I awoke this morning to melancholy, confusion and mourning.
My story matters no more than the stories carried by all souls.
Its role is to act as a vessel to transmit truths universal to us all.
Hazel lives in me, the naïve child full of unsullied optimism and joy.
Her horror in witnessing the evil unleashed against Ina is also mine.
Her failure to grasp such depravity and deliberate cruelty, also mine.
What doesn’t come so easily is Hazel’s readiness to live fully in this day.
I can step into the memories, relive the pain as if it were occurring now.
It matters not the lifetimes that have issued since the memory breathed.
The horror, the despair, the agony, the bitterness…all of it…come alive now.
And here I sit, in the world of today, living the world of yesterday, destroyed.
All that I need is a dream, an occasion, a sound, and it reappears in living color.
I understand too her consummate failure to comprehend depravity and cruelty.
How can such evil and malice lurk in a person, keen to inflict torment on others?
And for what reason, because they are different than us, individual, exceptional?
What is it about difference that frightens us so, that transforms us into monsters?
What primal fear does it incite in us that we hastily deign to kill rather than accept?
And, given the right circumstances, we all readily trade roles of victim and predator.
Here, I break from my upbringing which decreed our inborn hopelessness and impiety.
Such a reality opportunely bodes well for those who covet control of our every breath.
Rather, I believe with all my heart that, just as Hazel, we can choose to create our lives.
And I will not abide the actions of those intent on creating hell on this earth for their gain.
We are all different, by nature and design, and our differences promise to enrich our lives.
We do have the ability to choose, just like Hazel, the future we would create for ourselves.
And I, for one, say we do that, despite and because of our beautiful, broken hearts and souls.
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