An Uninvited Guest

Here's another from those days. My entries then were whatever they wished to be and that day I must have felt like being creative so I wrote this short short story.... and it's not that good, but it can turn into something better perhaps one day.

I'm thinking Anna must have turned into my Annabelle when I was feeling more optimistic...who knows. All I know is that my brain was working in creative (sometimes dark and scary-purely pessimistic) ways.

Please remember it was a first so please kind ... I know it is very rough very rough around the edges. There are a lot of kinks to sort out before it could ever become a final draft....nevertheless, here it is in its first stage glory! ;) x

An Uninvited Guest (the rough version)



At 38, Anna thought she would be situated –happily situated. She remembered playing the game of
 M A S H as a hopeful teenager, and it telling her so. Telling her that yes her life would certainly be set by 38. Her smile faded as she recalled how easily she made those choices of man, age, children and home. It was all very simple, and it seemed pathetically funny to her how she almost made it. She thought this game if she believed in it enough would be true, could be true.


But there she was she realized – at 38- unhappy, unfulfilled, not in love ....yet married. She always seemed to be looking in the mirror with closed eyes. When she allowed herself to remember, desperation was evident in every place she looked. All her choices had been made as quickly and as easily as she had done when she was younger. How could she have thought it could all be that simple?


This was a familiar scene for Anna. This scene took place often it seemed to her. When she could not find happiness in her home, when she could not find happiness in her pictures, when she could not find happiness in the stuff she collected, she found herself realizing. Most of the time though these moments did nothing to her arrangement. Perhaps tears came or some words were written, but she would always end up in bed next to him, pretending the tears were from silly thoughts.


This time though something seemed very different to her. There came a distinct pain with these thoughts and no matter what she did, what she bought, where she went... her old companion followed closely behind. The images in her mind were raw and too hard to ignore. What had changed she wondered? She had been married for nine years- unhappy for five- in some state for four. So what could be different now? What was it about now she asked and asked that made it all too much?


January became February and still she was awake and more aware of this uninvited companion who insisted on not going away. What she was tagging along was not going to pass it seemed. It was becoming clear to her that this dear "friend" wouldn't let her go.

For five years, her old, dear friend, fear, had held her captive and now it seemed something, someone else had taken its place.


She didn't know what to call this new companion. She didn't even invite it to come along. She had no idea where it came from and what to do with it. She only knew it wouldn't go away.

March came and she woke up to realize her constant friend, fear, had been completely replaced. It was somehow gone. It seemed to her it had been gone for a while now. She looked in the mirror with opened eyes. Someone new was looking back, standing there. She seemed to want to recognize this new friend now. She seemed to want to invite it in now.

 Courage was its name, and she knew at once and immediately what it told her to do.