Survival

Grow and nurture it
Nourish its body
Keep it healthy and safe

But no matter how careful

Eventually, it will die

Fade, and wither away, to

Become an unfixable mess

So don’t be afraid to cut

To burn, to rebuild

Only after death can it regrow

And come back

Even more beautiful than before

But that can never happen

If you hesitate to be cruel
So be true
Let it die

Let it change

Let it heal

Let it be reborn

Let it go

Start Moving

Fake it until it’s reality. Don’t be afraid to try when you don’t yet know how to succeed. Keep going even when you’re exhausted. Especially when you’re exhausted. Take breaks, but never give up. Move one step at a time. Crawl, if you have to. Don’t let anyone tell you that you’re wasting your time. There’s no upper limit. You’re not too young, or too old, or too anything. Don’t spend the rest of your life regretting that you never even tried. Just do it. Right now. No more excuses.

Believe in yourself, and start. Don’t keep putting it off. Later never comes if you never begin.

Stuck

Even when everything’s so hard

And I feel like I’m just stuck

If I don’t push myself forward

I’ll never feel alive once again

Someday when my skin is new
I’m sure I’ll feel stronger
My broken bones will heal
And I’ll walk even farther

Even when everything’s so hard

And I feel like I’m just stuck

If I don’t push myself forward

I’ll never feel alive once again

Waking up is so hard right now
But I force myself to get up
Nothing new’s going to happen
If I don’t keep moving onward

Even when everything’s so hard

And I feel like I’m just stuck

If I don’t push myself forward

I’ll never feel alive once again

So I wake up and get up and

Begin my day, and from there

It gets easier to believe that I’ll

Be okay sometime in the future

Even when everything’s so hard

And I feel like I’m just stuck

If I don’t push myself forward

I’ll never feel alive once again

Yes, it hurts right now. I’m in so

Much pain, it feels like I could die

I don’t know what to do anymore

But I know that I’ll heal eventually

As long as I never give up on me

Even when everything’s so hard

And I feel like I’m just stuck

If I don’t push myself forward

I’ll never feel alive once again

In the Dark - Part 10

This monster’s smaller than most. Faster. When I lunge, it swiftly swerves to the side and then turns around, switching its sight to another target. I twist around and run after it, but it dodges my next thrust. And my next.


You'd think that it would be afraid of being injured, but no, it doesn’t look anything but hungry. I’m getting more and more furious with each failure to kill this monster.


“Forget that one!” one of the others calls out. “Just focus on the ones that we can catch.”


It’s good advice, and I should have already stopped chasing after this one as soon as I saw how fast it can move, but I didn’t. I don’t now, either. Something about this monster’s continuing successful attempts to evade me is infuriating. It doesn’t even seem to care that it’s being hunted.

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Want to know what happens next? Check out the full and edited story here on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07FVY71NW.