Harm is interesting. It has the power to define a person, but can also be rendered to a story alone. I was certain all that had happened would define me. And, though I still believe a hereditary madness is desperate to claim another of my line. For the first time, I have hope. As I begin to render the harm of my person into story alone, I begin to hope. I don’t know what salvation looks like for me, and maybe I will never know, but it no longer feels like an impossibility. No longer simply my mother’s savior. No longer simply another daughter gone mad like her mother. No longer simply your child.
Though my circumstance may be perfectly singular, others before me have broken generational chains. The path is not the same, but on my way, there are those that collided. And in the recognition of those collisions—those imprinted steps—the path becomes clear. I may be the only one to do exactly this, but in mankind as a whole, all has been walked. And in that trampled forest, I feel freed. What once seemed to be unmarred, is mattered with footsteps.
Never alone in the woods of all.