SEMA WRAY
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300 WORDS: Centipedes in the Bathtub

6/27/2013

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 Ian wants me to ride the Griffon at Busch Gardens.  
 
“Mom, you have to face your fears.”  
 
But I have faced my fears, many because of him.  He made me face my fear of reproducing that which I hated in myself – anxiety, anger, bouts of darkness.

He made me face my fear of becoming a parent, which I had a better example of by watching Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, than by observing those who raised me. 

He made me go into the ocean, where I felt little besides fear, full of creatures which look upon me as I do the centipedes in my bathtub– “you don’t belong here, so I am going to have to kill you now.”

 And those fears I had already faced – Ending my first marriage, six years in – fraught with disagreements, two people going in opposite directions.   I was afraid to leave, afraid of hurting my husband, disappointing our
families, friends, not to mention, Jesus. I was prepared to be alone – preferable to the loneliness of an unhappy
marriage.

Then marrying again – a man with whom I was much better suited, but a possible flight risk at the time. 
 
I faced my fears by moving to Richmond, where I knew no one besides the person I came with.  I
faced my fears by taking jobs for which I had no qualifications, but enough smarts to fake it until I figured it out. 
I face my fears every day – don’t we all?

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    I was born in Oswego, NY, 
    a very cold place from which 
    I fled in 1988.  I graduated from the University of North Carolina Greensboro with a 
    BA in English, and have 
    worked in marketing and communications in  North Carolina and Virginia. I have lived in Richmond, since 1996, and even though I am not from from here, I am home here.  

    "I had always wanted to be a writer, but was impeded by the belief that to be a writer one had to be extraordinary, and I knew I wasn't.   By the time I was ready to give up my academic career I had realized that while books are extraordinary, writers themselves are no more or less special than anyone else."     The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
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Sema Wray • Writer

Richmond, VA
phone: 804-282-3609

email: [email protected]

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