She stared at the empty screen in front of her and willed her mind to fill it. Her heart had been wringed out of her chest and she lacked the capacity to observe the world anymore. She started writing many times but each line sounded wrong and empty and threatened to go nowhere, so her hand remained on the backspace button, while her head willed the words to come.

She typed.

All I want to do is write about you. I miss you. Your eyes, your smile, the stupid way you danced.

I miss the way you always knew what I was going to say and talked to me for hours about things that to other people seemed irrelevant and mundane.

When you made me breakfast and lunch and dinner and all the things inbetween. How you forced me to try new things and knew what I liked before me.

Your laugh.

Waking up next to you.

Sleeping next to you.

Waking up so tightly entwined together, any limb could belong to anyone.

She stopped typing because she knew that retrospect made everything perfect. That her mind had lost the ability to see wrong or bad. Maybe that was the beauty of love. Being able to squeeze out every bit of good from every bit of bad. Being able to see past actions to the soul of a person to understand their worst actions.

The way you wouldn't let me stay mad at you.

She would write about love.

I realised that I only cared because someone else did. But it doesn't matter who cared. It doesn't matter if it's someone or it's noone. And transferring that power, the power to do something- anything in life is stupid. The only person that should have the power is you. The only person it should matter to is you. Because at the end of the day, it's YOUR life. And yes, sometimes, you look at everyone else that has everybody believing what the say...but it doesn't matter. The lives that anyone else lives has no bearing on your life. Unless and until you break free from these beliefs, they will determine everything you do. They will bring you down. And sometimes, when you think you can do something, the only way to do it is to do it. The only way to grow is to grow. You have to do it even when it hurts. Even when you're the only person in the room that can hear yourself and noone else cares. THE ONLY PERSON THAT HAS TO CARE IS YOU.

Some nights I can't sleep because of the crippling fear. So many things scare me. But the only reason that they scare me is I KNOW that I'm not fighting hard enough. I know I'm coasting. And I know that if I carry on like this, all my fears will come to pass, so I can't let them.

Fears exist in the mind and I need to stop living in my mind and start living in real life.

ACID

It wasn't how she thought she'd be spending her new year.

She pulled down her too short glittery skirt and tried to make out her friends in the crowd. The neon sign of the club was blinding her. 'ACID' it said in bright pink neon lettering. No subtlety there.

She saw them huddled in a corner ear the door. They wore similar outfits to her and she hated to say it, but they looked...desperate.

'Hey' she shouted, tottering towards them in heels she could barely walk in. They waved back and Kike brought out a cigarette. She reached their small circle and gestured for a cigarette before she spoke.

'What's the plan?'

'We go in, have fun and enter a new year'...Uche tried to sound enthusiastic, but she just sounded tired.

'Ok let's go in then'

They walked towards the entrance. '20 pounds each' the bouncer said straight faced.

They watched three girls go in without paying. They didn't protest. They knew a pointless battle. They walked to the small pay booth and paid.

The lights in the club were even more painful than the neon sign. It was already packed. They found some standing space next to one of the speakers. Each beat felt like something was shattering in her brain.

This was not how she was supposed to spend new year.

Noone spoke about getting drinks. It was too loud to speak anyway and they could barely see the bar for all the people around it.

She closed her eyes for a minute and pictured what her life should be like. She should be at home convincing her child to stay up. She should be cracking jokes with her husband.

Anything. But. This.

She was 30 and in a nightclub in a too short skirt on New Years Eve desperately trying to have fun.

She felt someone tug at her sleeve. 'We're going to try the bar', someone was shouting in her ear.

'Ok'

They took it as indication that she was going to follow, but she stayed where she was. Then she ran. She ran out of the club, past the pay booth and the ugly bouncer at the door. She left her heels on a side street somewhere and didn't stop running. The pavement felt cool beneath her feet and she was hopelessly out of breath but she couldn't stop running.

When she finally stopped, she was right at the spot where the pain started. The house he lived in. The house he lived in with his family. The family that he made so quickly after her. The family that broke her heart a little more everyday. That made her life rot away gradually as if infected by a poisonous acid.

She saw a light come on in an upstairs window and watched a curtain close. She cried silently for what she promised to be the last time. This might be an equally desperate start to the new year, but at least it was honest.

Fireworks exploded around her and she could hear load chants of 'HAPPY NEW YEAR' from the insides of houses.

She started the long journey home.

It was time for a new start.

Challenge/Competition

Happy new year my lovelies!!!

I haven't ever done a competition or challenge, so her goes both!

For 30 days, I'm going to write a short story every day.

But the ideas are going to come from you. It can be a title, the first line of the story...even a word! be creative.

For every idea, I use...the person gets a printed copy and signed copy of the story sent to them in the post.

At the end of the challenge...everyone who participates will be randomly entered into a draw to win a printed/signed copy of all the stories. BECAUSE YOU NEVER KNOW! ONE DAY IT COULD BE WORTH SOMETHING!!! The winner would also receive other things that have not yet been identified at this point, because c'mon! I just thought of this!

lol

You can submit ideas by commenting on this post and then any of the posts in the next 30 days. You can give as many as you want. You can also tweet me the ideas @sexywriter

I promise to think more carefully about the details of the competition and come up with better prices.

But please participate guys!

xxx

Follow Me

Follow me on twitter:

@sexywriter

for those of you that already found me before (ni)...I switched accounts, so my former sexywriter account is now my personal account and now I have a new sexywriter account!

Look forward to talking to you guys on twitter.

Happy Holidays!

What Happens When The Piano Stops Playing? On Religion.

People cry in church. Like honest to God, bawling their eyes out. People jump and shout and run around. I don't know. I feel like a huge part of church is theatrics. It's the music...the sermon in dramatic tones! Everything is dramatic. It's like playing a love song in the background everytime you tell your girlfriend you love her.

I get it. That emotions run high 'in the presence of God'. That's another thing, people always emphasise God's presence on Sunday mornings when people are dressed up and there's a piano playing. Maybe it's like seeing your favorite artiste at a live concert...your emotions tend to run a bit high. I don't really do concerts, so I'm not sure.

I don't know, sometimes I feel cheated in church. I feel like I want to see everything stripped back. I want to see how people feel the love of God when the piano stops playing. I want to hear the sermon in tones that aren't modulated in a way to force people to listen.

I just want to see how much of it is real.

How much of it do people remember and feel after the closing prayer?

That's all I want to know.

I realised that it wasn’t who he was that kept me going back for answers. It was who I was. It was me blending in with all the nameless girls that had been in and out of his head. People that didn’t makek it into his history. Girls that carried hurt that he dismissed as ‘stuff that happens’. I knew he valued history. I knew that because he had told me his history. One with names and faces and wistfulness. His history painted him honest, if not perfect. I didn’t count on the fact that some people carried bits of him in their history and he didn’t make it into theirs. I wanted to have a place…a face…a name. I wanted to be etched deeply into his history and repeated often in the stories to come. But reality had me down as the parts of the past that didn’t even exist. He was in mine, but I was just ‘stuff that happens’.

The Friend Zone

There is nothing wrong with the friend zone. I know for many people, it's seen as the signal of death to any meaningful (read emotional) relationship, but realistically, it doesn't have to be. What's better than a relationship with someone who you get on with completely and honestly. Too often, when relationships take the direct route without a proper friendship first...it can last! It can be fun...it can last forever...but it's just not the same as a relationship with your friend.

I think the friend zone is only really strict when theres absolutely absolutely no chance of physical attraction. This usually happens when the person is just totally unattractive. They are not cute...They don't have an amazing body...they are just well below average. It's in circumstances like this that the friend zone can be well and truly useful.

I read an article about how negative it is to be the 'bottom bitch'...that is, you're always there for someone...but they keep choosing other people. Guys can be bottom bitches too...however, I feel it's an unfair assessment of why bottom bitches finish last. Bottom bitches don't finish last because they would 'ride or die'...They finish last because they don't prioritise themselves. Selflessness is up there with fairy dust. You can only love someone else as much as you love yourself (or at least you should)...so ALWAYS putting someone's needs before yours is silly. And for what? The hope that one day they'll realise that they love you? That negates from the selfless angle a bit actually.

In any situation, honesty is key. You have to be honest with yourself...don't become a version of yourself that suits someone else...That leads to you being demeaned in someone else's eyes. Always, always, always put yourself first! There's a time and place for putting your partner before you...and dating is not that time!

Venus vs Mars

Opposites attract but similar stay together. Don't argue, just accept it. Relationships are hard enough without disagreeing with someone on fundamental tenets of life. Similar doesn't mean the same...it means similar. Most importantly, that you agree on the important things. Don't fool yourself into thinking that the fact that someone doesn't like kids while you see yourself having 15 kids in quick succession isn't important...it is. Nothing is important in the first glow of 'love/lust/infatuation'...Even lack of conversation can seen romantic. But as I grow older, i'm realising that honestly, clichés about relationships exist because they are mostly true. Exceptions are exceptions. Don't live life expecting to be the exception. Live your life trying to be happy. Do you know what will make you happy? Being with someone from the same planet as you!

For some people, relationships are like a trip. You read about a place, see pictures and videos- it all seems extremely exciting , so you book a trip. The trip is great! Or maybe it isn't, but you take loads of photos and are eager to go back home. At home, you show off the photos and tell people about the trp, relieving the memories...but you don't plan to move there or even go back there. You might go again, if someone is paying and you have free time; you might even WANT to go back there because it was so much fun... But at the end, you always, always want to come back home.

The key to the right relationship is when the destination becomes home....but this rarely happens. So all that's left is to enjoy the trip.

Even when you're the destination.

HEY EVERYONE!!!