Too Young For Boys

When I was growing up, my sister had a boy crush whose family was troubled. Their situation ended badly and the story still haunts me. We hear news every day but this was the first time a headline broke through my bubble. I understood that tragedy is not elusive. Suicide, murder, heartbreak, loss — these things are real and present. And whether they are other people’s stories or our own, they ultimately affect us all because we share the same space, the same home, the same big world. Try as you might, you really can’t live in a bubble.

About a year ago, I wrote this fiction story “Too Young for Boys” while thinking of this boy and his family. I altered the characters and the setting. Today, it was published on Fictive Dream (see the link below).

Looking back, I felt a sense of disbelief as I wrote it, a longing to crawl back into innocence and remain untouched by tragedy. Those were the emotions my main characters experienced when they read the headlines. It’s how I often feel when I hurt and how I believe most of us feel far too often in life. Is there not a safe place to escape? A place where pain can’t find us? I wish I had a better ending, but sadly this is real life. All I can say is we are in this together, and perhaps that reminder is the best “headline” available.

READ Too Young For Boys