UNIT 6 A Woman's Distress The morning was moist, and the fog had set in last evening and still masked over the shabby cabin hidden deep within the Turtle Mountains. She shivered as she stepped barefoot onto unfinished slabs that held her deck together. She had purchased the slabs from the Hillbilly Board Store. Her white sleeping gown hung below her knees with just a white cotton lace. Her soft hair was loosely tied back with a piece of purple ribbon softly and gloriously falling out the sides and touching her cheeks of pale skin. Jen was so glad to be out of the city for a few days. This was her weekend retreat. She loved the cabin, and it gave her confidence and peace and complacency in herself. Jen worked everyday in an attorney's office as a consultant. She handled stacks of legal documents daily. So when the weekend and holidays came around she would head for her cabin. Her cabin was thirtyseven miles from the city. It was excluded from other cabins at the lake. She liked it that way. Jen had a secret, a secret she never told anyone: she was an amateur writer. She had a love for writing. Her writing is comprised by essays, fables, poems, and true stories about people she had come to know. Writing compositions about her childhood she could recall or anything that kept her interest. Jen never told anyone about her love for writing. She always felt people would consider her as a bit crazy. With so many activities to do on weekends, why would she choose to sit and write? The cabin was perfect: the breeze was fragrant and she could hear frogs croak from time to time. She would sit with her pen in hand and her spiral tablets and would write whatever came to her mind. Sometimes her novels and stories would dominate her and make her cry so hard that she would have to put her writing down and ask herself why she was doing this. She would write a song, then hum it and sing it to herself until she believed it was a real song, real like the songs on the radio or television or even imagined some famous singer singing her song. From her standpoint, writing gave her a feeling of complete satisfaction with herself. It's not her expertise but it helped her to experience successes and overcome the pain she had endured throughout her lifetime. It helped her to articulate the feelings deep in her heart. It helped her to bring imaginary people and places to reality in her mind. It was a freedom no one ever knew. Her writing was her true complement and soul mate that she could trust. Jen recently has purchased a computer and took an oath to herself that she would compile her writings and put them into the computer just to have for herself. It was an undertaking which would take a while but having her writings organized for the first time would be great. It was going to be a dreary weekend, but Jen didn't mind. She didn't plan on spending it outside anyway. For her, it was a stressful weekend. She had too many tasks to complete and the hours went away too fast for her when she was not at work. Stretching her arms above her head, sticking out her chin and yawning as if it were a sign of freedom, Jen stretched every muscle in her body. "Good morning, world", she yelled out as she turned to go into her cabin. The cabin was small in dimension, having four rooms to be exact, but it was all Jen needed. Her living room and kitchen were combined in one large room only the kitchen table seperating them. The bedroom was direct opposite the living room and the bathroom facing the kitchen. The backside of the cabin was an enclosed porch that was screened to enjoy a fresh breeze in the warm evenings and yet keep the irritating bugs away. Jen poured herself a glass of brandy, sat at her kitchen table and stared into space. Words were running through her mind, words of peace, words of beauty and poetry to relax by. She picked up her pen and started to write. Feeling like rose petals softened by the morning dew, Sweet scent fills the soul when I think of you. The way you hold me when I am lonely and down Like drops of water running through a pebbled brook. And the laughter in your eyes every time I look, Like soft rain falling, I have loved you from the start. I know you can never show your love for me. Your life has been drafted and she is yours forever. But darling I need you to understand I will always love you. I'll be here when you need me even if it's for an hour or two. I will never love another and I will die with you in my heart. Forbidden as it may be, I have loved you from the start. She put the pen down on the table thereafter as she could feel her eyes filling up with mist. She began to sob. Damn him, why did he do this to me, why did I torture myself. I knew he was a married man, I always knew it and yet I let myself fall in love with him. Jen wiped the tears that were streaming down her cheeks, and she knew she had to get on with her life. The weekend went fast, Jen had entered over one hundred of her poems on the computer and had written a few new ones too. She cried a lot of tears and yet had a few good laughs as she was reading what she had written. She always enjoyed going back and reading her previous writings. Sometimes she had even forgotten she had written some of them. As Jen locked the cabin door, she slowly walked to her car, knowing it would be another week before she could return. She loved the cabin and her writing. After all it was all she had right now as she was trying her best not to break up her best friend's marriage. |