I wish for my mom and dad to love each other as if they had never harmed one another. Yes, I know, many would now say: 'The child is speaking to us with heart-eyes adorned in a pink film.' Maybe what I wish for isn't correct, maybe love is stronger and truer when it comes after hurt, over wounds... Maybe I should wish for them to love each other as if they have forgiven all the harm, as if love is alive only when escorted by hope.
I was fully loved when I was very little. After I was born, light was welcome in everyone's lives. I danced as soon as I could walk and I laughed, I laughed vividly and brightly, and the windows that held the sea within them seemed able to heal any pain with just a glimmer. I miss that being as if it were another person, as if it were my lost child.
At one point, along the way, I took into myself all the harm I didn't want in others. I could barely live with myself, and in fact, I believe no one could live with me. I couldn't bear the inner weight, and I didn't bear it; rather, it dragged me, and I only watched as days and years passed me by.
I dreamt of two things: love and joy.
In recent years, I've realized that I've never really been grateful to God for my parents, nor thankful to them as I ought to be. When I say as I ought to be, I am by no means referring to moral duty, socio-cultural constraint, or other types of external pressures, but rather to the Lord's commandment ('Honor your father and your mother, so that it may be well with you and you may live long on Earth') and to the contentment and gratitude that my soul naturally demands. However, at the level at which I knew, saw, and perceived them, that's about all I could relate to them.
Growing up in my own life, detached from that 'home,' I managed to see in my parents a beauty that hadn't disappeared, but merely lay covered and sometimes suffocated by worries, by pains... A little light, a little dream... They are not saints, but they are a miracle. By giving birth to me and being my parents, they became a miracle to me, and I, through the gift of the Caregiver, became a miracle to them. What seems mundane to us (and it's not wrong!) is His miracle, an everyday one.
Therefore, among all the dreams that the aptitudes I've been endowed with and the competencies acquired until today allow me to have, the most sincere and effervescent dream is that of the child back then: to have a family that would be a source of love, joy, and light for her. I wouldn't want to sanctify myself, to perfect myself so that they would be proud of me, but rather to at least live with the conscience that I have done my part, that I have fulfilled everything that was up to me. That I haven't sat with my hands and my fierce will idle, waiting for a miracle. I know, the miracle won't come because of all I've done; it will come when I humble myself. May the Lord have mercy on me.
I blame no one for the pain I experienced for a good part of my childhood and half of my adolescence (I wish to mention this aspect to preempt comparative judgments, which I have often heard − 'What pain? What problems? What suffering? You haven't experienced deprivation! You don't know what trouble means! You have too much free time!' – and other similar remarks, stemming from poor, grief-stricken and burdened people, rooted in a survival mentality, although, I would rather call it subsistence, if anyone were to ask me. You are not allowed to be content with little unless that little is a crumb fallen from the Master's table!).
Besides, I know that's how things were. I don't know anyone who feels bad and commands themselves: 'Now I will feel good!', and if such a person exists, I doubt the health-promoting nature of this approach. There's also the issue of it not mattering how you feel, just to look around and be content, no matter what. However, being grateful is not a disposition in itself, especially when it consists of a rational perspective.
Many times I have felt a longing, a calling towards a way of being of my own, but also of things, and sometimes of those around me, a longing that I've always been told comes from illusions and vain hopes, as if the things I yearned for never existed and will never exist! I'm starting to discover that, in fact, the past few years have been an unconscious attempt to return to the untainted state of childhood: a world forged from love, from hugs and kisses on the cheek, from music, from dance and laughter. It would be naive to believe that the world can be just that – it isn't, I know, and I don't want it that way! The complex and complete life is the one I wanted and the one I accept now.
The problem is not that we experience pain, suffering, deceptions, injustices; the problem is that, without love, without joy, and without light, they are not worth living through. We do not live to die, but to reach the life that is above our fallen nature, where there is no pain, nor sorrow, nor sighing.
Gala Jura
Photography by Roman Tymochko / pexels.com