{"id":19924,"date":"2025-11-24T17:37:51","date_gmt":"2025-11-24T17:37:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/?p=19924"},"modified":"2025-11-24T17:37:51","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T17:37:51","slug":"the-morning-an-old-woman-at-the-station-grabbed-my-wrist-and-whispered-dont-go-home-tonight-four-hours-later-i-was-watching-my-own-building-burn-on-the-news-instea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/?p=19924","title":{"rendered":"The morning an old woman at the station grabbed my wrist and whispered \u201cdon\u2019t go home tonight\u201d \u2014 four hours later I was watching my own building burn on the news instead of from my bed"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I gave the old lady some change every day. One day she stopped me and said, \u201cDon\u2019t go home tonight.\u201dThat was how Simone Lawson would later describe the day everything in her life changed. Simone woke up to the sound of her alarm and for a few seconds couldn\u2019t figure out where she was.The empty half of the bed reminded her that the divorce had been finalized three months ago. The apartment in Atlanta belonged only to her now. Darnell had moved in with his new partner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At thirty-five, her life felt split into a before and an after. Before, there had been twelve years of marriage, shared plans, and joint trips to his parents\u2019 place outside the city, where she dutifully weeded the garden while he drank beer with his friends. After all that, there was just this one-bedroom apartment, the silence, and the necessity of starting over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She got up, pulled on her robe, and went to the kitchen. The kettle boiled fast, the only thing in the entire apartment that worked flawlessly. Simone made herself coffee, looked out the window at the gray April morning over Atlanta, Georgia, and sighed.Welcome to Betty\u2019s Stories. I share new life stories here every day, and I\u2019d really appreciate it if you hit subscribe and liked this video. Now, let\u2019s jump back into my story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I gave the old lady some change every day. One day she stopped me and said, \u201cDon\u2019t go home tonight.\u201dThat was how Simone Lawson would later describe&#8230; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19925,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"views":572,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19924"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19924\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19926,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19924\/revisions\/19926"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}