Lying Next to Me

by Gregg Olsen

Newcomers with buckets of cash from Seattle jobs or real estate they’ve unloaded think we’re quaint, if not a complete throwback to another era. We smile at that, if only to ourselves. It’s good to be all of that when the alternative is big-city life and all the problems and discontent it seems to bring with it. We’ll take small-town any day.

Not talking about it and pretending that I can’t remember is my chosen path. It’s my right to hold that inside. Everyone makes a choice on what they want to do with what was done to them. I’ve chosen to bottle it up. Sequester the evil. Move on. I do it because I’m so ashamed of the stupid mistake that I made. My therapist would chime in right now and interrupt my thoughts to remind me that I was a child and that I had been victimized.