One Sentence Per Year
This is cool. Here’s how it works:For each year of your life, you write a sentence. That’s it! Number one will be a sentence about something that happened your first year of life. Number five will be something that happened during your fifth year of life. Got it?? Your sentence can be as complex or simple as you’d like.
Oh, and if you participate, leave me a link, I’d LOVE to read whatever transpires!! And if ya'll don’t participate voluntarily, I’ll start tagging your a's and haunting you!
1. I was born at exactly one minute before midnight. (1971)
2. I sang publically in church for the first time. (1972)
3. My grandmother worked with me to learn to read from and memorize scriptures from the Bible. (1973)
4. For our church Christmas eve service, I recite Luke 2 in its entirety - from memory. (1974)
5. My mother yanks me out of a Baptist pre-school because the teacher slapped me. (1975)
6. I spend my days with my grandmother, who teaches me everything I ever needed to know about life and becomes my best friend. (1976)
7. My mother announces she is pregnant and I ask for a baby sister. (1977)
8. My baby brother is born (I said I wanted a sister!), my grandfather died, and my hometown faced the worst hurricane it had ever faced and we lived without electricity for a long time on my gradnmother's back porch. (1978)
9. I begin doing second grade in the morning and third grade in the afternoon - because it was not permissible to "skip a grade" in our school system. (1979)
10. I realize that I am very different than most kids, and that most kids didn't like me very much. (1980)
11. I begin being bussed one day a week to a different school where I could be in the "gifted education" program. I like it more than I've ever liked anything in school before. (1981)
12. I take my first bus to school - for Middle 6. The bus creeps me out and seems dirty and smelly. I beg mom to drive me, which she does whenever she can. (1982)
12. I was in the 7th grade and had my first real boyfriend - Jason. I learn about monsters that live among us when his sister was brutally raped and murdered, and he was never the same again. (1983)
13. I was in 8th grade and attend my first dance, much to my parents' dismay. I remember dancing to Careless Whisper (1984)
14. I get mono so bad that I almost have to repeat the 9th grade. This is the first year that kids I know in school die from drug overdoses. (1985)
15. I start high school (10th grade) and loose my virginity against my will to my then-boyfriend who date-raped me. (I must write about my process of recovery at some point in the future.) I stay with him for a year because I saw myself as "used goods" that no other man would ever want. (1986)
16. I leave high school after 11th grade and start college in May. My mother has to drive me to my first college class that summer because I had not yet turned 16. She sits in the car in the parking lot - far away from the building so my classmates wouldn't notice. (1987)
17. I fall "in love" with a French Horn player named Keith. (1988)
18. I get my AA degree and move to Gainesville, FL to go to UF (go Gators!) (1989)
19. I study at the Universidad Autonoma de Yacatan, taking courses in Anthropology and Spanish. (1990)
20. I graduate with my BA degree from UF in August and start my MA program there two weeks later. Keith and I break up. (1991)
21. I change majors in the middle of my MA - to Counselor Education. (1992)
22. I drop our of grad school, take a job as a secretary, and marry a complete looser named Brian who had no education or ambition to speak of. My parents send me to counseling because they think I am very screwed up. I tell them for the first time that I was date raped, and by whom. We never talk about it again. (1993)
23. I move to Memphis to finish my MA. My car is stolen, there is a shooting in our apartment complex parking lot, and my then-husband is mugged. I vow to never live in Memphis again. (1994)
24. In an attempt to self-sabotage, I have an affair, yet still I manage to finish my MA in Communication from the University of Memphis, missing a 4.0 by 1 B+. (1995)
25. I move to Denver, Colorado to begin work on my PhD in Communication at the University of Denver. I fall in love with the city and in hate with my dissertation director. I am diagnosed with clinical depression, and am relieved to discover I am not crazy. (1996)
26. I spend the majority of my time writing, attending conferences, and trying to publish as much as humanly possible. (1997)
27. My then-husband decided he wants a divorce and moves back to FL to live with his sister - but he returns a few months later. (1998)
28. I interview at 5 places and accept a faculty position at Columbus State University in Columbus, GA. (1999)
29. I decide to end my marriage. In November, I attend an annual professional conference where I run into an old friend whom I admire greatly. I admit to him I have always had a crush on him. He admits the same to me. Six weeks later, I fly to Ohio to see him. (2000)
30. I finally finalize my divorce. My gradmother dies and I do as she wished and sing at her funeral. I am awarded Educator of the Year at Columbus State University - Michael attends the ceremony with me. On Michael's birthday, I present him with a diamond ring and ask him to marry me. It takes him a month to give me an answer. (2001)
31. I move into an old house in the ghetto that was built in 1918 and was being remodelled by a friend. I live in the front rooms while the back rooms are being torn to shreds. I watch "Cops Live!" on the street in front of my house each night as the neighbors beat the snot out of each other. One night, the woman was found dead in her shower (they said it was natural causes). Michael breaks up with me saying he does not want the same kind of life that I do - we don't see each other for 6 months. (2002)
32. I move into a duplex and make friends with my next-door neighbors who are Mormon missionaries. I cook lots of food for them. I suffer a nervous breakdown and my doctor releases me into the custody of my best friends. Megan moves in with me to care for me. At Christmas, Michael and I fight a lot, then decide to get married. (2003)
33. Michael and I get married in March, I quit my job one year before going up for tenure, and move to Lexington, KY in order to be with my new husband. (2004)
34. I am diagnosed with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome and learn shortly thereafter that my husband is also sub-fertile. I start treating the PCOS with Metformin and (2005)
35. I talk to the man mentioned in #15 for the first time since the phone call I made to tell him I loved him before he left for the Gulf War. It was a therapeutic call that brought great peace. His wife left him and their two children for another man. He had called my mom, who refused to give him any information about me. I looked up his number and and called to tell him how sorry I was. (2006)
Man, I just realized how weird this all looks, and hesitate to post it. But - nothing is unknown to anyone. My life really hasn't been all that negative - I guess it often seems that years are punctuated by that which we remember - and there are both good things and bad in the mix.
Tomorrow is another day. I hope it gets better.
posted by No Longer In Crisis @ 3/07/2006 02:16:00 PM
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