Bio : The Story of She

She is young. She wants to grow up too fast, so she can follow her big sister. She potty-trains herself in three days. She falls in love with snow and the way a dog will stay loyal to her for as long as she pets it. She doesn’t understand sadness yet. Her father asks her questions while he works hard — harder than she’ll ever know. She laughs and thinks as deeply as she can. She grows and realizes the ugliness of a lie. Her mother loves her from a seated position, and she thinks she is too tall for her mother. She feels guilty for things she doesn’t understand. She sees darkness when she cries but doesn’t know why. She falls in love with teachers and learning and tries talking to God. She turns fourteen when her mother stops breathing. Now, whenever she cries, she sees her mother — she sees herself. Sometimes she wishes the darkness would return, but she has to grow up too fast and becomes a poet. The words come, but they are frail and green. She goes to a small school with big ideas where she must defend her own. She falls in love with a boy who loves truth and loves her words, so she keeps writing hoping to find something and give the boy what he’s looking for. She chisels and digs and talks to God more and more. She tries sewing what little truth she has on the inside of her blazer. It’s not enough; the truth eludes her. She turns twenty-one, and the boy stops breathing. She wants to hate God, but she’s already fallen in love with the truth and believes it can save her. She becomes a philosopher, and her words are large and heavy. Teachers are everywhere and in everything; they teach her about beauty and death, and she longs to understand it all. She falls in love with a man who reminds her of the boy who stopped breathing. He testifies that life is heaven and challenges her to think and to write as she was always meant to: authentically, deliberately. He is her best friend, and they laugh so hard together that they hold their guts, and the world begs to know the punch line. He does not believe in God. She is forced to choose between them, and she wants to hate God again, but the truth is already etched on her forehead and written in her heart; and she still believes that it will save her. She learns how to be alone and to listen. A teacher who distributes bread and truth shows her how. She stumbles and thinks love can be etched on a ring in an ancient language and suddenly exist. But false love hurts her and she nearly escapes a demon selling charades that leave bruises. The truth is everywhere, has always been, and will always be; but she finally sees. Her father still works hard — harder than she’ll ever know — and makes her smile while he works. He becomes one of her favorite people of all time, and it takes her thirty years to see it. He teaches her to search with her eyes — which have seen the difference between dark and light — to hold on tightly with her hands — which have been worn and wrinkled by both life and death — and to forever believe the impossible is possible — because it’s a miracle offered everyday to those who choose to see it.