Shancia Speaks: Short Stories Superb!

Deep breaths no longer combat mental exhaustion. Elisha needed to retreat. Mental decapitation, the hangman's joy reigned supreme. Who designed this? To work so much and rest so little and of course, those daily autonomous regimes. Tired, weary, and dreary, Elisha was a mixture of all three. The morning alarm is the worst sound, like poison to her ears. The dreadful aide- memoire of the expectations of life placed upon her, expectations she did not bargain for. Elisha sits on the edge of the bed and juggles between crucial decisions. Slouching shoulders hold the agony of the forced interactions to come. Crossed legs are tense and stiff, regretting they even have to move, heavy from the weariness. The jab in Elisha's gut plays tango but not the kind you have fun with when you dance, rather a twisted discontentment, hanging in limbo. Then there's the mind, where the bulk of the exhaustion lives, the kind that sleep has yet to permeate, the type that debilitates. Elisha believ...

There are children who live in adults and they are hurt. Out of not knowing what to do with this hurt, they adopt the worst coping strategies and inevitably hurt others. The child is wounded; the adult frame is frail and every time the child mourns, growth derails.  No one apologized to the child and so the adult believes no one is owed an apology. No one lifted up the child in praise, and so the adult criticizes harshly. The child who lives in the adult throws tantrums that bang like drums, screaming when the outside world dares to go against the ego. There goes the adult coward, fearful of what others may say or think, and so the adult learns to be vicious, to be manipulative, to be deceitful, the child in the adult has learned to get his or her way or he or she will ruin the other's day. The child will make the adult crush whoever stands in the way, the child has yet to learn any boundaries. The child scrutinizes, looks for an agenda in everything, the child in the adult useless...