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Rejected Essays: Hell Week

In the interest of better understanding which of my essays get picked up by editors for publication, I started sharing the ones that didn’t sell. After all, there must be a reason they didn’t resonate, right?

The Backstory

Three years ago, this essay poured out of me during a morning writing exercise. It was sudden and certain. I workshopped it in a class, updated and modified it. Wrote longer versions and shorter versions. And I pitched it again and again, racking up at least eight rejections from mostly literary publications. To me, it speaks to a season of motherhood and teenagehood. But I wonder if I was targeting the wrong market. Perhaps this belongs in an anthology or perhaps it would be better in a commercial publication with more meat to it about the impact of stress on teenagers.

The Essay

Hell Week

It’s early morning and I am trying to stay out of the way while my daughter dribbles hot soup into a thermos, spoonful by spoonful. She’s barely speaking, exhausted, not quite awake.

“What are you taking to eat,” I ask because I’m her mother and I have to think ahead when she can’t.

Soup, two snacks, water … “That’s it? What about dinner?”

“I’ll come home and make pasta,” she says, forgetting yesterday, forgetting how little time there really was for her dinner break.

It’s Hell Week and her first high school show opens in three days.

Yesterday, she barely had time to eat after fetching food. Today, I told her then, she needed to plan ahead.

Without a word she heads back to the cupboards, the fridge, the counters. Finally, she grabs the lettuce, chopped veggies, a far of dressing. Salad. She’ll take a salad.

It’s almost time to catch the bus. She and my son should have left already. She’s frantic, anxious. I don’t know if she brushed her teeth but I know it’s not time to ask.

I clean up her mess. My son waits patiently, not rushing her.

She looks exhausted, dark circles and sagging eyelids.

I don’t say it, but I am worried. Is she not ready for the way a long day of school melts into a long night of rehearsal and you arrive home, unable to finish your homework because your eyes can’t stay open anymore?

I thrived on it. Will she?

It’s too soon to tell. Perhaps she’s just not awake yet. Perhaps her energy will revive like a rolling stone gathering moss throughout the day. Perhaps she will find the joy in the process.

I kiss them goodbye, hoping they make the bus, hoping for the best.

But she’s still on my mind, my slip of a child, so bright and hopeful. She loves the stage. But it comes with a cost. Is she really ready to pay it?

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