Why I Wrote “Afflicted”

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Years ago, I posted this story on my blog as part of an A–Z Writing Challenge in which I participated. The goal of the challenge was simple: write something every day, follow the alphabet, and don’t overthink it too much. At the time, I saw it as a creative exercise—nothing more than a way to stay disciplined and see what might happen if I trusted the voice and kept going.

What surprised me was how fast the story came.

It was written in under a month. I brainstormed the titles of the posts based on the Power and Control Wheel but after that, I didn’t outline and I didn’t really plan themes or lessons. I just followed the narrator and let each letter lead me to the next moment. The scenes came easily, almost insistently, as if the story already knew where it wanted to go and I was just trying to keep up.

Until the end.

When I reached the final stretch, I got stuck. I knew the story needed a surprise but I couldn’t quite see how. I remember thinking I needed a clever twist, some neat way to tie everything together. Eventually I figured something out but I wasn’t happy with it. What I really needed was time and distance, and I didn’t have either. I still may not have time but since I’m carving out a little time each week to write, it’s the reason why I’m slowly rewriting the entire story to see what I can improve.

Back then while I was posting daily installments, something happened that I hadn’t anticipated at all: readers were responding in ways that caught me off guard. Many women commented to say they thought the story/online journal was real. Others shared that they had gone through something similar. They recognized the patterns immediately, like the small red flags, the justifications, the slow erosion that doesn’t look like danger until you’re already deep inside it.

Those responses stayed with me.

To be crystal clear, the story is fiction. It always has been. The narrator is Cara. It’s not me and the events are not some kind of direct retelling of my life. But it is built from reality. Not one person’s reality, but the reality of many. I drew from conversations, observations, anecdotes and the emotional truths that surface again and again when people talk about control, manipulation, and abuse.

I chose fiction deliberately. It gave me room to explore without turning the story into a case study or a cautionary tale. I wasn’t interested in too many big, obvious moments of harm. I wanted to stay with the quieter ones first, you know, like the moments where something feels off but still explainable, where love and fear coexist but where leaving doesn’t yet feel possible.

Looking back, I think that’s why the story came so easily at first. It followed an internal logic that many of us recognize, even if we don’t have language for it. The narrator Cara adapts. She minimizes. She explains things away. Not because she’s naïve or weak, but because what’s happening fits into patterns she didn’t realize she already knew.

The ending was harder because it demanded clarity and abuse stories rarely offer that. Survival doesn’t always look dramatic or victorious. Sometimes it looks unfinished and looks like confusion that lingers long after the danger has passed. I didn’t yet know how to sit with that on the page.

Now, revisiting this work feels different. I have more patience for what the story was trying to do. I’m less interested in twists, more interested in texture, how harm accumulates slowly and how recognition often comes after the fact.

I’m sharing this piece again, from A to Z, because it carries the echoes of many experiences, many voices, many moments that are often dismissed if you don’t know better.

If readers see themselves in it, that doesn’t mean it’s a confession. It just means the story touched something real and real things are rarely owned by just one person.

You can read this fiction on the blog here - 👉 “Afflicted“

Note: I didn’t publish the full post here because my blog is where my longer-form writing lives. That space is intentional for me—it’s slower, quieter, and rooted. For me, Substack is about connection. Conversation. Letting you know what I’m thinking about, what I’m working through, and what I am working on, without repeating the work itself.