Young Dumb And 21

A Crime Fiction

Young, dumb, and 21. That’s what we were. We were of the age of invincibility. There was nothing we could not do, and if it was wrong, we would never get caught. We could drink all night and get up for work the next morning. There was no limit to the trouble we could get into or the amount of alcohol we could consume. As was the night of October 28, 1990.

Receiving an invitation to one of Brody’s parties was something everyone bragged about. So when we received ours, we were ecstatic! I called Cheryl and Lisa and told them the news. They, too, were just as excited. We asked ourselves if we should invite Christy, weighing the pros and cons. If she finds out we went to Brody’s without her, she will be so mad at us. She’s been wanting to go to one of his parties for a long time. But if we invite her, she’s only going to regret it in the morning, then ghost us for weeks while she gets right with God and aligns with her church and parents’ values. With that last thought, we decided not to tell her about the party.

The three of us pull up to Brody’s huge, lustrous mansion, the lights illuminating the circular drive. The valet took the keys to my bug and drove away.

“Wow, this is bigger than I imagined!” I said.

‘No, I thought it was going to be way bigger and way prettier.”

Lisa, wanting to keep the peace, said it was exactly as she imagined.

Once inside, a large staircase led upstairs, and people were sitting at the bottom. To our left, French doors opened into a huge room full of people. Brody had a DJ, and the room was dark, with strobe lights that danced like shooting stars. There were coolers and kegs and bottles of alcohol everywhere. We each grabbed something to drink and started mingling. We didn’t know anyone here. So, we regrouped in a corner.

“Do you know anyone?” Lisa asked.

“No. Do you?” Cheryl replied.

“Me either, this is weird. Well, the valet took my keys, and I’m starting to feel this drink, so we may as well make the best of it. Let’s go explore.” I pulled out my phone.

“Should we text Christy the address?”

Lisa shook her head. “You know how she gets. She’ll have fun tonight, then spend the next three weeks feeling guilty, ghosting us while she gets right with God.”

Cheryl nodded. “I can’t deal with another guilt trip.”

I put my phone away. We left the room with fresh drinks inside 24-oz tumblers with lids and straws.

“Wow, taste this!” I extended my cup to Lisa. Cheryl was a germaphobe. And shook her head no at the thought of sharing straws.

“Oh, that’s good. Here, try mine.” Lisa’s drink tasted of kiwi and pineapple with a lot of vodka.

Huge portraits of people we didn’t recognize hung throughout the house, and the bathrooms were bigger than our bedrooms. We found two kitchens and a room that I later learned was a butler pantry, equipped with a sink and fridge.

Before heading outside, we stopped in the ballroom to grab another drink. Bodies were dancing provocatively, a good indication that they were heavily inebriated. Cheryl wanted to stay and dance, Lisa and I wanted to go outside to the garden, so we parted ways.

We linked our arms together and headed outside, swaying and stumbling as we walked. The giant hedges arched into an opening, and we entered with the courage that alcohol gives. It was dark; the full moon illuminated the path before us.

“Shit, we’re going to get lost.”

Lisa burst out laughing. “It’s not like we will be stuck in here forever; someone will eventually come looking for us.”

“But what if they don’t?”

We stopped laughing and stared at each other for a moment, then burst into another sort of laughter. The kind that pushes away fear.

“Well, this is a dead end, I told you we should have gone right. You always go right. That’s the only way to go.” She scolded.

I hated to admit she might be right this time. So, we turned around.

“But we have to go left this time because we didn’t go right the last time.”

Lisa rolled her eyes, and we went left. “Ugh, this drink is getting to me. It was way too sweet. I’m going to set it right here. That way, when we come back out, we will see it and know we are going the right way.”

Onward we walked, hands grazing the hedge’s edge. When we came to a fork, Lisa reminded me to go right. And this time I listened. I set my drink down before turning right, knowing our drunk brains will need all the help they can get.

We stumbled through the maze, giggling. It felt like forever, dead end after dead end, but we were having too much fun to care.

Finally, we found the end of the maze. It opened into a garden full of roses and a gazebo in the center. There was a water fountain with a stream circling around. It was heaven.

“Wow, this is amazing. Have you ever seen anything like this?”

“Once, but it was Colorado when I hiked to a waterfall. But this is man-made, so it makes it more surprising.”

We walked to the gazebo and noticed someone was slumped on the ground.

“Who do you think that is?”

“I have no idea. In case you forgot, we don’t know anyone here. “ Lisa snorted.

“Hi. Do you mind if we join you?”

There was silence. I wondered if they were passed out and decided to check on them.

We stepped onto the gazebo floor and realized it was Christy.

“Christy? I am so glad you came!” I said.

Lisa’s eyes were huge. She stopped, her jaw dropping to the floor.

When I turned back to Christy, who was still silent, I thought maybe she was mad at us for not inviting her. Then I noticed her hair was matted to her head. I grabbed my phone and shined it on her. Her hair was matted to her face with dark, sticky, reddish brown crust. I stood up and gasped. I shined my light down her body. Her skirt was pulled up and her panties were tangled around her ankles.

Blood was everywhere. It was on me too. Lisa was frozen, silent from shock. I stumbled backward,

“Oh my god! I she….” I couldn’t bring myself to say, “…dead?”

There lay our friend Christy, whom we chose not to invite, in a pool of her own blood.

“It’s all my fault,” Lisa sobbed. “I’m the one who said we shouldn’t invite her. I said she’d kill the vibe. If we had invited her, she would still be alive.”

In the distance, I could still hear the music from the house. People laughing, dancing, living.

GROUNDED

A Short Fictional Story

It was a beautiful sunny day with a few clouds against a bright blue sky. I loved looking up at the clouds while I walked—it was invigorating, almost like walking blindly, yet your eyes are wide open. I walked this path so many times that I did not need to look in front of me to know where I was going. So looking up at the clouds while I walked had become my favorite pastime, a game.

There was this one cloud in particular—it looked like Snoopy. Seeing it took me back to my childhood Christmases when Charlie Brown and Snoopy had their Christmas specials. Snoopy was one of my favorites. I loved it at the end, when Snoopy would be asleep on the top of his doghouse, with big heart floating away from him. I could tell he was loved, and he knew it.

The blue in the sky seemed bluer than usual. It wasn’t the standard gray-blue today. It was more of a robin’s egg blue. Vibrant and cheery. That reminded me—just the other day I’d found an actual robin’s egg on this very path, that perfect pale blue, delicate and whole. I’d stopped mid-stride, my foot hovering just above it, not wanting to crush something so beautiful. I’d stepped carefully around it and—

My foot landed on something soft.

I toppled forward, falling flat onto what felt like the cold seat of a car cushion.

Before I could get myself up, panic began to rise from within my bowels as I realized I had stumbled onto a person!

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t see you.”

There was no reply.

“Ma’am? Are you okay?” I shook her shoulder as I scooted back and lifted to my knees.

The woman was face down and unresponsive. I didn’t know what to do! With trembling fingers, I pulled my phone out of my back pocket and dialed 911. Through my shaky voice, I told the dispatcher,

“There is a woman on Elm Street, and she’s unresponsive. She’s cold and her lips are blue.”

How did I not see her? So much for the cloud game. I had to forfeit today, or resign the team altogether.

Ambulance and police cars arrived, taking my story, asking me all kinds of questions. They didn’t understand how I couldn’t see her. How I just literally stumbled onto her. I guess they never daydreamed before either. I think they don’t realize what daydreaming is either. It’s like awake dreaming. You’re awake, you’re dreaming, but unaware of your surroundings. That was me looking at clouds, reminiscing about my childhood, while God knows what was happening around me.

Everything after became a blurry tunnel of questions and rustling uniforms, the paramedic’s clipboard pressed gently against my shoulder, a police officer’s voice gently corralling me to the side.

I kept apologizing, still explaining, though the explanation was nothing more than the fact that I’d been looking at the sky, like I always did. They led me away (I followed because it seemed like the right thing to do). There was no blood., the woman just looked like she’d laid down for a nap and forgot to get back up.

They took my information and then left me to myself, sitting on the curb while the medics checked for a pulse and shook their heads in a subtle, practiced way. The woman had been dead. Maybe for hours. Maybe since the night before. They zipped the lady up, loaded her into the ambulance, and drove away with their lights off. The blue sky had retreated behind a thickening layer of clouds, not that it mattered; I no longer wanted to look up at them.

That was the last thing I expected out of this walk. I remembered kicking that empty robin’s egg with my toe, the color, the way it shattered perfectly. I remembered my own mother’s hand on my shoulder, steering me away from the broken things on sidewalks.

One of the police officers, a big pale guy with a pink face, asked for my name.

“Chelsea,” I said, my voice shaky. “I’m sorry, I—I walk here all the time. I should’ve been paying attention.” I felt the need to say it, as if apologizing enough could excuse all of this.

I was looking at the clouds, that I’d been so caught up in shapes and memories that I’d missed a dead woman lying right in front of me. But it sounded stupid, selfish even. So I just shook my head.

The officer nodded, scribbling something in his notepad. “You did the right thing calling it in,” he said. “We’ll be in touch if we need anything else, but you’re free to go.”

I stood up slowly, my legs still unsteady. The street looked different now—smaller, darker, like someone had turned down the saturation. I walked home the long way, keeping my eyes on the pavement the whole time.

For weeks after, I couldn’t bring myself to look up. Every time I tried, I’d see her face instead of clouds, that awful stillness. My teammates asked where I’d been, why I’d missed practice. I told them I was sick, which wasn’t entirely a lie.

Eventually, I started walking that path again. I had to. But I kept my head down, counting cracks in the sidewalk, and noticed the weeds pushing through concrete. There was a whole world at my feet I’d never paid attention to before—ants carrying crumbs, dandelions growing in impossible places, the way light caught on broken glass.

I still think about the clouds sometimes. I miss them, the way they used to make me feel untethered and free. But I can’t go back to that, not entirely. Now, when I look up, I make sure I know where I’m standing first.

WHEN CHRISTMAS CHANGED

I don’t know when Christmas turned from magic and lights to misery and blight. I only know that one day the lights didn’t sparkle as much anymore. Shopping feels like a waste of time and a drain on life savings. I don’t see why we spend four weeks preparing for something that lasts a day and two more weeks taking it apart.

For me, Christmas starts at Thanksgiving, when our family combines the holidays. The tree goes up a week or so beforehand and stays for the long haul, like an unwanted guest. Or a fly trapped in a car. Some years, I play Christmas music. Most years, I keep playing my usual, Ozzy and the like. This year has been an Ozzy year (RIP).

I don’t know exactly when I started to hate Christmas. Maybe it was when my former husband threw a fit because I wasn’t decorating the tree the way he thought I should, or in the colors he preferred. I remember standing in the living room, feeling crushed. It was Thanksgiving night or the evening after. I had cooked all day, and the meal was devoured in about fifteen minutes. Then came the cleanup, too much for three young children to help with, while he lay on the couch and napped.

After a few years of begging to do it myself, I learned it was easier to stand by and hand him the ornaments. There was rarely a time when I was alone. He took up most of that space unless I woke earlier than him, something I trained myself to do after a few years of marriage.

.I was excited to put up the tree so the kids could feel the same anticipation we had as we grew up. We finished hanging the cursed lights you pray will still work from the year before. The last thing was the topper. No matter how hard you try, tree toppers never want to stay straight. It didn’t help that he was obsessive about details. Somehow, it became my fault that the angel leaned and refused to stay lit.

Then there was the money. I had no idea how we were going to buy presents with what little we had. He was in Bible college and believed he should not work. If God wanted him there, God would provide.

It was then that I started questioning the sacrifices we were making. We gave money we didn’t have to a church and to missionaries who earned more than we did. We decided things like toilet paper and electricity were luxuries, not needs.

How do you reconnect to Christmas after that?

When I was a child, my parents had a tradition that I could open one present on Christmas Eve. Sometimes I choose it. Sometimes they did. Now that my youngest is still at home, I understand why they sometimes chose it, because there was that one gift they dreaded wrapping.

The oversized gift hidden in my closet this year will be opened the same way, because it is simply too big to wrap.

I remember the year I received a Nintendo with a Smurf game. I stayed up all night playing. When my parents woke up, I was still sitting on the floor in front of our wood-encased television, controller in hand.

My mother asked if I had slept at all and warned that I would be too tired to open presents later. I told her I would be fine. I was twelve. Of course I was.

Every Christmas Eve, we went to my grandmother’s house for dinner and gifts. No one ever knew what to buy for my uncle, a grown man still living at home who owned every comic book printed. He usually received socks or an ugly sweater. I hated getting gifts from him because they were never helpful.

Then, one year, he bought me the entire Wizard of Oz book set. He was a reader. Once he learned I loved books, buying gifts for me became easy. That year, he earned my respect.

My grandmother made many of my gifts by hand. Stuffed animals. Dolls. Raggedy Ann and Andy. A panda bear. Characters from The Wizard of Oz, except the witch. Around that time, rumors circulated about possessed dolls. I wasn’t afraid of Raggedy Ann or Andy, but the Oz dolls terrified me. I stored them in my mother’s closet.

I was fifty-six years old when I learned the infamous Annabelle doll was a Raggedy Ann, identical to the one my grandmother had sewn for me.

Every year, she stitched us matching Christmas dresses or skirts. Mine always brushed the floor. By the time I was thirteen or fourteen, I decided that kind of outfit no longer served my image.

One year, she made me a stocking more than five feet tall. My mother filled it. Stockings were always my favorite part of Christmas. Candy and small surprises, one after another.

We used to cover the tree in silver tinsel so it looked like snow. It didn’t look like snow, but it looked like Christmas. The cats loved it too and walked around for days with tinsel trailing behind them. No one wanted to deal with that, so we didn’t.

As a child, I loved Christmas. The lights. The colors. The music. My earliest memory is of a tree in the front room and presents underneath it. Our dog unwrapped a gift I had made for my parents, and I was furious.

That same year, I wanted a necklace so severely that I couldn’t stand not knowing. I unwrapped a present early, saw it was the necklace, and wrapped it back up. When they asked, I blamed the dog. But they didn’t believe me.

Christmas stopped being simple over time; loss layered itself onto the season. One of my children is gone. A serious family rupture surfaced during the holidays. My former husband despised Christmas and made it miserable. Putting up the tree was always a fight. There was never enough money.

One year we threw the tree away, calling it an idol. I had the scripture to support it. He declared the sin we were committing and the consequences. I enforced them. Out went the tree. Out went the decorations.

Minimalism became our way of life before it had a name.

This is why my adult self does not love Christmas.

My inner teenager can take it or leave it. She once begged relatives to give her gift certificates so she could choose her own clothes. Instead, they bought things she wore once and never again. She loved shopping with her mother because she got to choose, except for the extra-tight parachute pants.

I don’t know exactly where I stopped enjoying Christmas, maybe when I got married, maybe when it became my responsibility to make it happen with people who made it difficult.

My current husband shares a similar background and the same ambivalence about the holiday. We try. We are doing fine. But Christmas is no longer all about lights. Not like when our mothers made it special.

Recently, I did something I hadn’t done in several years. I play instrumental Christmas music and turned it up. Then I baked.

Banana bread. Apple bread. Pumpkin. Gingerbread. Peanut butter cookies. Most of it adjusted to be Paleo.

All day I measured, mixed, and baked. Timers went off. Batter waited for its turn. I tasted everything.

My favorite was the banana bread sweetened only with bananas. Not overly sweet. Just enough.

The final loaf was made from leftovers. Extra pumpkin. Extra applesauce. I still don’t understand why recipes don’t simply use the whole can.

Halfway through, I remembered dinner. I pulled out the Instant Pot, added frozen meat and seasoning, and thirty minutes later, we ate.

The kitchen felt chaotic and magical at the same time, warm, messy, and smelling like Christmas.

I don’t enjoy Christmas as much as I’d like, but I am learning to find ways to make it more enjoyable.

Fa-La-La-Laaaaaaa

Saturday morning, I awoke with the innocent idea of a bath. A little peace, little self-care. With just a few drops of lavender oil for calm and a touch of peppermint to invigorate the senses. Just a drop or two.

I should have known the moment I saw the crooked cap on the peppermint oil that fate had other plans. I bent down, meaning only to twist it shut, but the bottle leapt from my fingers like it had a will of its own. It hit the edge of the tub, ricocheted onto the trash can, and finally exploded onto the floor in a minty massacre. Over half the bottle spilled, its contents cascading across the tub, the floor, the trash, and into the steaming bathwater too.

Quickly, I grabbed a washcloth and wiped where I could, not grasping the full extent of the invasion. The scent was intense, but pleasant. Clean and energizing. I mistook it for a good omen.

Then, I stepped in.

The moment I slid my body into the water, my lady bits were met with an icy fire I can only describe as what I imagine happens when frostbite and cayenne pepper make love and have a menthol demon baby.

A blinding, searing chill set my nerves alight. My body seized, my breath caught, and I launched out of the tub like it had turned to lava. In a frenzy, I pulled the drain and stumbled into the shower, fumbling with the knobs like I was defusing a bomb. For minutes that felt like hours, I stood under the water rinsing my stinging, peppermint-soaked body, praying it would end.

The tingling and burning betrayed me. Every inch of my skin pulsed with arctic intensity. My toes were numb. My nether regions felt violated by peppermint’s cruel embrace. She ached with an almost comical vengeance.

The bathroom had become a cathedral of menthol. The scent, powerful and unrelenting, spread like incense across the house. Every room minty. Every towel minty. Every breath like freshly chewed gum, minty. I smelled like a candy cane, an echo of that peppermint curse clinging to the air. The house remained a shrine to my overzealous self-care.

Lesson learned: essential oils may be “natural,” but they are not gentle. Especially not peppermint. Peppermint is not your friend. Peppermint waits for a moment of prideful peace, then it strikes. Use it wisely and use it sparingly. And never assume the cap is on tight.

When Doing the Right Thing Still Makes You Feel Like the Villain

A story about family, guilt, and the cost of choosing someone’s peace and safety

This year, I set a boundary with my parents.

We didn’t go to their house for Thanksgiving. We had it at ours instead. That might sound small to someone outside the situation, but it wasn’t. It carried years of pain, silence, and choices that should never have been mine to carry.

It wasn’t even about me this time. It was about my daughter.

There’s a story I’m not going into here, but I’ll say this much. My daughter was violated by a family member, their grandson, my son. He’s in prison now for what he did to her. But my parents still choose to stay in contact with him.

She was the one who said she didn’t want to go. She didn’t want to sit in a place that still protects the person who hurt her. And I decided to support her, choose her, and stand on her side.

It was the right thing. I know that. But it didn’t stop the fallout.

My mom didn’t speak to me for a whole week. My dad turned on the guilt, the blame, and the disappointment. Like I was the one punishing them. All I did was protect my daughter from the people who made her feel betrayed.

And still, I spiraled. I second-guessed myself. I wondered if I was being dramatic, if I had taken it too far, if I was being cruel by drawing a line.

That’s how deep the conditioning goes. That’s how beating yourself up becomes your favorite hobby.

You protect your child. You do what you know is right. And then you punish yourself for it.

Here’s how that cycle works. Here’s how the guilt gets under your skin and stays there, even when it shouldn’t.

1. You confuse guilt with being good.
You grew up thinking that if it hurts, it must mean you care. If you carry the guilt long enough, maybe it proves you’re the better person. Perhaps it means you’re nothing like the ones who hurt you. So you hold it. You nurse it. You call it empathy, but it’s not. It’s grief. It’s fear. It’s survival mode, you never got the chance to grow out of.

2. You turn on yourself before anyone else can.
It’s safer that way. You blame yourself first. You get ahead of the punishment. You run the worst-case scenario before it even happens. That way, if someone does get mad, you’re already halfway into self-destruction. You don’t have to be blindsided. You’re already bleeding. You call it control, but it’s fear disguised as preparation.

3. You were trained to carry the weight for everyone.
Keeping the peace was your job. Making things easier and smoothing things over. So when you finally make a decision that protects someone else, someone innocent, someone hurt, it still feels like betrayal. It feels like you’re letting everyone down, even when you’re the only one standing up for what’s right.

4. You think beating yourself up makes you accountable.
You think that if you suffer enough, it proves you’re not careless. That you’re not cold. That you understand the impact. But accountability is not self-punishment. It’s not turning your own heart into a punching bag. Accountability means standing in your truth and owning your choices, even when they hurt, even when you’re alone in them.

You can know something is right and still feel crushed by the guilt of doing it. That’s the part people don’t talk about.

The pain of healing is that it often makes you look like the villain to the people who benefited from your silence. And the reflex to beat yourself up is strong. It feels like the only way to keep the peace with yourself when everyone else is pulling away. But beating yourself up is not the same as being good. It’s just the story they taught you to believe. And you don’t have to keep telling it.

Why Happiness Makes You Nervous

For the girl who thinks the tightness in her chest is normal

Good times make you nervous, don’t they?

You don’t call it fear—you call it “being cautious,” or “not getting your hopes up.” But the truth is quieter: you’re not used to peace. For so long, love has felt like tension, panic, apologizing, overthinking, and walking around someone else’s moods like they’re landmines.

So when something finally goes right… Your whole body glitches.

You look around, waiting for the explosion.
You wait for the tone in his voice to shift.
You wait for the moment he decides you’re “too sensitive,” “too emotional,” or “too much.”

And if nothing happens right away, your brain fills the silence with dread: Is this the part where it all turns again?
You don’t trust happiness—not because you’re broken, but because you’ve survived too long without it.

Girls like us learn early that peace feels like a trap.
A setup.
A calm before the next storm.

No one told you that real love isn’t supposed to feel like bracing for impact.
No one told you that safety isn’t the same thing as “keeping the peace.”
No one told you that if your body relaxes only when he isn’t home… that’s not comfort. That’s survival.

Listen, sweetheart—if happiness feels foreign, it’s not because you’re incapable of it.
It’s because someone taught you to expect pain.

And here’s the part I wish someone had whispered to me sooner:
You don’t have to keep living in the story where fear feels like love. You don’t have to keep shrinking yourself just to fit into a relationship that was never safe to begin with.

Real peace doesn’t make you nervous.
Real love doesn’t make you flinch.
And real happiness doesn’t feel like a setup—it feels like finally coming home to yourself.

You deserve that kind of happiness.
And I promise… it won’t explode.

When someone ties despair to God Himself, it buries you in a deeper kind of fear. You stop dreaming. You stop believing in the better. And every time life gets quiet, you brace yourself, because you know the calm never lasts.

I remember once, after one of our rare calm seasons, we tried to dream again. We made a little vision board together — nothing extravagant, just things a normal couple would hope for. A peaceful home. A reliable car. A future that didn’t feel like walking through broken glass.

But his face went dark, the way it always did when anything felt too good.

He looked at me and said,

“God hates me. We will never get any of this.”

And just like that, the air changed.
The hope drained out of the room.
My body learned — again — that peace wasn’t safe, and happiness wasn’t to be trusted.

My Gut Reaction: Living with Public Anxiety, IBS, and a Submarine Emergency

A funny, honest essay about navigating IBS, hidden anxiety, and one unforgettable moment in a submarine that led to personal healing.

I never considered myself an anxious person — but the swooshing in my gut, the bubbles, the ache — it happens too often to ignore. And it only ever happens in public places, which made me start to wonder: maybe this is anxiety.

We were on a little weekend getaway and decided to go to the Arkansas Inland Maritime Museum before heading home. The USS Razorback (SS 394) submarine is harbored on the Arkansas River. The tour starts in the visitor center, where I went to the restroom one last time — just to be safe.

Walking across the plank, I looked out at the foggy river, thinking, I love Arkansas; it’s so beautiful here. It was bizarre but amazing — a real submarine in the middle of the Arkansas River. It made me wonder if there were others.

Our tour guide opened the hatch door and pointed to the 14-foot ladder leading down into the vessel, instructing us to climb down. I was cursing my choice in shoes that morning. I wore wooden-heeled pumps, not knowing we were going on this spontaneous side adventure after breakfast.

I chose to be the last to go down. Each step made me tremble with fear.

She talked, leading us down narrow pathways, stepping through doorways. There was so much machinery, equipment, and living necessities squeezed into this tiny space. It was warm and damp, and you could still get the faintest waft of sweaty sailors.

I usually welcome warmth, but this day my belly was giving me a different type of heat. I knew I shouldn’t have eaten the eggs when we were not close to home. Eating eggs was always like playing roulette. I might have explosive diarrhea, I might not. We would wait and see. Of course, if I had known we were going on a side trip before heading home, I would have ordered something safer.

Every time we go out, I calculate the distance from the restaurant to home because these bathroom emergencies, we like to call them, had become a part of my life. When we go to shows or concerts, we always choose aisle seats so I don’t have to walk in front of a bunch of people, clenching my butt, praying I don’t pass gas in someone’s face.

But here we were in this submarine — tight and suffocating, with recycled air that clung to your skin. Not even a quarter of the way through our tour, I couldn’t hear what she was saying. All my focus was on the swooshing and bubbles in my intestines, calculating how long or how much time I had to climb up that dreaded ladder and get to the bathroom.

It wouldn’t have been so bad if we had been the only people on the tour. But there were others. And I was about to have to interrupt and explain my situation.

I crossed my arms across the top of my bloated belly as if to say, “No. I refuse to let you do this to me,” but honestly, I was praying I could just make it through the tour.

Then I felt it.

The drop — when my stomach contents fall into the next chamber like a trap door has opened. That’s the signal: time is running out. Once that happens, the rest of my system tends to follow suit in a panic. Maybe that’s why they call it “taking a dump” — because once it starts, it’s all downhill from there.

I raised my hand like a shy elementary student asking the teacher to go to the bathroom — but in a whisper, so no one close by could hear me, so they wouldn’t laugh and make fun of me.

I said quietly, “I think I’m going to throw up.”

I learned that if you tell them you’re about to toss your cookies, they are more sympathetic and quicker to get you out of there because no one wants to deal with vomit. This happened to me on a cave tour in Colorado. They stopped the entire group, handed me a barf bag I knew I wouldn’t need, while everyone waited for someone to rescue me and take me back above ground.

She led me to the porthole, climbed up to open the hatch, and stood there watching as I clumsily made my way up the ladder in my wooden-heeled shoes.

Once outside, I walked as fast as I possibly could to the bathroom, feeling it crowning like a baby fixing to be born. I don’t know about your bladder and other systems, but as soon as I see the bathroom, my systems think it’s time to release — steadfast, I keep my gaze on the ground, not wanting to make “eye contact” with the bathroom door.

I barely had time to pull my pants down before the rest of my digestive tract let go. It was a speedy, high-volume exit.

And that was it.

I breathed a sigh of relief, wiped the sweat off my forehead, and — being too embarrassed to return to the tour or wait for the next one — we drove on home.

That experience prompted me to reflect.

My stomach doesn’t betray me — as long as I don’t leave the comfort of my home. Conveniently, I work just down the driveway, so even work feels safe. But as soon as I round the corner to head toward town, leaving the comforts of our rural home, my gut will start doing its thing.

There have been times when I was driving that I felt I would pass out. It happened so often that I started keeping a closer eye on my glucose and blood pressure, thinking it could be a physical cause. But my vitals always came back normal.

Then I read something about how, when we’ve been through traumatic events, we often create an environment for ourselves that’s so comfortable we don’t want to leave it — and become afraid to.

And it dawned on me.

I have it really good at home. From the deck, we have a view of the mountains, surrounded by trees, and it’s just a short walk to a creek — everything I ever dreamed of and more. It even makes searching for vacation homes difficult, because not many places can beat the one I live in.

But leaving this wonderful, comfortable place gave me anxiety. And that anxiety was taking control of my life.

So I decided to start therapy.

When she asked why I was there, I told her I think I have anxiety — and how my gut liked to let loose in response. Little by little, she helped me peel back the layers to understand why it was happening.

That was two years ago. Now, I can safely go places — tours, car rides, even crowded events. The gut thing has only popped its ugly head up once recently, after getting bad news from two of my adult children — separate events in their lives, but both deeply upsetting.

I’m learning to live with a gut that feels everything — and to finally listen to what it’s been trying to tell me.

The Victim Mindset Is Keeping You Stuck

Why Blaming the Past Feels Safe—but Is Silently Sabotaging Your Growth

There’s a mindset that keeps people trapped—and often, they don’t even realize they’re in it. It shows up subtly, quietly, in the way someone reacts to life’s hardships. And over time, it becomes the lens through which everything is seen.

It’s the victim mindset.

It convinces you that life is just happening to you. That your circumstances, your past, and the way people have failed you are the reasons you can’t move forward. And while there may be truth in those hardships, staying stuck in that story only leads to one place: nowhere.

This mindset is especially dangerous because it feels justified. You’ve been hurt. Life has been unfair. Opportunities have slipped through your fingers. But the victim mindset doesn’t just acknowledge the pain—it builds a home in it. It keeps you focused on what’s been done to you rather than on what you can do now.

And the most painful part? Sometimes, it makes you push away the very help that could make a difference.

You might tell yourself that you’re independent—that you’ll figure it out alone. But if you’re rejecting real, practical help while still depending on handouts or the temporary kindness of others, that’s not strength. That’s survival. And survival is exhausting when there’s no plan to move beyond it.

When you stop asking yourself hard questions like, “What part am I playing in this?” or “What can I take responsibility for?”, you give your power away. It’s easier to blame the system, your past, or your circumstances. But blaming keeps you stuck. It keeps you from healing. And it lets you off the hook.

The truth is: you’re not powerless. You’re not broken. And you’re not doomed.

But if you’re constantly rejecting growth, avoiding discomfort, and refusing to let others help you in meaningful ways, you’re choosing stagnation. And deep down, you probably know it.

Real change is hard. Accepting help feels vulnerable. Facing your patterns takes courage. But that’s where transformation lives. It’s not in the blaming, the begging, or the surviving—it’s in the choosing.

You can’t heal what you refuse to take ownership of.
You can’t rise if you keep convincing yourself that you’re stuck.
And you can’t move forward if you keep turning your back on the help that’s already within reach.

Let this be the moment you get honest with yourself. Not to shame or guilt yourself—but to reclaim your power.

Because the victim mindset will always keep you stuck —and you deserve better than that.

I see this in my daughter. We have sent her to trade school twice, but she has dropped out both times. We paid off her car, paid her auto insurance for a year, and helped her pay for her own apartment.

And now she is in a worse place than before we did that, begging people for money.

My family members and I offer true, lasting help – like coming to stay with us so you can get on your feet, etc. – but she refuses. Instead, she chooses to remain in the chaos, her comfort zone.

GRATITUDE IN REVERSE

What felt like the end of the world turned out to be my greatest gift.

Albert charged into the side door of our house, clad in polyester basketball shorts and a t-shirt adorned with armpit sweat.

I inhaled, holding my breath, thinking, “Oh boy, what now?”.

“Pastor Riggs told me to hand in my resignation.”

He wouldn’t say he got fired — that would sound too obvious, like admitting he did something wrong. No, he was ‘asked to resign.’ He explained, with pride, that he had told the pastor off and had a long list of reasons.

All I could think of was Thanksgiving back in 2007, when we had to eat spaghetti because he had been fired from a previous position helping a pastor grow his church. He didn’t have a proper title, so we called him the church evangelist — but really, he was the church shit stirrer. I can recall three men who have dared to tell Albert the truth to his face. None of these men was a hothead like him. They had boundaries, and he crossed them. One preacher even went so far as to call him “a wolf in sheep’s clothing.” I remember that night and still chuckle inwardly.

But this day felt like the end of an era—the end of our lives. We knew poverty. We survived it. But I was so tired of just surviving. So tired of pinching pennies, being the recipient of groceries because people felt sorry for us. I was downright exhausted. He told off the wrong guy, and that guy had the balls to stand up for himself. Kudos. But that didn’t help the situation. We were in dire straits. Bills do not miraculously stop just because you lose a job. No, electricity still runs, and a bill is still accumulating.

This is when he decided we would pursue his lifelong dream of starting a cleaning business.

“Oh gawd, yuck. I hate cleaning.” I thought. I did not want to do this. But being the obedient wife I was,

I said, “Okay.”

I was already at my wits’ end with him. I had even filed a restraining order earlier that year, thinking it would change him and he would be a different person. It only changed me. I became a different person. I was finding my voice.

We pushed along, started from scratch, and kept on scratching until we had a decent little cleaning business. It turned out it wasn’t as brutal as I thought it would be —cleaning, that is. Since he was OCD, I had learned to pay attention to detail.

I remember one time he was at work (I was a stay-at-home wife and mom), he may have been at bible college. Regardless, I spent all day cleaning the house. I wasn’t taught to keep a clean home. As a kid, my room was livable — clothes piled up, and I’d make a path to the bed and push them off to sleep. Dishes would overflow in the sink and onto the counters, even with a dishwasher sitting right there. My mom never asked for help — just pouted on weekends, complaining nobody helped her. But she never asked for help. I do not remember a single time my mom showed me how to wash dishes or asked me to wash them. But when I stayed the summer at my aunt’s house, she made me clean up after myself and even showed me how to clean behind the toilet.

So like I said, living with an OCD person – my husband – taught me to pay attention to detail.

Back to the part where I had cleaned all day, then he came home and went on a rampage:

“What have you been doing all day? Why does the house look like this? Get off your lazy ass and clean this fucking house!”

Nothing was lying around —not even a particle on the floor; everything had been freshly mopped and vacuumed. Do you know what he saw? A smudge on the corner of a mirror. Something I had missed. I cried that day. But I learned how to pay attention to detail on that day, too.

Cleaning houses felt a bit rewarding. I cleaned behind toilets and wiped baseboards, tops of door frames, and ledges on the doors. Top to bottom. No mirror had a smudge, and you could eat off the toilet seat. 10/10 would not recommend, but it would have been safe to do so.

As time went by, my disgust for him grew. But I could not figure out how to survive on my own with all these kids still living at home. It wasn’t until he got sick. Real sick. He ran a fever for over a week and refused to see a doctor. He would come downstairs and cry and whine like a baby, literally. Imagine a 3-year-old whining when they want their way. That was him. Then he would go back upstairs to sleep. He slept and slept. I would bring him soup, tea, water, and even made a homemade herbal remedy, which, for the first time in our 23-year marriage, he took. I welcomed the quietness his illness brought me, but I still performed my wifely duties of “in sickness and in health,”. Then went to clean the houses by myself. My daughter, who was in Christian school, would take a few days off to help me, but I found it easier to clean by myself than to go behind her to make sure she did it right. Not that she couldn’t clean, but this was our only income, and I didn’t feel I had room for mistakes.

Two more days went by, and he did not get out of bed. I got scared. I realized something was really wrong with him. He’s not faking or overreacting this time. So I called my sister-in-law and told her what was going on, and she said,

“You march up there and tell him he is going to the doctor, that he doesn’t have a choice.”

And so I did. He refused, crying and whining the whole time I was helping him dress, like a child not wanting to leave the park. Then, I drove him straight to the hospital. The doctor asked a bunch of questions that I answered, since he liked to withhold vital information. I even got the doctor to give him a prostate exam, which brings a smile to my face today. Turns out it was his appendix. It had been oozing into his body, and instead of being able to have the simple surgery, he had the large one where they cut from the top of the sternum to the pubic bone. I felt little sympathy for him, and he is a miserable patient. I was thankful to have work to go to. Grateful that we had just started an enormous organization project that was able to keep me away from seeing his green face and the black bile coming out of his mouth. His recovery took over six weeks. But by then, I’d already been cleaning solo for 8 — and I realized I could keep doing it. I could support my family without him. He had already lost interest in cleaning, wanting always to rush through the houses. He was there only to collect the check. Turns out he did not have as great a work ethic as he proclaimed.

When we finally separated, he left me the house and the business. A detailed story for another page, but what I thought was the end was just the beginning.

I thought when he got fired, we were going to do like we always did and move to another state and start all over. But instead, we started a cleaning business I didn’t want to start, and that business helped me support my then-6 kids at home. And without him there to tell me how the money was going to be spent frivolously, I was finally able to buy my kids’ school clothes and school supplies. For the first time, when they came to me with a need, I was able to supply it.

And that was the greatest gift of all.

Yoli's Write To Sanity

Just Breathe And Write

Category: short-story