"The Best Way Out is Always Through"

Giveaway coming soon!!!

I am SO excited to announce this! I have never done any reviews or giveaways other than my own home made items, and I am ready to jump in head first!

My first weekly Friday Flash giveaway is starting TOMORROW- so check back for that! There will be one every Friday, so tune in for THAT! (I know, the anticipation is already killing you. LOL.)

But that's not all! A wonderful new review and giveaway is on the way! I can't say what it is yet, because it's still in the works, but it'll be settled soon! I'm excited! You should be too!

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Mama Kat's Writer's Prompts.

I chose prompt number 1:

What did you go through in order to get out?

"The best way out is always through." - Robert Frost

At first, when I saw this post, I thought hilariously about the Haunted Circus my girlfriends and I attended this past Halloween- the spinning rooms, the puffy tunnels, the chainsaws, the clown oven....- long story. The things I literally went THROUGH to get out of there.

And then, I noticed the complexity of the question.

When we say to someone who has had a hard time, "You've been through a lot," or "this situation is tough, but you'll get through it," we don't usually think about it as a physical thing.

Looking back, though, it does seem a bit more physical. Dark spots-tunnels, if you will- that eventually widened into caverns and then became bright again. I remember lots of them. I'm in one right now- a loooooooong, seemingly endless tunnel that gets narrower and narrower as the days go on. I'm sure that eventually, it'll make a great blog story about what I went "through" to get out of it. For now, you'll have to settle for a past experience.

You see, I sort of see my entire college career as "dark ages" in my life. The details of that are not really necessary- not terribly incriminating either, so don't jump to conclusions- but there was a heck of a lot of soul searching, getting to know myself and learning how to trust, and how discern when not to trust. A lot of culture shock.

And, not that I'm reminiscing at all, but I was involved with my first serious boyfriend. I dated him for two years, and we almost got married- but you see, it's obvious that we did not get married, which means that there was a breakup. It was absolutely the most distraught period of my life.

I worked as the early morning (read: 4am) baker at Smith's Bakery then. I drove an adorable little yellow Omni with band stickers plastered across the back window, I spent all day going to class, afternoons doing homework, and evenings hanging out with roommates who didn't really care about me, nor me them, and dodging "date nights" in our living room.

I cried- nay, I sobbed- while baking french bread and Mexican wedding cookies each morning, barely held it together while taking cake orders from customers, and was severely glad to just sit, staring at my teachers for 8 hours a day. Surely they thought I was deeply interested in what they had to say. In the Student Union Building, I often crashed beside the fireplace, curled up in one of the many love-sac beanbag chairs while trying to finish math homework, and snorted sarcastically when, during my Tai Chi final, my teacher expressed, with much gusto, how well she could feel my chi. I told her, without smiling, that I was just so incredibly happy. I still got the highest grade in the class.

My ex and I had all the same friends. We all met the first week of school. And when I broke up with him- yes, believe it or not, I must have had some kind of masochistic desire to have my heart ripped out of my chest, thrown on the floor, kicked through the dirt, and then stomped on until it stopped beating. I broke it off- I lost most of them too. Neither of us asked them to pick sides, but he threw parties a lot, and did "cool" stuff like rock climbing and sk8ing. There were few people I had left there, but one of them, Ryan- a boy I wasn't interested in at all, but who made me laugh, danced with me at Homecoming when I showed up stag, and let me bowl free because he worked at the alley and was captain(?) of the bowling team. I spent a night, once, sobbing so hard that I couldn't breathe in his dorm while he rented me a stack of chick-flicks, and brought me pizza.

Those days seemed to last forever. I truly loved him. But we didn't belong together. We wanted a million different things.

Of course, time took it's toll. I grew up a lot. Heartbreaks make cynics of us all. I came home from school a lot, and I started dating Brandon. You see, I'd made a really difficult decision, knowing it was the right one. My romantic belief that love always perseveres and that happy endings prevailed had been proven wrong. But I survived- and largely on my own.

Slowly, the tunnel lessened it's pressure on me, and let me escape. And I was still just fine, when it was all over.

The "through" is never as dark when you look over your shoulder as it is when you are surrounded by it.

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