It shouldn’t have happened to her or them or him or even— to me.
My eyes open to the gift of life each morning with hope and expectation. The hope of a good day at work and the automatic expectation that the day will result in a return trip home, crawling into bed and drifting off to dreamland to arise again with the same hope and expectation.
My days and nights are speckled with thoughts of present, past and future. Like a fortune teller with a crystal ball, I peer into my center, examining the ebb and flow of my life. I inspect moments of strength, happiness, passion and pain. Each moment with its purpose in the functionality of the organism of me. Each one precious, priceless and pure.
I listen intently when I hear people say, “It shouldn’t have happened to her.” Many things “shouldn’t happen”. Babies shouldn’t be born addicted to meth. Children shouldn’t be used as sex objects. People shouldn’t be judged, hurt, even killed for the color of their skin. And daughters shouldn’t be kidnapped.
I strain my ears, my brain and my soul to comprehend all of the things that “shouldn’t happen” and I must admit—I cannot. There is no comprehending things that are beyond belief. Evil in human form will never be explained to a degree that we mere mortals will fully grasp. Yet still, I ponder, think and awkwardly grasp at comprehension. I have to or the “shouldn’t haves“ will eat me alive.
The myriad of moments that make up my life, my days, my nights are meaningful. In the rush to forgive and forget, to heal and put it behind you, to just get the hell over it- I am pushed and prodded to move on, move forward and to not take a minute (or several) to just slow the fuck down and marvel at it all.
The miracle of living, loving, making a baby with my body, crying out, being in despair, having a broken heart, realizing this whole adult thing actually sucks, facing medical fears, being raw and real, daring to be authentic, eating a pizza…all simple, yet truly miraculous.
Miraculous in the way that against the odds, I dared to evolve. Authentic living can be lonely when it offends other people. The people who look down at the ground, shake their heads and say under their breath, “That shouldn’t have happened to her.”
I want to scream, “But for God’s Sake! It did happen! So can we just talk about that for awhile? Can we live in that for a while? Can we give what shouldn’t have happened the respect it deserves because it did happen?”
I scream this in my mind. I scream it with no words. I scream it with silence, distance and solitude. I scream it with every thought, action and word, yet no one hears. My screams fall on deaf ears and blinded eyes. The ones that belong to the people with downcast eyes saying, “That shouldn’t have happened to her.”
They cast their eyes down, but do not reach their arms out. Then they look away from the unsightly thing that shouldn’t have happened to her,them, him or even me. And they leave the traumatized to fend for themselves.
And THAT is what really shouldn’t have happened.
