UNIT 6 A Woman's Distress

The morning was moist,

and the fog had set in last evening
and still masked over the shabby cabin hidden deep
within the Turtle Mountains.
She shivered as she stepped barefoot onto unfinished slabs
that held her deck together.
She had purchased the slabs from the Hillbilly Board Store.
Her white sleeping gown hung below her knees
with just a white cotton lace.
Her soft hair was loosely tied back
with a piece of purple ribbon softly and gloriously
falling out the sides and touching her cheeks of pale skin.
Jen was so glad to be out of the city for a few days.
This was her weekend retreat.
She loved the cabin,
and it gave her confidence and peace and complacency in herself.
Jen worked everyday in an attorney's office as a consultant.
She handled stacks of legal documents daily.
So when the weekend and holidays came around
she would head for her cabin.
Her cabin was thirty?seven miles from the city.
It was excluded from other cabins at the lake.
She liked it that way.
Jen had a secret,
a secret she never told anyone:
she was an amateur writer.
She had a love for writing.
Her writing is comprised by essays, fables, poems,
and true stories about people she had come to know.
Writing compositions about her childhood
she could recall or anything that kept her interest.
Jen never told anyone about her love for writing.
She always felt people would consider her as a bit crazy.
With so many activities to do on weekends,
why would she choose to sit and write?
The cabin was perfect:
the breeze was fragrant and she could hear frogs
croak from time to time.
She would sit with her pen in hand and her spiral tablets
and would write whatever came to her mind.
Sometimes her novels and stories would dominate her
and make her cry so hard
that she would have to put her writing down
and ask herself why she was doing this.
She would write a song,
then hum it and sing it to herself
until she believed it was a real song,
real like the songs on the radio or television
or even imagined some famous singer singing her song.
From her standpoint,
writing gave her a feeling of complete satisfaction with herself.
It's not her expertise
but it helped her to experience successes
and overcome the pain she had endured throughout her lifetime.
It helped her to articulate the feelings deep in her heart.
It helped her to bring imaginary people and places
to reality in her mind.
It was a freedom no one ever knew.
Her writing was her true complement and soul mate
that she could trust.
Jen recently has purchased a computer
and took an oath to herself
that she would compile her writings
and put them into the computer just to have for herself.
It was an undertaking
which would take a while but having her writings organized
for the first time would be great.
It was going to be a dreary weekend,
but Jen didn't mind.
She didn't plan on spending it outside anyway.
For her, it was a stressful weekend.
She had too many tasks to complete
and the hours went away too fast for her
when she was not at work.
Stretching her arms above her head,
sticking out her chin and yawning
as if it were a sign of freedom,
Jen stretched every muscle in her body.
"Good morning, world",
she yelled out as she turned to go into her cabin.
The cabin was small in dimension,
having four rooms to be exact, but it was all Jen needed.
Her living room and kitchen were combined in one large room
only the kitchen table seperating them.
The bedroom was direct opposite the living room
and the bathroom facing the kitchen.
The backside of the cabin was an enclosed porch
that was screened to enjoy a fresh breeze in the warm evenings
and yet keep the irritating bugs away.
Jen poured herself a glass of brandy,
sat at her kitchen table and stared into space.
Words were running through her mind,
words of peace, words of beauty and poetry to relax by.
She picked up her pen and started to write.
Feeling like rose petals softened by the morning dew,
Sweet scent fills the soul when I think of you.
The way you hold me when I am lonely and down
Like drops of water running through a pebbled brook.
And the laughter in your eyes every time I look,
Like soft rain falling, I have loved you from the start.
I know you can never show your love for me.
Your life has been drafted and she is yours forever.
But darling I need you to understand I will always love you.
I'll be here when you need me even if it's for an hour or two.
I will never love another and I will die with you in my heart.
Forbidden as it may be, I have loved you from the start.
She put the pen down on the table thereafter
as she could feel her eyes filling up with mist.
She began to sob.
Damn him, why did he do this to me,
why did I torture myself.
I knew he was a married man,
I always knew it and yet I let myself fall in love with him.
Jen wiped the tears that were streaming down her cheeks,
and she knew she had to get on with her life.
The weekend went fast,
Jen had entered over one hundred of her poems on the computer
and had written a few new ones too.
She cried a lot of tears
and yet had a few good laughs
as she was reading what she had written.
She always enjoyed going back and reading her previous writings.
Sometimes she had even forgotten she had written some of them.
As Jen locked the cabin door,
she slowly walked to her car,
knowing it would be another week before she could return.
She loved the cabin and her writing.
After all it was all
she had right now as she was trying her best
not to break up her best friend's marriage.