Workshop Write

Well I tried mailing this in, but I must have done something wrong. Unless of course it shows up twice.

I'm trying to get back here, folks. I really am. I have written quite a bit with pen and paper but it just doesn't show up here for some reason! :) Still working to get my modem problems fixed.

Meanwhile, this is from today's workshop. The prompt was: And I thought the tundra was cold.

And I thought the tundra was cold.

Of course that's a figure of speech. I've never seen the tundra. The closest I've come was the top of Pikes Peak way up there above the vegetation line with a wind chill and all that. But tundra, no. All you have to do is study a little and you know the tundra is cold, though. You don't have to be there.

But that's not the point is it?

What do you call it when your best friend just decides--on the word of someone who she doesn't know well, doesn't even like that much--that you're not worth hanging out with anymore? I call it cold. Colder-than-Tundra cold.

This is what happens when you stretch. I have spent this entire year stretching out of my comfort zone, coping with situations that--my goodness, how do you describe it? If anyone would have told me in advance how this school year would progress, I would have laughed and moved right on into it anyway. I'd have never believed it.

Long story short, in the midst of the chaos one of my long-standing opposers. It's hard to choose a word there--"rival" sounds like I'm trying to compete with her for something, and she has nothing I want or need; "enemy" sounds like we hiss at each other in the halls and cook up harrassment schemes for off-campus entertainment. What we really had an avoidance relationship, if that makes any sense.

At any rate, horrible things happened to us both. And as a result I reached out. At someone else's urging I extended a truce; that means I did it against my better judgment. But that was the only time I was a victim. The rest of it I did to myself.

I worked to get her her life back. More than her life really. She was always cute and popular but not so smart--even though she had it in her to be smart. With the time she had on her hands during her recuperation, we fixed it so she got in touch with her academic side, and voila--she was earning grades she didn't think possible. She became part of our world for a little bit and I was foolish enough to believe she would see the wisdom in it. That she could have it all.

Well, that's exactly what she took. She's a shining star among the sports crowd and the academic crowd. More popular and showered with more attention than she had before she landed in her wheelchair. And please understand that I was so happy for her. I felt that her life took on a new aspect, because mine certainly did. There are lessons here that I wouldn't trade for the world.

But now she wants to keep everything she's gained, but deny me any part of it. Can you believe that? We haven't been back to class for two days and she's told my friends such stories that they don't know what to think. They don't know who to believe. Can I count on them to come to me to find out the truth? At the beginning of the year I would have said, "Certainly!" Now I just stand here and shiver in a vast unknown plain that is colder than the tundra. I know it is, because when the chill comes from inside, there's no blanket to cover it with, no heater to turn on--it just freezes you inside, particularly your heart.