Adapting to Life
Ever dreamed about how life would turn out? Many children, like me, think they will have it all—everything they thought they needed or deserved. Money, fame, a perfect romantic marriage. Janie probably thought she could have it all. Not the same “all” as us, but the “all” within her realm of possibility. At least, the perfect romantic marriage. It’s hard when life doesn’t go the way you wanted. You don’t accept it at first. You try to change it and return to that state of hopeful ignorance. Janie tried to do that by running off with Jodie. She still felt entitled to those happy things. Unfortunately, Jodie was not what Janie wanted him to be. Janie learned pretty quickly that she wouldn’t have the things she thought she would and adapted. We all adapt as life goes wrong. We experience injustices that used to exist only in our nightmares and tragedies that we read about in story books, and we normalize them. We expect them, and the next time they happen, we’re not as shocked. We ada...
Alrighty Emi, this story has literally quintupled in size since I peer-edited it for you, and I really like it. First question, did you purposefully add more people with names starting with J just because I complained about it while peer-editing? Because there are more!
ReplyDeleteOther than that, I love where you’ve taken the story. I know originally, you weren’t planning to use Jesus as a character, but I love how you’ve woven stories from Mark into Deborah’s own life. I think my favorite scene was probably your retelling of the healing of the paralyzed man, with Deborah’s father as one of the stretcher bearers. I found that very clever. I guess the only thing I think you could change would be more focus on the demon, who’s become less of a character than it was in your original draft. Overall, this is really cool though, Emi. Good job.