You never forget the feeling. Fear. Desperation. Loneliness. It never fades from your mind. You wake up and regret. You sleep and your dreams remind you of it all. Then you wake and regret it some more. It haunts you daily and no matter how much you beg and plea for forgiveness, it comes back. This is how I feel when I think of Sayla May. Fairmont was a pretty hard place to live. The streets where about as dirty as the felons who resided there. I guess you could say I lived in the ghetto. I never really saw it as such because I hadn’t known any other way. My daddy died in 1999. Cancer is what momma says. The streets say different. When Daddy passed I was two years old. Daddy stayed out late most nights, but others he was home and asleep. …show more content…
It wasn’t strange in Fairmont for a boy not to know his father. Most kids were raised by the streets. Others were either raised by crackheads or they’re grandmas. My mom was not a crackhead but I barely got the chance to see her. She worked three jobs to provide for me. My older brother Javari was shot last year by some thugs in front of Mr. Rod’s house. Mom hasn’t been the same since she had to identify the body. Mr. Rod is an English teacher at Monroe and Malcom, a school in Fairmont. I have only heard rumors of the things that happen in that school. Mom refused to let me attend. She used the money from her second job to put me in Harlow. A private school full of rich white people who all but hated me. My clothes where all from the thrift shop. Except for what Momma made herself. All the kids made fun of me. Always pushing me down and slapping my books out of my hand. Life was hard. Momma always told me that life isn’t supposed to be easy if so they would called it sleep. I never understood until I had to endure the struggle. I stood on the side walk debating whether or not I should just turn around and go home. It isn’t like mother would know she was always at work. Just like the day before all the kids from Monroe and Malcom passed and teased me for going to Harlow. They think that in thought I was better than them when truth was I never thought anything of the sort. I envied them. I wished to go to a school with black kids. Kids who dressed like me and spoke like me. I ignored the ideas as I neared the bus stop. As I waited for the bus I sang. “God’s going to trouble the water See that band all dressed white God’s going to trouble the water The leader looks like the Israelite God’s going to trouble the water…….” I loved to sing.
I often heard momma sing this song as she cleaned the dishes. I never understood much of what Momma talked about but I knew if momma said it. It was important. I was a good singer. I even sang in the church one Sunday. Hearing momma sing those old Negro spirituals really took a toll on me. They were hard to get out of your head but even harder to get them out of your heart. I stepped back off the road when I heard the squeaky buss tired coming up the road. I was normally the last kid they picked up, so I always had to sit right behind the bus driver. While all the other kid yelled and laughed quietly sang the rest of wade in the water. It helped relax me... Singing those Negro spirituals reminded me times could be tougher then what they was. The bus slowed to a stop infront of a house I had never before seen. The yard was big as surrounded by an iron gate that said, “May” on the front. The white paint that swallowed the house seemed as if Picasso himself had painted …show more content…
it. In the mist of my admiration a young blonde girl stepped onto the bus.
She was beautiful. Her perfect piggy tales hung down over her lacy pink dress she wore perfectly. She was like the girls you see in the ads for toys. Trying not to stare I looked out if the window not noticing her eyes on me. I looked at her questioningly. “May I sit with you?” The question completely slipped my mind. All the kids on the bus stared as she ignored the need for permission and sat down. Even the bus driver raised a brow but biting his tongue kept driving. “What is your name?” she asked. I looked at her confused as if she was talking to me. “I’m Shayla,” she interrupted the silence,” Shayla May.” She put her hand out and I just stared at it. “I’m not going to bite,” she said as if she was joking, but in a way it was serious. “My name is Jwavar Jersey, but momma called me JAY.” I said trying not to be rude. After trying to say my name she looked at me and proudly, ‘Jersey it is.” After a minute or two of silence she began to hum, “Wade in the Water.” Without knowing I began to sing along. Her eyes glow big as she stared at me. “JERSEY CAN SING!” she shouted. I crunched at all the stares and blushed. “Not a lot.” I replied trying not to show how good it made me feel to know somebody was happy with
me.
prick up as she hears a sound in the water beyond the entrance to her lair. She
Life as we all know is full of disappointment and filled with disparity. Most of us are able to go through these and learn from and forgive ourselves. Yet, this isn’t always the case. People are faced with traumatic experiences that often take a long time to get over, if they ever do get over it. These experiences brew in our brain popping up at the most random points often bringing our spirits down. Although these experiences may scar us and fill us with regret and guilt, we can’t continue to live in the past and let these regrets haunt us. Self forgiveness is a key to healing and to moving on in life, no matter how hard it is.
· Penrose, Roland. Picasso at Work. With introduction and text. Photographs by Edward Quinn. New York: Doubleday & Company Inc., n.d.
In this work, the colors and shapes come together to form the depiction of a woman in a chair gazing out at the landscape beyond a window. This subject matter relates to Picasso’s infamous relationship with women and may serve as a depiction of one of the many women he was linked with. The painting depicts the woman with a dual omniscient and introspective vision. Picasso develops this dichotomy through the depiction of a wayward eye gazing out the window and a larger ubiquitous eye glaring directly at the viewers. In constructing such a contrast, the painter is able to convey the personality...
It took her a long time to catch her breath,but she finally managed to spit out the words,
After understanding, and coping the problem a person can deal with their problem at hand by perhaps writing it down or writing about who hurt them, according to Melanie Tonia Evans, “this is self-recognition that will assist you in healing and reclaiming your right to perfect love, success and happiness.” A person can feel as if they were abandoned, unwanted, unloved, or forgotten. The most important thing though, is to stay positive about themselves at all costs. When a person loves themselves and is happy with their life it can make everything much easier and healing can begin. “Once you have validated and learned what you can from the experience, you can let it go and move forward. This won’t happen all at once. Those imprints are still there, and they need to be replaced with healthy, positive ones,” (Dania Vanessa.) The dysfunctional experiences that a person has from their childhood can pose as a learning experience that shaped someone into who they are now, from the hardships they
realise that the path we had chosen was the wrong one, and even though I
After that I saw her there, as if she'd been standing beside the lamp looking at me every night. For a few brief minutes, that's all we did: look at each other. I looked from the chair, balancing on one of the rear legs. She stood, with a long and quiet hand on the lamp, looking at me. I saw her eyelids lit up every night.
Ever had that feeling that just made you wish you did something but you chose not to for some unforeseen reason? Or even that feeling of regret that just takes over you and all your thoughts are just filled with “what ifs”? Maybe your regrets are just eating you alive and you just don’t know what you’re going to do now. I never enjoyed regret or the fact that it always came in the end. It’s like a rash that keeps on getting more and more irritating. Regret starts off as, “Oh. No big deal.” to where it becomes “I wish I did this. I wish I did that.” If you don’t know how to deal with it, it just becomes a part of you.
Everyone has a past, other people stories might not relate to you but it makes every individual who they are. A painful past can leave you feeling empty and lost. Reliving memories and never getting closure to the situation can be the biggest issue to face because of the damage already made. The most common thing for most people to do is find someone or something to blame it on. The blame game can be a burden also because you feel as if someone owes you an apology and needs to acknowledge that their wrong. One of the hardest things in life is to accept an apology you will never get and forgive whoever hurt you. Letting go is a hard task. We tend to hold on to things and bottle up emotions with no outlet and it can mentally
Life began in the University Medical Center of Southern Nevada, with a mom that was only 19. We grew up together, watching the Las vegas lights fade during the day and glisten in the night. It was just me and her, we had family to make sure we were supported but when it came to the end of the day, it was her and I, no one else. Growing up in a single parent home had its struggles, but we made it. When I wasn’t at school, and no one could watch me I would go to work with her. I knew the system, make snowflakes, paper chains, and have conferences in the meeting hall. My mom worked everyday to make sure she could provide for me, she did good, she spoiled me when she could, but always supported me. Although my mom had a steady job we were constantly moving, maybe not towns, or states, but houses
“What’s wrong?,” my mom asked, after my sister had gone to the ocean with my dad. She looked confused.
“Hey Gabby, you’ve been acting a bit off lately, are you ok,” Maria asked me with concern laced through her voice.