Achelle’s Literary Fiction

When Enough Is Enough

(Currently Drafting)

In most cases, a series of events throughout one’s life, defines them. It’s like the poem by Robert Frost, ‘The Road Less Taken’. Any event depending on who is involved and how it is handled can forever change another’s life, without anyone ever knowing.

On one hand, someone is able to hurdle those events and evolve into a better person, drawing strength and elevating them into a more meaningful existence. Even if the events occur during childhood, somehow even if the memories elude their minds, the feeling of those events makes them a better person. It could very well be that they become better doctors, friends, family, fathers and even mothers. They use their lives solely to ensure the quality of life for others around them is improved, happier.

For example: Susan who felt neglected, may not have been, but had that feeling, might grow up to raise her children in a giving, selfless, thankful environment. When her five year old son without asking begins taking an extra fifty cents a day to school to ensure another girl has milk money, this in turn changes both the son’s life and that of the girl’s. It’s as simple as fifty cents.

On the other hand, the same events and under the exact same circumstances, it could create an introvert, a soulless unmoral shell of a human being. One who turns to alcohol, drugs or sex to exorcize and alleviate the emotional strain for short periods of time but constantly craves the freedom from the demons that were created. They fight their own thoughts to exhaustion to supress sometimes the images but more often the nagging underlying feeling of the events. While they try to understand and make excuses for the events, they betray, manipulate and use those around them causing events that will affect those around them for generations to come.

For example: A dimwitted, self-involved Pamela loses her husband in a terrible car accident, her child left fatherless, very tragic. More tragic is when Pamela finds out she is pregnant after his death and decides to give their second unborn child up for adoption because she is unable to be a mother to the first child let alone a second. Now she has changed countless lives, her own, her daughter’s, grandparents, aunts, uncles and not to mention the adopted child. By one, the chain reaction can be devastating.

Scientifically it isn’t known or able to be proven how two people will react differently to a shared experience . There is no exact science, only human emotion and instilled moral values.

This is the first person story of Susan Knight, the events that occurred, and in some cases the reaction of those around her eventually shaped who she became. Which fork in the road did she take?