Gemotions

The deadline was looming, and Chloe’s mind felt like a scrambled egg. The novel she was supposed to finish seemed to have vanished into thin air. She slumped onto the couch. Her gaze drifted towards her mother’s storage unit. It was a chaotic assortment of boxes she'd never looked through.

She forced herself to open a box. Inside were stacks of papers. Her elementary school reports, covered in her teacher's red ink. She flipped through them, each paper a monument to a younger version of herself, full of dreams, and sometimes, failures.

A sudden, intense heat bloomed in her chest. She remembered her mother’s words. “You can do anything.” But these papers told a different story.