Following the announcement of the "Impact!" writing contest winners on April 8, the Spectator has agreed to print a few of the winning entries.
Ailish Brundage took the first place with her entry, inspired by real events. "My essay was complete non-fiction, actually. One of my closest friends was abused as a child and I wrote my entry after discovering she'd started cutting again after being able to quit for five months," she explained her writing-impetus.
Brundage took full advantage of the contest's potential to spread much-needed awareness for a vulnerable subject. "Not enough people realize the lifelong impact that child abuse has or how many people it touches," she said. "I thought that this contest was the perfect place to make my voice heard."
It is important to stress the various impacts of all the entries, regardless of rank or award.
Ailish Brundage, First Place:
There is a girl sitting on the comer of her bed, and she is covered with scars. There are new scars, old scars, self-harm scars, and scars from surgeries. But most are scars from things done to her, things no young girl should even have to imagine. I have seen all her scars, but there are ones no eye can see. Days spent locked in a basement, nights spent locked out in the rain, mother's hands which do unthinkable things, these leave scars cut deep into her mind. Scars which refuse to heal. She is safe from the hands now, from the basement and the rain; there is nothing left to hurt her. When faced with safety and happiness, she retreats back to the things she was taught for eighteen years other short life. When faced with love, she picks up a shard of glass and adds more scars. I ask her why; she had promised me she wouldn't. Her answer is simple-the scars told her to.
"The Power of Love," Second Place:
Battered, bruised, bleeding, and alone, she weeps for the strength to survive another agonizing day in this hen called life. Sacrificing not only her integrity, but also her very own sanity, she bows down obediently to her husband for another brutal night. Yearning for fortification, she prays to God that her husband would not harm their unborn baby who remained innocently entangled in a world inescapable. Frightened by the consequences of leaving him. She became trapped between brutal desolation and the loss of her very own identity. She became the embodiment of a woman longing to die yet thirsting to live for her unborn baby girl. With the help of the law, she gained the courage to leave the memory of her past behind and start toward a new beginning. The road ahead will be tong, but her courage is unbreakable. This was the first step to salvation; however, the scars will forever remain. This is the story of my mother, my heroine. My mother was a victim but is now a survivor. I am here to proclaim her story. My purpose is to empower woman to overcome abusive relationships through faith, hope, and love.
Agnieszka Guttmann, Third Place
Good evening. This is Jeff Plainer and you're watching the evening news. Tonight's top story, an international student of a Pennsylvania college was arrested on the charge of terrorism. FBI found evidence of threatening activity. Photographs of militants, videos of Gaza Strip shootings, and browser history full of Palestinian resistance blogs was discovered on the suspect's computer. The suspect himself is being held in detention, and is under FBI's investigation. And now, tomorrow's weather with Bill...~-Wow, you think to yourself, a Pennsylvania student? It can't be, can it? Ivan? We just did a project on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Is it possible? What did they do to him?! He's innocent! He's not a terrorist; he was just researching for a class assignment! I mean, come on, they have gone too far with this Patriot Act! Next thing you know, they will come for me. I was doing the same project. ..Good thing I'm an American citizen, the Constitution will protect me...
"Mr. Smith. it's the FBI! Open the door! You're under arrest on the charge of terrorism!"
Aricka Ladebu, Fourth Place:
The wooden water buckets hanging from my shoulders weigh me down as I blindly take one more step. The weight pulls me to the ground where I have cried so many tears of helplessness that the color in my eyes has washed out. Hope has drained out too. I realize numbness has set in as I try to recollect the once familiar loving faces of my family. It all is a blur. The night the men took me at gunpoint my mother desperately cried after me, "Don't stop believing!" They took me because of my family's faith. Now I am in this prison of a factory. I know of Pakistani men who are doctors, teachers, and leaders. I can never be numbered with them. My life no longer exists, for I am a prisoner. I've been here since my sixth birthday and most likely won't live to see my sixteenth. What food I do get has meager nutrition. I am always hungry. But the real hunger I feel is one for freedom. I don't need to run and play like other boys my age. To choose my days and to live with purpose, for this is what I ask.
"Unfair," Lauren Knupp, Fifth Place:
It was so unfair. They were perfect in every single way. Some would call them high school sweethearts. I would call them meant for each other. That night though, changed their so-called fairytale ending. The night was young. The star filled sky embraced them as they kissed goodnight. Little did they know it would be their last.. She opened the huge oak door hoping the sharp creak would not ruin her sneak back into the dim house. He walked back to his beat up Chevy parked along the empty street.. A love struck grin formed across his face as he opened the door. Hopping in, he reached into the glove compartment where his secret gem lay hidden. He wanted just one more night with her to make sure he was ready for such a commitment. All of a sudden from around the sharp bend, it came. A screech. A flash. A collision. The truck was totaled. In the place where the truck once was, the shimmering engagement ring lay. We found out later on that the man had been drinking. It was so unfair.
"Concerning the American Writer," Molly Nelson, Sixth Place:
It is with wholehearted earnestness that I declare my desire to lose this contest. Few could be more enthusiastic than I to reveal a desire to know within their hearts that there still exist writers self-confident enough to fall within these seven places of honorable mention. Not, of course, to proclaim that this author finds herself capable of practicing the habits of a competent writer, but merely to suggest that the amount of inquiry needed to detect a general lack of competent writing within modem-day America is dishearteningly minimal. When an academic assignment of writing holds the power to send a collective shiver of anguish among a class of University students (supposedly intent upon their cultivation of liberal minds), one cannot help but concernedly wonder, what has happened to written language? Thus, to lose a contest in writing would inevitably bring tears to my eyes, though they would be of joy and not sorrow; for their presence can only indicate the existence of at least seven students through whom this insidious dislike of writing has failed to permeate-a very encouraging scenario, indeed.
Harold Schreckengost, Eighth Place :
Since I was a child, I've had a terrible fear of being lonely, of being abandoned. Coupled with an unstable home, it's enough to wreck anyone; to a child, the combination is enough to cause a complete destruction of the psyche. Even after 4 years of trying. I still cut; I still cannot deal with the feeling of abandonment; I still feel the urge, occasionally, to destroy my body completely.
It's a terrible feeling, knowing that things that happened to you, things you had no control over, can break your mind so completely that, try as you might, you'll never be able to truly escape it. I know I will never be perfectly safe from myself; I know I will never be perfectly sane; I know I will always be "weird" inside; I know I will always be the odd man out. At this point, getting depressed over it is futile; all I can do now is embrace my life as it is and work at fixing things. Oh well; I have my whole life to fix it.
Carla Velez, Ninth Place:
It was not long after the sponge was inserted into my vagina that contractions became evident, accompanied by loss of muscle control. I laid in a fetal position on some weird couch in a tiny room at the abortion clinic -mouth dry like a tadpole out of water. Engaged in a coughing fit, I wound up peeing on my hospital gown. Forcing my body to stand on numb legs, I staggered down the hall, around the corner, and to the restroom. It was large and sterile with a frosted glass chicken wire window. Gingerly, I lowered my bottom onto the frigid toilet seat. Upon sitting my back-end spayed like a fire-hose, chin pressing into my perspiring chest. Reaching for toilet paper, I discovered only a brown cardboard tube. Resorting to paper hand towels, I waddled across the way to a metal box which hung on the wall. It began to bother how the nurse had gasped during the sonogram. Returning to the toilet, ribbons of blood swirled throughout the water. Sixteen weeks pregnant, I had not seen my uterine blood in months. My breasts were sore and lactating; I wished I was someone else.
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