Another November ends...

I have missed you this month.

I have missed me this month.

I chose once again to dive into the madness that is NaNoWriMo.

I sat, I typed, I drank too much coffee.

I kept my schedule free of lunch dates with friends.

I spent many evening hours apart from my beloved husband.

But I have broken the surface victorious with 50,000 new words.

I will take time now to inhale and celebrate.

Here's a tiny little clip I posted on my NaNoWriMo profile:

Linda’s father was a man of few words and what words he did use were harsh and cold. She learned to stay out of his way whenever possible, afraid of the steel freeze of his eyes. It seemed to the young girl that her mother did the same, slipping in and out of rooms like a shadow.

Laughter in the house rarely rang out and only when her father was away, then and only then would Linda catch the faint edges of a smile from her mother. The turn of her father’s key in the front door lock always chased the smiles away.

Linda, her older sister and her little brother walked nervous through their own house, never certain when the eerie stillness would be shattered by the next storm.

It might be the meat on his dinner plate was too well done, or his favourite white shirt was not folded perfectly square, or a toy happened to not get put away before he got home. The air cracked as his voice cut through like a whip, accusing and condemning.

Plates were thrown, glasses smashed and flesh bruised. The children and their mother were given names like labels branded on their hearts. Stupid. Useless. In the way. They were idiots, pains in the ass, good for nothing and failures. Time and again they were reminded that they really were not worth his time.

“I could do so much better than all of you” he would announce. “I should just walk away and start over.”

Linda never told anyone about the small hope she kept burning in her heart that he would live up to his threats and leave. But day followed day, week after week, and the years piled up one after the other.