A story that will touch your heart

As you can tell, I am a collector of everyday stories. Here is another one:

One afternoon, Martha Sweeny, was in a coin laundry outside her hometown of stonewall Texas, when half a dozen young motorcyclists suddenly roared up to the gas station next door.

They were all a boisterous, rough-looking lot, and one of them—younger than the other, no more than seventeen—was the loudest and roughest-acting of the bunch.

With several of his friends, the boy entered the laundry, and then something happened when he looked around this small, rural town—and, especially when he notices this older woman observing him.

In one of those revealing moments we’ve all lived through, Martha made eye contact with the boy and saw him hesitate.

Later, after his friends had gassed up their cycles, he told them his starter was on the blink to go on without him. He said he’d catch up.

After the others went roaring off, the boy brought some dirty clothes into the laundry. “His shoulders sagged as if he were terribly weary.

Dust and grease and sweat-stained his shirt and jeans. A beginning beard faintly shadowed his chin and leans cheeks. He turned briefly, our eyes met again. Emotions flickered across his face—doubt, longing, pain?”

Moments later, he ran his clothes through the washer and dryer, then disappeared into the men’s room.

When he emerged ten minutes later, he was wearing clean pants and shirt and he had shaved his scraggly beard, scrubbed his hands and face, and even combed his hair.

He now grinned in Martha’s direction and jumping on his motorcycle, zoomed away.

Not following the others, but going back the way he’d come—back toward home.

Every time I read this story, I get a lump in my throat. And that is the aim of the stories. To evoke emotion. To bring out a single tear.

Why I started this blog

Most blogs have an enchanting founding story. Stories like:

A charming law graduate quit her job to travel and write; she is now eating her way around the world.

An industrial engineer and ex-employee of General Motors and Walt Disney World started a blog after having her first child and teaching other mums how to earn through blogging.

A depressed artist healed herself by teaching art through her blog.

The start of my blog wasn’t anything like that.

I have been writing since 2001 but didn’t have the courage to put my work out there. Not only that, I couldn’t even call myself a writer. Even though I had filled notebook after notebook in eighteen years of writing, I thought of myself as a failure.

My writing was not good enough. I had nothing to show for years of toil. I had published nothing. My name was not on the cover of any book. Not even at the top of a magazine article.

My writing buddies liked my stories, but I thought they were being polite and never considered entering my stories into any writing competition.

I kept on seeing myself as a failure and tortured myself mercilessly. I would set myself unrealistic writing goals and would beat myself for not meeting them.

My ‘job’ was taking up all my energy, and the rest was consumed in keeping the house and raising the family.

Something in me was dying, and I knew I have to do something. All I wanted to do was to write. Writing had become a compulsion for me. But I was too scared to put my work out there.

After weeks of agonizing, I bought my domain name. Something terrible happened on that day. My father passed away.

The next couple of weeks were full of confusion, numbness, guilt, and grief. In those days, I wrote madly, capturing every single thread of memory that came to the surface. Writing was my savior, as it was when my mother passed away three years earlier.

As I went through various stages of grief, I realized ‘writing’ was the only true tribute I could pay to my parents, who instilled in me a love for learning. They were both teachers. I felt compelled to tell their story, and through them, my story.

There was another powerful reaction. Their departure brought me face-to-face with my mortality.

How long was I going to live?

My time here is limited, and yet I was postponing my life. When will I live the life I really wanted to live? Was I prepared to die one day without even finding out what would have happened if I had followed my dream to become a full-time writer?

I wasn’t.

Hence this blog.