I’m going through my millions of files, and found something I’d forgotten about: A 111 word flash fiction I’d written for HER KIND, a publication by VIDA. My entry was featured in their July 2013 edition.

The prompt was ‘coming into my most formative summer’.That would be the summer I turned 28. Things were not good:

I wasn’t in the process of suffocating, I was finalizing the act. Imprisoned in a state I saw as a black hole, I felt further trapped by a husband-turned-tyrant. Although at my lowest, I realized that I was not powerless. I declared divorce. Air! And when that damn Colorado border continued to taunt me, I loaded the kids into the car and drove right over it. Freedom! My tumble into adulthood had somehow made me forget that we are either jailers or liberators- of ourselves. So, to keep myself reminded that limitations are self-inflicted, I continue to cross borders to remind myself that limitations are self-inflicted: Mississippi. South Dakota. Illinois. Lost my job- kids, lets drive to Florida!

I’ve been reading a lot of posts on writers groups from people who are stuck, and stressing out about it.  This is my contribution: find a fun act of defiance, a distraction. Something to remind yourself that you aren’t all that ‘stuck’.