Out of the Woods

by Hannah Bonam-Young

Out of the Woods is my love letter to all of us who met their soulmate before they had the chance to fully meet themselves. I wanted to write a story that reflected the delicate dance of being madly, deeply in love with your significant other but desperately seeking independence, evolution, and change.

It’s also for all of us who, following a traumatic event, felt frozen in time.

Desperate prayer is the only kind I’ve ever known. After Mom passed, I relied on my own instincts to tell me when it was appropriate to pull on that heavenly pair of tin cans tied together with angel’s-harp string. I’d shut my eyes tight and ask something bigger than myself to intervene. A force of some kind. Some deity. Some all-powerful, all-knowledgeable, all-capable thing. Something my mother called God.

And even though I’ve never seen an answered prayer, I still find myself giving it a go. Rarely and only when there’s nothing left to be done, just as Mom taught me.

this makes me so sad

we know each other at a level deeper than most friends would. Closer to sisters, I’d like to think. Twins

“What the fuck am I doing, Win?” I ask in soft desperation, clinging on to her eye contact like a lifeline.

but she was my mom. I’m the one with her DNA flooding my veins. Her auburn hair, her tea-stain eyes, her slightly crooked left incisor, her long legs and disproportionately short torso, her ugly feet with bent-in toes she’d joke were our family’s curse.

i rly like how she describes brown eyes

Marcie Green could throw together a Michelin-star-worthy meal with a couple of cans, whatever else we had in the pantry, and a few bags of frozen vegetables if you gave her an afternoon and a Shania Twain CD to blast on repeat.

Win has overcome so much to be the woman she is today. Her limb difference never once held her back.

win is from the first book " out on a limb"

In just under two months Win and Bo will officially open Camp Cando. A summer camp she has designed for kids with varying disabilities, and their families, to explore nature and have community with one another.

awww

It’s the cursed roles we’ve been stuck in since the eleventh grade. The gallant knight riding in on his white horse is here to save me once again. And shit, if being the damsel in distress isn’t getting old.

“I think maybe that’s the issue. We’ve been letting shit pile up for years, ignoring it like the bills on our moms’ kitchen table. But now they’re all past due and we’re too tired to deal with it all.”

I honestly am starting to wonder if I’m some sort of…NPC or something.” Win blinks, her eyelashes fluttering rapidly. She opens her mouth to speak, shuts it, then shakes her head. “Wait—what’s an NPC?” “A non-player character,” I answer. She’s still confused, open mouth staring at me. “Like from a video game? The characters who exist the moment the main player needs them to and then, presumably, disappear when offscreen—existing in some empty void.

ive literally had this thought before lol

You cannot throw your whole life away because one event didn’t go as planned.

advice yaaas

I cannot afford to go to jail, I have a gluten sensitivity. Prison food would turn my gut into a tear-gas factory.

relatable

kept my brain occupied enough to avoid slipping back into that dark place. And when reality crept in to an uncomfortable degree—I’d escape with books.

thats what im doing right now

I’m incapable of ever becoming a productive, helpful, functioning member of society because I can’t seem to move past shit that happened over a decade ago.

“I miss my tits,” I answer, keeping this thin filter between my mouth and brain intact. “The way they used to be,”

“It can sometimes be difficult for me to feel grateful for what I have because I’m thinking about what I’ve lost or what I could lose.

i feel this way exactly and have most of my life. its so nice to see this in book

“I want you to understand that you can be anything but not everything. And, sometimes, you have to make a choice for yourself, right or wrong, before life makes it for you. I don’t want you to let anyone tell you not to try just because you might fail. Failure is simply an opportunity for those who have time. And you will have so much time.

beautifully beautiful

I want to be the only man lucky enough to be loved by you.”