“‘Life sucks and then you die.’ Yeah, I should be so lucky.” ~Jacob in Breaking Dawn
I feel that way quite often. Sometimes I see all the things I missed in life growing up.
~Having the chance to fit in
~Knowing American culture
~Having the chance to really do well in school - not having to teach myself everything by reading books without any real teachers past fourth or fifth grade.
~Being allowed to express my emotions
~Having friends
~Worshiping God from the heart instead of just the head
~Being absolutely sure that I and my pets were safe in the hands of my parents
~Feeling loved
~Learning how to relate to others appropriately
~Having choices like what to wear
~Having chances to go out with friends
~Knowing what I liked
~Knowing what I wanted - or even just being allowed to think about it
Many of those things I can do now, but I will never get back that time. I will never be able to change the fact that I didn’t have any of those things until I worked hard to think for myself, knew that I wanted them, fought for them, and was of legal age to make my own decisions. Some things I will never get back. It will always be hard for me to just fit in with the average person. My background is so different!
When will I be able to join in a discussion of fashionable clothing without having dozens of flashbacks (making it look like I am staring into space) and eventually admitting that this is all very new for me and I still have plenty of fears about not hiding my body well enough. When will I be able to see a little girl enjoying worship at church - totally free to be herself - without the parched ache of knowing that was who I wanted to be, but wasn’t allowed to be? Will I ever be able to look at a teenage girl in a school sports team without wishing that sports and camaraderie did not exist in my world at that age - that PE hadn’t been just walking around town? Will I ever look at a band or orchestra without jealousy that I never had the chance to play instruments with a group on a regular basis? Will I ever not feel a surge of anger and a stab in my heart when I hear a certain classical piece that was not good enough for my parents and therefore they wouldn’t let me play in a string workshop with an orchestra because they were playing that piece? Or maybe that feeling comes from not being given that choice myself even though I was at least sixteen?
There are so many things that are just so not right about how I was raised. So many things that hurt. So many things that make me want to punch something. So many things that seem like they will be impossible for me forever.
But then, in the midst of all that, I hear three words: no wasted pain. Right, I never will get back those years of my life. They will never change. They are set in stone. And that is a good thing. It is through those years - through those very same experiences and lack of experiences - that I learned things more valuable to me than American culture or Romeo and Juliet. It is those very same painful experiences that taught me to be compassionate, to feel deeply, to understand, to give grace, to love, to care, and how gloriously and amazingly beautiful beyond words it is to be free! It has given me the passion necessary - if not the strength - to fight, to live, and to die for my sisters who are in slavery so that they can be free too.
I will enjoy life as much as possible and feel the beautiful freedom myself just to feel the pleasure of being alive. It is like the first warm breeze of spring when it blows though your hair and fills your lungs with fresh, life-giving air after a long winter of choking on the cold day after day. But the most important reason I don’t want to go straight to Heaven and forget the terror of this earth is that I am prepared - unlike any other upbringing would have prepared me - to make a difference. Prepared to give other girls, who were raised in the same or similar situations, a chance to be free. Hmmm, yes, it is worth every bit of the pain. None of it was wasted or useless.
Strangely, this knowledge, this feeling, doesn’t make me ignore or minimize the pain. It gives me the strength to embrace the hurt... and then... it heals. It gives meaning and worth to even the most painful memories. One more time I say, “Yes! It was worth it after all.”
“I've had to face death, and loss, and pain in your world, but I've also never felt stronger, more real, more myself. Because it is my world too. It's where I belong.” Bella
(Ok, ok, I’ll stop with the quotes already!)
~Sophie Anderson
