Today, I would like to share with you parts of an old NaNoWriMo challenge that I never completed, but has peaked my interest again. Leave me your feedback. If you like it, then I'll post more tomorrow. Tell me what you think will happen next? Does this excerpt make you want to read more? Let me know in the comments below. You might inspire me to finish the book this time... : )
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Marrying Dad by Raychelle Muhammad
For years I have ignored all of the signs: all of them. Everything (from the little whispers to the gigantic, blatant billboards along the highway that is my life) has pointed to an ugly harsh reality. I never wanted to admit it. I never wanted to accept it. Surely, I would never have made such a dreadful mistake and still insisted on hanging in there. My mother did it. My sister did it. And I couldn’t manage to avoid following suit. I did it. I married my father.
How could I NOT have done it? Dad was charming and handsome, athletic and popular, and smart and hard-working. On the outside, he was everything that a woman would want, right? Doesn’t he sound like a wonderful example of what my future husband would be? At family gatherings, my dad was the life of the party. He was a smooth dancer and could make the crankiest baby giggle. My dad was a social person. Frankly, I think that he found being a husband and father confining—to the point of resentment. In college, I am told, Dad was quite the ladies man. Women didn’t seem to mind sharing him from time to time. He would keep a girlfriend and even be faithful for a while. The problem was that something lacked in his ego. He needed constant attention and praise. If a woman wasn’t chasing after him, he would somehow feel invalidated. The first time he cheated on my mother, I thought for sure that we would leave and never look back. My mother was a stunning woman who still turned heads at 64 years old. She didn’t have to share her husband with anybody. But, she wanted my sister and me to have a father under the same roof so she took him back — repeatedly.
Marriage can survive many things, but infidelity is by far the toughest offense to overcome. It is the worst kind of betrayal. Taking a vow before God to be a good wife to her husband and then bearing his children is serious business. I always thought that a man should suffer indefinitely for betraying his wife that way. And I never understood why my mother insisted on keeping him around. Every time she discovered a new fling, she became a different person--each more bitter and vindictive than the last. She lost a little bit of her spirit as hurt, anger, and thoughts of revenge gnawed away at her. Seeing my mother this way certainly did my sister and I no favors at all. In my own relationships, I would rationalize bad behavior. I couldn’t accept the end of a relationship as anything other than failure. My sister and I often had to choose between the mother we idolized and the father who selfishly catered to his own needs. We loved them both, but I think that I would have been better off if some truths about Dad had been left to my imagination. Oddly, I thought that I had figured out the right way to approach marriage. There was no way that I would continue the cycle of dysfunction that Mom and my sister seemed to relish. I was the educated and enlightened one, you see. I was going to do everything right. A picture-perfect, drama-free, happily-ever-after, storybook romance was on the horizon. Damn it, if only I hadn’t taken that wrong turn at Albuquerque…
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Keep your pen to the paper! Remember, inspiration is everywhere...
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