If you hate me, I understand.
The words that carried you forward were penned in my blood. Know that when you hurt, I hurt, but the pain was necessary. I had to strip you down to your bare desires and dissect your despair to understand my own. It is an unforgivable crime, but I am no goddess, only human, although I don’t expect that admission to bring you any comfort. It certainly wouldn’t soothe me to hear those words from the mouth of my own creator.
I’ve been rooting for you in your darkest moments. I’ve been whispering, “Just hold on; you’ll get through this,” even as I dashed your dreams, beat you down, and ground you into nothing. I knew you would persevere and rise from the ashes, like a phoenix. I didn’t always know how, but I knew somehow.
My muse is not a gentle voice whispering purest silver bells into my ear. I believe she is part demon, part ghost, and she eclipses me often, tuning my ears down to white static, dialing my eyes out of focus, possessing my fingers to move across the keys. I am, in many ways, a bystander, just like you. My ghostly demon muse unravels the dreams I’ve forgotten by the time my eyes open. She pulls threads of my own insecurities and weaves them into your clothes. She stands you in front of me, and I’m looking into a cracked mirror.
I don’t ask for your forgiveness, as I’m certain I don’t deserve it. I ask only for you to know that the ink in your veins is the blood in mine—that we’re connected, you and I, and for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.
If you hate me, I understand.
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I'm an award-winning fantasy author, artist, and photographer from La Porte, Indiana. My poetry, short fiction, and memoir works have been featured in various anthologies and journals since 2005, and several of my poems are available in the Indiana Poetry Archives. The first three novels in my Chronicles of Avilésor: War of the Realms series have received awards from Literary Titan.
After some time working as a freelance writer, I was shocked by how many website articles are actually written by paid "ghost writers" but published under the byline of a different author. It was a jolt seeing my articles presented as if they were written by a high-profile CEO or an industry expert with decades of experience. I'll be honest; it felt slimy and dishonest. I had none of the credentials readers assumed the author of the article actually had. Ghost writing is a perfectly legal, astonishingly common practice, and now, AI has entered the playing field to further muddy the waters. It's hard to trust who (or what) actually wrote the content you'll read online these days.
That's not the case here at On The Cobblestone Road. I do not and never will pay a ghost writer, then slap my name on their work as if I'd written it. This website is 100% authentic. No outsourcing. No ghost writing. No AI-generated content. It's just me... as it should be.
If you would like to support my work, check out the Support The Creator page for more information. Thank you for finding my website! 🖤