Imperfection | Marjorie Riches

Isn't fear a funny little thing. It sneaks up on us when we least expect it and won't go away. But why are we afraid? Why are we afraid that someone may see us trip as we are walking. Why are we afraid that someone might not like the way we talk, or stand, or twirl our hair around our finger when we get board. Why are we afraid that someone won't like something that we have created. Why do we fear what others think of us? Because we are human. For the human race, fear will always be a part of life. Fear of others, fear of the boogie man, even fear of ourselves. Have you ever looked deep inside your mind and thought that you are a horrible person? Have you ever thought that if anyone really knew what was going on as the wheels creak around inside of your head that everyone would hate you? I have. In fact, I think it all of the time. Sometimes I even fear that I am insane and that no one has noticed yet, but that one day in the not too distant future, i will do something that will send me straight to the loony bin. Is it horrible that I wouldn't be surprised if this happened to me? I live a normal life. In fact, I live a great life. I have a wonderful, caring, supportive husband. I have wonderful parents who raised me in a wonderful church that gives me hope and something to believe in as this world goes to crap. I am going to college, soon to graduate and get a house and start my family. Everything in my life seems to be in order and perfect to the outside viewer. Somehow, my mind doesn't see it this way. Now don't get me wrong. I do think that I have a great life. In fact, I know that I have a great life. I love my husband very deeply and love the way my life is going. But then the insanity kicks in and nothing is right. Suddenly everything is out of order. I am not a good enough wife. I am not the perfect daughter. I'm not the best flute player, the best student, the best person and it drives me crazy. I am a perfectionist. I have to be perfect at everything I do and that is simply not possible. I can say this out loud, even think that I believe it, but acting on it is an entirely different story. Sometimes I hate myself because I'm not perfect. I don't think that I deserve to live because I'm not perfect. Sometimes I get so deep into these dark thoughts that everything in my wonderful life disappears. I become all alone, alone with my imperfections. Alone in every way. I want to scream. I want to throw things and tell everyone, "Look at me! I'm a horrible person!" I want people to tear me apart on the outside the way I do on the inside. I want to feel the pain that burns inside my body on the outside. Maybe then the pain on the inside would be silenced. I warned you that I was insane. I'm working on it though. I am seeing a counseler and trying to learn how to confront myself. It's not as easy as it sounds, but I know that it has to happen. I know that it has to happen so that I can be happy on the inside, not just in my glowing smile that everyone sees. I have learned to put on a good mask though. It hides me from everyone but me.

Rambles | Marjorie Riches

I have always been a person who enjoys to write. I will write anything, from my own little musings to serious essays that could change the world. Unfortunately, I do not love to write all of the time. In fact, it is more often than not that I hate writing and could care less if I ever did it again. Then there are those times when I get a tingling sensation in my mind. An idea grows and I have to write. I will put my whole life on hold just to get my thoughts down on paper. During those times, writing is the best thing in the world to me. I sometimes wish that I had those moments more often, but then I think about it and decide that those moments wouldn't be so special to me if they happened all of the time. they would become routine and then they may not ever happen again, all because I wanted to have them more often.
I have no patience. i don't think that I was born with this "virtue" and it definately has not grown in me over time. In fact, even if I was born with a tiny bit of patience, it is all long gone now. I want to see results of my actions immediately. I admire people who have patience. My husband is one of them and he is trying to rub it off on me. All of his attempts are going into the big black hole that sucks up all of the things that I want to be, but never will be. I will never be patient. Writers have to be patient. They have to accept the fact that a book is going to take a long time to write, and that after it is written, it may be forever before anyone ever reads it, then it will have to be edited, reworked, and on and on. I cannot be this kind of writer. If you are this kind of writer, you are amazing, but as for me, I'm just mediocre. I have no patience and only get that tingling that makes me want to write once in a blue moon. During these blue moons, I write in short spurts. I love poetry because I can get it out of my system and done with. Then, if it sucked, I never have to look at it again, and if I liked it, I will put it in my book of poems that I one day plan to type up and give to my mom for Christmas. I have been planning this for years now and it hasn't happened. The act of typing and binding makes me cringe. It's work, that takes time.
As you may have guessed from all of my pointless rambling, I have no desire to be published. I was published once, back in elementary school when I entered my poems into contests. All that getting published did for me was give me a big head. I thought that when I got to high school and was getting ready to graduate and try to find scholarships, that i would still win every poetry contest that came my way. And now they weren't just for fun, they were for money. I entered lots of poems and none of them one. This is where my lack of patience came in. I kind of just gave up after that and I haven't wanted to be published since. I've decided that I write for me, not for contests, not for stupid classes that force me to write when I really don't want to, for me. Writing is something so personal that often I don't care if anyone ever reads my work. I know its there, and I think it's beautiful. That's all that really matters.

The Island | Marjorie Riches

My family and I went fishing one day in Valdez Alaska. It was my mom, my dad, my cousin Miranda and her husband Todd, their two big rotwieler dogs, and me. We took out two different boats so that we would be able to carry more fish. Valdez is on the coast of Alaska and is a great place for deep sea fishing. So we fished and we fished and we fished. We didn't stop fishing until about six in the evening. We had all caught a ton of fish. Now, I don't know how much you know about gutting fish, but we all knew that you can't gut fish in salt water. Unfortunately this presented a problem, we were in the ocean and it was all Salt Water. So we rode around in the boats for a little while until we found a little island that had a freshwater stream running through it. My dad said that this would be a perfect place to gut the fish. So we gutted and we gutted, until all of the fish were cleaned out and ready to cook. We then walked back to our boats and found them on their sides, with nothing but land surrounding them. The tide had gone out while we were gutting, leaving us stranded on this island. These weren't little boats either, they were huge so there was no way we could push them to the water. We were stuck and it was starting to get dark. We decided to build a fire and thought that it would be kind of fun to have a little campout on the beach...with no tent, or way to keep warm, or food. We were all fine though until we saw them. Little glowing eyes in the woods next to the stream where we had gutted our fish. Great, there were bears on the island. All of a sudden our little campout didn't seem so fun. We stayed around the campfire though because if there is one thing that hates people as much as we hate them, it's bears. They also hate noise so my mom, being the positive woman that she is, suggested that we start singing camp songs. The bears disappeared for a while and we sat singing songs by the fire. Eventually we ran out of songs to sing and there was a lull in our conversations. My cousin and I fell asleep while everyone else sat quietly talking. I opened my eyes a while later to hear a hush. Everyone had fallen asleep. The fire was still burning dimly. I looked out in the forest and saw beady eyes staring back at me, glowing by the light of the fire. I could barely get it out, but I managed to yell, "BEARS!" and woke everyone up. The dogs that were with us took off and jumped in the boat. So much for brave rotwielers. I was quick to follow their lead however, and so was everyone else. We all decided that camping out in the boats was a better idea than camping on the beach. So we sat in the boats and waited and waited for the tide to come in. It was pitch black by the time it finally did and we all wanted nothing more than to get back to our warm beds. So we set out. Each boat had a spotlight and a GPS system so that we could find our way back to the dock easily. It was freezing cold as the arctic water sprayed up on the boat and we tore through the ocean. We could see Miranda and Todd's boat beside us. Then, all of a sudden they were gone. We slowed down and stopped our boat, turning around to look for them. They were nowhere to be seen. We decided that they must have gotten ahead of us, but they had a GPS and light so they would be fine. We started up again and were going along at a speedy pace when my dad mumbled quietly, the GPS just went out. Great, I knew now that we were either going to freeze to death or hit something and die. We would never find our way back. Just then in the distance we saw a light! We all thought the same thing, it must be the dock! So we sped away toward it. My mom, who was holding the spotlight, suddenly yelled really loudly "ROCKS!" My dad made a sharp turn and I thought that the boat was going to flip, but we avoided the rocks and we didn't flip. The light turned out to be a lighthouse. We drove around for w hile longer and eventually saw several lights that we knew had to be shore. We were finally right. When we got there, Todd and Miranda were freaking out. They had no idea where we had disappeared off to. But we were all safe and went to sleep as soon as we got back to our home. If we survived that night, we knew that we could survive anything.

The Double | Marjorie Riches

Double dates can be lots of fun, getting together as friends or as couples always makes a good time. The atmosphere is more low key when you are doubling and you have someone of the same sex to bounce ideas off of while the women have "potty parties" and go and gossip about us. Tonight I went on a double with my good friend John and two lovely ladies we had met at the club the night before. I live in Vegas, the "city of lights", and sometimes I just want to
get away from it all, but I can't. Where am I supposed to go...Utah? Ha. I'll stay where I'm at. As I was saying,I went on a double date tonight. My dates name was Jessica and her shirt was hanging off of her like a window drape, barely keeping the light out. I knew she had done it for me, wanting me to see what I had the chance to get tonight. I wasn't impressed. John's date was somewhat less scantily clad, a blonde girl named Heather. I could tell from the way that he wouldn't stop talking that he must like her a lot. I couldn't say that she felt the same way, but hey, who can read women. John and I had decided ahead of time to take the ladies to the Cheesecake Factory. It was nice, but not nice enough to tell them that are made of money, because we aren't. The ride to the restaraunt was nice, although no one but John was talking at all. I don't even think he knew what he was talking about. I heard something about radios and a couple of minutes later he was going off about airplanes. I wondered if he realized that no one was listening to him and his date was staring at him like he was a rotting dead fish. I laughed to myself at his stupidity. My date and I were in the backseat of John's Chevy Malibu. We were sitting on either side, as far away from each other as possible. If I had been slightly interested in her, it would have made this whole date thing easier, but I wasn't. I was only on this date because John really liked this girl, but got nervous when he was alone with a woman. Not that me being there made that any better. I felt bad for him. John was a really great guy. He just sucked at being anything but insane around a woman. This girl had at least agreed to go on a date with him, that was farther than he usually got. We arrived at the restaraunt and I could see the relief in everyones faces. At restaraunts you always have something to talk about. Whether it is the menu, or the drinks, or the funny people all around you. We were seated upstairs by a older couple who hadn't quite reached the 1970s yet. Our waiter was an extremely energetic man. I couldn't quite tell if he was gay or not. He walked like it, talked like it, and even held his hand up in front of his chest when he was talking. On all counts he should
have been gay, except that he had a wedding ring on his finger. I decided it was a cover up. I definately wouldn't be friendly to him at all. I wouldn't want him to get the wrong idea. I am straight as a whistle. We ordered our meals, both girls ordering salads while us men ordered real food. As you can tell, I'm not a big salad eater, or excerciser, or stay in shape kind of person in any sense of it. I am pleasantly plump and proud of it. I enjoy my food the way it is supposed to be enjoyed. I don't look like my date who looks like she has been anorexic for some time now.
Maybe that's why I wasn't impressed by her showy top. I like a woman with a little meat on her bones. I like her to show that she likes to eat, but that she can still do all of the things that healthy people do. Plus, I know that if a woman is a little bigger, she is a good cook, and that is very important to me. After we ordered, John continued to rant about who knows what and the atmosphere didn't change much at all from the mood in the car. I was getting bored. When I get bored, I do things. Not normal things, but things that are risky and will get me in a little trouble. I always think about my friends first of course, and right then I was thinking about how much of a fool John was making of himself and that he really didn't need to be put through this torture any longer. So I said it. "So how long have you had the disease?" My date looked at me, confused, "Excuse me?" "The disease, you know, anorexia." I said blatently. She looked appalled and didn't give me the courtesy of an answer. "Don't try to tell me that you were actually going to eat the salad you ordered. Your kind never do. You arder it, make the men pay for it, don't touch it, then run off and see how much skinnier you got from starving yourself another night." She was looking furious, her friend shocked and John like he had just discovered electricity. He knew where I was going with this. You see, when I know that a date is going poorly, for both of us, I throw a twist in things and see how long it will take the girls to leave so that we can kick back and have a beer. I figured these girls wouldn't be hard to bust. And I was right. Moments later, my date, looking like a donkey had kicked her in the face, stood up, shoved her seat back and glared at me, "I am NOT anorexic. You are just saying that because you are fat." And she stormed off. Her friend quickly stood up, gave us both a look that I think she thought was mean and followed. When they were safely out of earshot, John burst out laughing. "You've never tried that one before...fatty." And he punched me in the shoulder. We had a good chuckle over the night and stayed at the restaraunt for an hour or so more, just drinking and laughing at the look on that girl's face. Moments like that are priceless. Now I know someday John and I both are going to meet wonderful women and fall in love, but until then, kicking back as just the boys and having a beer is better than any double date.

The Bitter Storm | Marjorie Riches

Bitter storm clouds fill the hardened sky
Threatening to pour down their anger on the quiet valley beneath
Threatening, but not yet acting on their lewd impulse
Instead waiting for the perfect moment to cry out and frighten the sleeping child,
The perfect moment to let weary tears flow.
All is silent, pensive.
In an instant, beams of light break through the clouds
Pouring out comfort and peace on all beneath.
Heavens beams shoot through the darkened sky.
A lone raven appears from nowhere and flies into the light
Embracing the warmth of the sun before returning to his secret lair in the sky.
The clouds close in,
Choking out the sunlight with their billowy flesh.
All is dark once more.
All is silent.
The perfect moment has arrived.
The clouds let all of their anguish flow out into the valley.
Peace is gone.