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Suggested prompt...
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She hurts inside, having to leave her children at home every night but has no other choice than to work. Her husband is an alcoholic, not in any shape of holding a steady job; this is all she has and all that she is able to do to earn the money that she needs to take care of her family.
Most days, no one would even know her story. Most days, she comes to work with a smile on her face and ready to please; not today. Today, she’s distracted. A familiar face entered the shop today and noticed what she was unable to hide. “What’s wrong, sweetie? What’s got you down today?”
She just tells them “nothing”; shakes it off and continues her duties. Being the last one at work, she shuts down and locks up for the night; returning home to find her husband passed out on the couch. The kids are wandering around, eating candy and drinking soda, watching TV. and it’s so late. She’s exhausted, unable to even care anymore.
What happened to her life? Who has she become? She was once the mother and wife that she wanted to be. Where did it all go wrong?
She flops on the couch and the kids jump on top of her. The littlest one smiling in her face, saying “welcome home, Mommy” and she puts on her face…again…the smile that is worn as a mask; the mask that hides her dreams and sets her up to perform. She thinks of how she should have become an actress, because she’s so good at it.
Somehow, she manages to get the little ones cleaned up and off to bed; returning to the living area to pick up, and do the dishes. He wakes up from the couch expecting another performance, the one that he expects every night but isn’t able to catch. She doesn’t even see the man that she once fell in love with. He has become a bottle in her eyes. She misses that man she once loved.
She manages to find the bed and in pure exhaustion, she collapses; only to awaken to another day waiting for her attention. The kids are up; bouncing on the bed and ready for breakfast and her husband is gone off to his few hours of work.
Later in the day, she finds herself back at work with the same smile on her face. She glances off for only a moment and catches a glimpse of her past and a fresh outlook for her future…and…she dreams.
~ Simply Heather
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10 comments:
She dreams of a desk job, a fashion designer, of being the top chef at the Plaza by Central Park. She wants to be able to go to the PTA and not feel embarrassed when she is asked what she does for a living. If she only realized that to her 6 year old daughter and 8 year old son...she is the most wonderful, the most beautiful, the most important person in the world...the "something more" would be accomplished.
To children, you are not What You Do...you are Who You Are...Mom. What more could anyone ever aspire to?
Dan
She has been in the breakfast diner almost every day of her life. Her parents have worked hard to make it a success, and she is so proud of that place. She always loved being around the customers and helping out her parents. Now that she is out of school and working there fulltime, however, she dreams of something more. It's not that she doesn't still love the diner; it's that she feels life is passing her by.
Her friends are going out every night, having fun, meeting guys. But she has to be in bed as the night is just beginning. She has to be in the diner by four to start prepping for all those omelettes. And when the diner closes at two, she's still there cleaning up. She heads home to an empty apartment because her friends are still at their jobs. They get home by six, and everyone talks about their plans for the night. Parties and clubs and dinners. But she is tired already. She fixes an omelette for herself and cleans her dishes. Her roommates head out. She heads to bed where she dreams of something more.
Everyone always asks her, "what are your plans?" or "where are you going?" and she never answers them. She just smiles. Serves the coffee, black, sweet, however you like. Everyone tells her she should be dreaming. Every little girl deserves her fairy tale.
Bu no one ever teaches you that it's okay enjoy the life of Cinderella. No one ever tells you that humility and delight can intertwine.
She's happy here.
That's why she always smiles.
Just look at me. Here again, in this job that I hate. Is this the best I can do? What have I done with my life? I know I can do better, this is an honest living, but I can't get paid more than minimum wage and I need to make more if I am to provide for myself and my son. I must take action and go to a vocational school and learn something that I can make more money. I am honest, hard working, friendly. The beginning of a new life will start today. I can make anything happen that I want to.
All of us dream of something more
But who goes out and does it?
Have you dreamt of changing your job?
What is keeping you from doing it?
The cash, the family, the girl next door...
The economy, the life, the substantial debt and more...
Have you dreamt of traveling so far?
What has stopped you from going there?
The job, the family, the time to go passing...
The fear, the weather, the money worth spending...
If you cannot change jobs today- then start a new hobby today.
If you cannot go traveling today-
bring those travels home to you.
Camp out in your living room, throw a Hawaiian party, spend a day "at the beach" in your backyard. The world is yours TODAY.
She dreams of something more ... but doesn't have the courage to make the leap.
She is not alone; this is how 99 of 100 human beings today live. They know it's okay to dream of something more--but to do it? Well, those that do deserve nothing but the deepest loathing. For our lot, children, is to be sheep, or machined cogs, chained to the wheel of commerce, or glued to it, or welded to it. Such is the lot of the common man.
She hurts inside, having to leave her children at home every night but has no other choice than to work. Her husband is an alcoholic, not in any shape of holding a steady job; this is all she has and all that she is able to do to earn the money that she needs to take care of her family.
Most days, no one would even know her story. Most days, she comes to work with a smile on her face and ready to please; not today. Today, she’s distracted. A familiar face entered the shop today and noticed what she was unable to hide. “What’s wrong, sweetie? What’s got you down today?”
She just tells them “nothing”; shakes it off and continues her duties. Being the last one at work, she shuts down and locks up for the night; returning home to find her husband passed out on the couch. The kids are wandering around, eating candy and drinking soda, watching TV. and it’s so late. She’s exhausted, unable to even care anymore.
What happened to her life? Who has she become? She was once the mother and wife that she wanted to be. Where did it all go wrong?
She flops on the couch and the kids jump on top of her. The littlest one smiling in her face, saying “welcome home, Mommy” and she puts on her face…again…the smile that is worn as a mask; the mask that hides her dreams and sets her up to perform. She thinks of how she should have become an actress, because she’s so good at it.
Somehow, she manages to get the little ones cleaned up and off to bed; returning to the living area to pick up, and do the dishes. He wakes up from the couch expecting another performance, the one that he expects every night but isn’t able to catch. She doesn’t even see the man that she once fell in love with. He has become a bottle in her eyes. She misses that man she once loved.
She manages to find the bed and in pure exhaustion, she collapses; only to awaken to another day waiting for her attention. The kids are up; bouncing on the bed and ready for breakfast and her husband is gone off to his few hours of work.
Later in the day, she finds herself back at work with the same smile on her face. She glances off for only a moment and catches a glimpse of her past and a fresh outlook for her future…and…she dreams.
(Read with a thick New York accent. It makes it much better. lol)
Ya know...that man is crazy! He just talks, talks, talks! Everytime he comes into the diner he just talks about how much he wants to get to know me, how my eyes are pretty, how he'd like to see me with my hair down.
Ha! I don't trust him. Nope! I don't trust him one bit.
He looks like one of those guys who will have ya in the sack one minute and out the door with your money in the next. I've seen his kind blow in the door and out the door and poof! Ya never see the woman they were with again.
Yeah...that man is crazy!
I close my eyes and I see her so clearly. Remembering when I was that young girl dreaming on my back porch. I painted myself a future filled with romantic interludes, exotic travels and breathless adventure. Twenty years later, I don't want to be this woman trapped in a world without change and excitement. Today will be the day when I hang up my apron for the last time. I will pursue my dream somehow.
The girls enter the diner giggling, young and pretty in too-short skirts that reveal too-perfect thighs. They sit down at the booth and order a mountain of food: pancakes, hash brown, bacon, biscuits with sausage gravy. When it arrives, steaming hot and glistening with grease, the girls dig in with gusto. Their bony fingers pick at sausage links, glossy lips sucking soda pop through straws as thin as their arms.
She watches them from behind the counter. She remembers fifteen. Fifteen, when she was so hungry for life she could eat an entire turkey and not gain a pound. Ambition and innocence burns everything it touches, even the most saturated of fats.
She wants to tell these girls, I was like you once, but she knows they wouldn't believe her. They would never believe she was once so stunning, so thin, so desirable that she walked runways for Dior, wore haute couture gowns made of nothing but swan feathers and silk, was made up like a geisha and photographed for Vogue. They'd laugh if she told them she had rock star lovers at sixteen or a closet full of $500 shoes before she turned twenty. They would take one look at her sagging breasts, her support hose, her swollen ankle, and they would howl like banshees until their full stomachs ached.
And maybe she doesn't want to tell them. Maybe it's best that way. Let them believe they'll always be a size zero and turn heads every time they cross the street. Let them think they'll never be anything less than radiant. She doesn't want to go over to them and tell them, I used to be a princess, and look at me now. She doesn't want to break their hearts. Time will do that eventually. It always does.
Instead, she just watches them eat their breakfasts, these pretty teenaged girls, until their plates are as clean as their toothpaste-ad smiles. She watches, and she dreams of fifteen, when she was something more.
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