She stared up at the sky. She took a huge, fresh, breath. Her heart beat was slow, slow enough to think everything had stopped. Time was still, and so was her soul. It was her and the stars. No one else. Everything was clear to her. As clear as the night sky while she lay in the barren field where the soft spring wheat was just starting to grow. She thought about everything that had shaped her into who she was today. Nothing felt better than looking up at those stars.
She thought of everything that had plagued her in these last few years. The years she had run away. The 3 years that had shaped her life. She felt anger, confusion, hate, but most of all she realized something. Something that she knew had bothered her for years.
She’d grown up. At 20 years old she knew she had to grow up she had to learn who she really was. After everything in her life had been crushed, after friends she thought were real turned out to be her worst nightmares, after boys crushed her, assaulted her and made her feel like the only solstice to life was death, after the only people that knew her well enough to love her, forgot her, she was still strong still willing to fight.
This is what shaped her to who she is today. She had no idea how much she had changed until she looked through those yearbooks, talked to those friends she forgot about and returned home to find that everything she once knew hadn’t changed but merely evolved with her. She was someone completely different. She wasn’t that confused depressed young woman anymore. She was that woman she inspired to be.
Her mother looked at her differently, with a pride only a mother could have for a daughter she realized had come to her own. She was no longer having “mother daughter days” but having “ladies who lunch” days. Her daughter wasn’t just her daughter anymore, she was her best friend.
Her father felt like she had left his arms. He cried inside but it never showed unless you looked straight into his eyes. Those tears were there, but they were filled with a sense of love, a love only the proudest most compassionate father could have. To him, she’d always be his little 3 year old Scruffy, hiding behind the chair in the living room refusing to brush her hair and putting herself to bed before anyone told her to.
She still had a lot to learn, a lot to grow from and a lot to do. But somehow, everything seemed clearer, more open to her interpretation…
It’s amazing what can come from a stargazing evening shared only by the breeze, and the universe.
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