Writing exercise- The Moment I Knew It Was Love

Posted on by April-Rose Appleby

“The Moment I Knew It Was Love” this one isn’t perhaps as hard, and it happens quite often, but not perfectly.

It was recently, fairly recently, that I discovered one of those moments, but it was more perfect perhaps then usual.

It was a slightly more adult moment in my life than perhaps I realized a very private moment, but a moment all the same.

So now I must confess, I am damaged, I am what can be called damaged goods, I fear intimacy. To me the biggest struggle I face, daily, is trust. Very few people I trust, my closest friends I trust with my life, my family I do not.

It has taken me some time, some months to learn to trust my boyfriend, actually quite a few and it felt almost too natural which of course meant I had to fight it because I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t fight it a bit, live in a little denial for a few days. Well that trust has of course grown with time.

This moment was entirely intimate in the throws of passion. Due to my nature and fear, during such times I struggle to make eye contact because it is far too intimate. But it was different, it was honest, but we weren’t speaking, not out loud. You see this time, in this moment, I felt the complete trust, I could feel every hidden thought of affection I had buried and I held his gaze.

Intimately it was a perfect moment, I let the guard down, broke a few walls and let him in mentally, I wasn’t compartmentalizing or trying to protect myself from getting hurt. I was just being myself in that moment, and so was he.

They say your eyes are the window to the soul, and that is where I sometimes keep my guard, but it is the first place I look when I want to read someone. Sometimes you can just tell everything in a moment by a gaze.

In his eyes that moment, I saw affection and care and respect, everything I had been looking for, and I would like to say that as I write this I am not crying but that would be lying. Because I have my guard down in this moment, remembering the moment I knew I could trust him completely, and though he doesn’t really say it, I know he trusts me, the times when he opens up and tells me something he is struggling with make me the happiest because he is testing his trust in me and I am just there. I tested my trust in him, in my most vulnerable moments and I discovered safety and security, something I have wanted and yearned for, for so long, I found in him in one moment, I felt the rush of love and affection for him that I now struggle to hide.

Sometimes these moments aren’t these movie moments that sweep an audience off their feet, it might not even sweep you off your feet. It s just the seconds in which you are aware, you realize you have stumbled upon a feeling that can be so precious and rare they may happen once, maybe twice in a lifetime.

Writing Exercise- The Moment I Fell In Love

Posted on by April-Rose Appleby

I don’t know where to start with this, “The Moment I Fell In Love” exercise, so it may well be a surprise.

Well, I know it doesn’t sound right, and I know it won’t make sense. I doubt it was via  I.M. but you see, a special familiarity is formed when you message someone until past six in the morning and only stop because you have no choice. After all it was past six in the morning.

I suppose it could have been that day, well night, had I have let it happen that way. Instead somehow I think it happened twice.

We met over the internet, the way a modern love story would. We talked for a while, it was so familiar. I remember, just a little, the journey to the train station, the brief slightly out of breath rush texting and trying to beat my way to the station before the train came in. It was raining, as it always does in London. I remember waiting by the little bike shed by the station, anxious nervous, not really knowing who or what to expect. I remember being told to look for a long umbrella and black coat, and that was it. I had no expectations, I didn’t really know who I was waiting for and somehow I knew. The man with the umbrella, the smile and somehow I knew it was him. The world fell away and this strangers face suddenly became every conversation we had ever had, I knew it was him. I didn’t know who or what I was waiting for, I walked their with no expectations just nervous excitement. This strange man with dark hair and a sweet smile had become everything we had shared, the conversations, the laughing and joking, just it became him.

It is those two seconds perhaps in that smile and me making the connections that it was him, those two seconds letting the world fall into place, I started to fall in love, with him.

It was perhaps that same day, well evening by then that I can say that was the moment. I had spent most of that date itching desperate for him to just kiss me, the connection the flirting it was all so solid. He was nervous and somehow I knew he wasn’t going to make the move, I was too tense and too curious that I couldn’t wait longer. I did it, I kissed him, it was while he was mid sentence, and I caved. It was then in that moment perhaps, I didn’t know it then at the time.  But all I knew was I didn’t want to run, with every first kiss so far I had wanted to run and it had been a disaster and I would beat myself up for not running, this time I just didn’t want to run away. I wanted to stay, and ever since I have never been able to walk away, no matter how bad it gets, it has gotten better. That first kiss is the moment I fell in love.

A little more about me

Posted on by April-Rose Appleby

A little more about me.

I am shy. In person, unless I really have to be otherwise, in my natural state, I am shy. I like to be polite.

To those who haven’t guessed yet, I am female.

I love to write, especially “strong” female characters because hey why not?

I have a dog, I would love another dog, but all in good time. I absolutely love dogs, in general, staffies freak me out though, there is something about the jaw that unnerves me. I had my dog at 8 weeks old potty trained within two days, with only eight accidents over his first week to two weeks.

I love my best friends, they are the family I have chosen. I have a “brother” and three “sisters” that are actually friends that are that close. I don’t generally consider myself extremely social with many out of my circle but that suits me fine.

I am in my early twenties, but I feel much older, possibly because I have always been wiser then my years. I don’t drive but I want to, I honestly can’t afford to learn let alone drive a car of my own, the same goes for motor bikes, I wish I could learn to drive one of them, when I was little my uncle let me ride on his bike with him, it was fun but my nana and mother forbid me to ever learn or get one of my own. I am starting to ignore their rules slowly more and more so who knows maybe one day I will be riding a motorbike.

I honestly stumbled on my love of writing as a way to deal with traumas in my personal life and so I turned to writing to both confront and escape from the things that were destroying me from within. Writing has become a powerful tool but it is also now a passion and something that I am a slave of.

 

I also have an amazon  author page for those interest the link is here.

My twitter page.

My  Facebook page.

 

Writing Exercise- Monster in the Darkness

Posted on by April-Rose Appleby

Have you ever noticed? In that time just before you go to sleep, when everything is dark, and you are left alone with your thoughts, you are never really alone. Because in that darkness, there is something there waiting, watching. You can feel its breath on your toes, and its the fastest you move, your feet are diving under the blankets no matter how hot you are, because you are afraid.

You wonder is it a ghost? Is it real?

But here is the secret I am afraid to tell. Sometimes, I think that the monster is me.

I think I know what it is. When you were a child, did you have an imaginary friend? I did, I had many, perhaps too many. I was a lonely child. But I grew up and some how I’ve lost or forgotten my imaginary friends. I can’t quite remember what they looked like, or what they would look like now. I barely remember a name or their voice. In fact, I remember so little that my imaginary friend is now a ghost, a faint memory. That thing we feel at the quiet moments, the thing watching us in your sleep is the ghost of those forgotten friends.

What do they want now? To be seen or heard? To be known? To be loved? To be the friend they were or to get revenge, for it is after all our own memory, our growing up that killed them.

It is the child we were, the one we barely remember that we wish we could become again watching from the corner of the room, asking what have I become? Who am I now?

Do the answers scare you? Or is it the questions, the ones we cannot answer?

I am the monster waiting at the end of the bed, the forgotten memories, the child hoping to be so much more, angry they are so much less. I am the thing waiting in the darkness, my own worst enemy, my own monster.

The Darker Path

Posted on by April-Rose Appleby

Well, it was fun, but a challenge to remain honest without chastising, I know people like the characters and they are to some degree based on them, and although it could be the harshest light shining at the most negative, and the most positive trait of someone, it lacks a degree of tactful flattery.

The Darker Path has also got a clear progressive possibility, but the task was to create the opening, not the beginning middle and end, although I can see how, where, and whys to the characters futures, the plot line if it were to continue is already clear in my mind. Perhaps progressing this story wouldn’t be the best of ideas. It is simple and it is hard all at the same time to navigate a degree of control. To control the urge to continue on a story, that perhaps would distract from the time that you allocate or are willing to give. when there is a story out of the corner of your eye that deserves undivided attention. Something that has bubbled under the surface growing slowly into the perfect and completely horribly complicated incredibly imperfect story that has been gnawing at the back of your thoughts every day, just waiting to be ready.

The Darker Path was fun, it reminded me of the sassy things I wish I had said a long time ago, the sassy things I would have said if I had the balls. Its the teenage angst bottled up, that time just before your in your twenties and expected to really be a grown up now. That time, that horrid horrid time.