Hate List

by Jennifer Brown

The truth was most days I couldn’t feel grateful no matter how hard I tried. Most days I couldn’t even pinpoint how I felt. Sometimes sad, sometimes relieved, sometimes confused, sometimes misunderstood. And a lot of times angry.

“Just concentrate on being in the moment,” he said. “Don’t read into things. See what’s really there, okay?

It seemed like way too much work, cleaning up my grief.

Some days making it to the end of the day is quite the victory.”

“Time’s never up,” she whispered, not looking at me, but at my canvas. “Just like there’s always time for pain, there’s always time for healing. Of course there is.”

Just curl up into myself until I disappeared. Never speak to anyone again.

I couldn’t change the past. But if I were ever to feel whole again I would have to say goodbye to it.

I knew what she was thinking: Being pretty isn’t everything, but sometimes being ugly is.

I lived and that made everything different, she’d said.