Sabrina Marie Appiah

My phone rings early on a weekday in 2018 and I glance at the number – it’s my parents. Ugh. I have to get ready for work and even if I didn’t I still wouldn’t answer it. I let it go to voice mail and finish my makeup. It rings again. For fuck’s sake. “Hello?” “Hi Sabby, it’s mom.” “Hi mom.” My voice falls into a special cadence reserved for her - guarded, irritated, polite. It’s a difficult dance trying to manage these all at once which explains why I always feel drained after I talk to her, no matter how brief our “conversations”. “Sabby…” she says and starts crying. Right away, I know. Dad is 80, blind from glaucoma, high blood pressure, diabetes and I’m not sure what all else. I stay calm and ask her what happened. He collapsed in the middle of the night and is in a coma in the hospital. I talk some more with her, getting the details of what happened and what needs to be done. We hang up and I sit on the side of the bed, staring out the window. I pick up the phone again and call ...

I’m on my way to the Red for Easter, my second trip since my separation, first trip divorced. Last year’s trip was so hard. So hard. Everywhere I turned I saw us and felt our absence. The past few years have taught me that I need to let myself feel everything that comes up, that denying it and pushing it away only makes it worse, though doing this in the middle of a route is it's own special kind of challenge. I’m 80 feet up on a beautiful sandstone route, climbing with people who don’t know me that well. I'm the only woman in the group and I’ve spent most of my climbing life wanting to be/acting like I’m “tough” (whatever the fuck that’s supposed to mean). That identity has faded but there’s a faint silhouette of her in the background.  Anyway. There I am in 2022, sitting on the rope up high, a beautiful day and I’m dry heaving from trying to swallow my tears, thankful that at least up here no one can see what’s happening. I lower and we eventually call it for that crag. We st...

My husband and I eat, sleep and breathe climbing. Sometimes if the forecast looks good, we’ll pack the car on a Thursday night after work and drive down to the Red after calling in sick for Friday. We stop in Cincinnati and sleep in a rest stop when he gets tired, then continue in the morning straight to the crag.  This trip he’s working Table of Colors, I’m working Infectious. Infectious is hard, for me. I’m used to vertical routes - crimps with bad feet; although Infectious is far from overhanging by the Red’s standards, if feels bouldery and steep to me. I dig my fingers into the pockets so hard I wear away at the skin around my knuckles – I’m bleeding through the tape but I don’t care. I want to send. I started trying this in the Fall and came close…the more I get denied the more I want it. The more the route tells me no you can’t, the more my back gets up and my defiance builds. I’m gonna try again. And again after that if I have to. I just want to fucking send.   Final...

*warning - descriptions of physical/verbal/emotional abuse, racial slurs I’m standing at the edge of where the hallway meets the kitchen and living room. Through the doorway to the living room I see dad sitting perpendicular to his desk, watching tv. I look over to my right at mom, who’s standing at the kitchen sink, washing dishes. Her upper body is half turned toward me as she yells over her shoulder. “You’re so fucking stupid. Shit. I have to do everything myself. What the fuck do you think this is? You're fucking useless.” My eyes are half lowered, trained on the floor tiles in front of me. I see the little gold and silver flecks against a white background, contained in neat gold bordered squares. I keep my face impassive. My skin feels like it’s burning. My throat feels swollen, blocked. My stomach hurts. I can’t cry. She keeps yelling and I glance back at dad. His eyes are fixed forward, unblinking. My mind reaches out to the bedrooms behind me, to big brother’s room. He’s in...