AnYi 安亦

It was, perhaps, a  dream.

I was 13 or 14, I remember, when I sat in my bed one night, praying to whatever forces that were out there, please let me die. Let me wake up the next day and find myself in whatever world that one was supposed to be in after this, and escape.

My books were torn apart and scattered around the room. One of them was Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince. The pages after Harry visits Hagrid with Slughorn were torn off and not to be found again until much later. Or maybe I got that wrong — maybe those pages were never found again. I really can’t be sure.

Of course, it was not a dream; and of course, I did not die, because whatever forces I believed in at the time, did not just take the life out of people because they wished for it. I woke up the next day and went to school as usual. This was just another interlude, something everyone was supposed to go through at some point of their life. I did not know then how it could be any different.

It was just another interlude — one of many that had happened before. People break, and then things break. And then life breaks and the world crumbles. But of course, one will soon get used to it. The earth still revolves – it is not going to stop just because you feel bad about being beaten, or having hit people, or having broken things. It might feel like it’s going to stop when you’ve broken hearts or had your own shattered to pieces, but then, it really doesn’t.

Because otherwise, how are people supposed to live through such traumas? This is merely the last excuse, yet a very solid one.

I have woken up many times since that day. I’ve had worse times, and happier times, and I’m quite glad that I didn’t die. I’ve talked to people who have hurt me and whom I have hurt in return. It doesn’t always work, but I still try to do it.

It’s never something cold and stern or just another issue to be brought up for discussion in legislation processes. It has much more complicated roots in history and culture, in society and politics, in family and kin. As for the latter I no longer try to hate them or blame them, because I can see a picture none of them had been able to see, and because none of them could really help it — how could you, if all you know your entire childhood and teenage years were constructed with violence, and without anyone saying it is wrong? — but I show them the scars they have left on me, as I see their scars too, left by people who had loved them. Incredulous as it might sound to some, we have found forgiveness – no, reconciliation, rather – in us, but I will always, always bear those scars and show them.

‘I hated my father so much when I was your age, but I guess I’d forgotten.’

They say it’s something about love. I wish it really were.