Love is acceptance~

Tonight, in the midst of the terrible storming in Alabama, I was given my answer. The question that has been bugging me in the back of my mind, death? What is it? Why has it been circling me for days and the fear building up within me, bucking and seizing. I could feel it taking shape as though it were whispering to me and trying to make me forget what I'd learned from the beginning.
My message.
Tonight, I read a couple chapters from a book. The main character was a young king who was put into a battle for the first time along with his friends to help an ally overtake his cousin who has unjustly stolen his kingdom from him and did terrible things to his people. They were completely taken off guard by a dishonorable attack during the night and the ally of the young king is killed. All the killing had turned into slaughter, everyone killing everyone else. There was no honor in any of this and the dying allying had realized that no matter the reason, killing was slaughter of another man.
At some point the young king is captured and because he makes the unjust cousin angry he decides that the king be killed without any honor. He is brought to the burning ground where the dead bodies were burned and only the changars could do the job. The changars did not have a caste [rank in society] and were pretty much treated like lepers to even be touched by one of them would destroy strip your caste and you would become one. Instead of being killed the king was put on a dog collar and became the changar's slave. It was a joke for such a lowly person to have a slave and a king at that. The young king yelled, "No, you've made a mistake! I'm the King of Sundari! You must kill me, spare me that. What will you lose?" But the changar would not because he said he was sparing him his life and now he had a slave.
The King tried to deny it in his mind, he'd been touched and now he was one as well. He tried to rewrite the past, he couldn't even accept it. But no matter how he tried to change his mind...he knew the truth, his caste had been broken, he would be one for the rest of his life.

I understand this feeling.

I remember what it feels like to be this young king, to be naively innocent. Everyone copes in their own way, every tries to deny the darkness in their own lives in one way or another. For a long time, we have ways of evading it. Even when we say the way it lurks in every corner and it on every news channel, we have ways of keeping it from within our own lives. Even if that means we have to believe we are somehow better off then everyone else. That somehow, the possibility of being something as terrible as a rapist, that kind of darkness would never plague are life and IF it did, we would be the victims not the attacker. Which is why so many of us feel sorry for ourselves, we live like victims because the world is the one attacking us. Isn't that right? There is so much darkness in the world and we have the right to feel a little broken down because we have so much to fight against. Of course, because we're on the good team.

But are you? I wasn't.

The darkness? I couldn't hide from it anymore. It stood before me, honestly and truly. There was no evading and there was no denying it. All of the sudden, the very thing I had spent my entire life fighting against. Every single fear, every single disdain, everything I thought I stood for to fight against. The very message I was proclaiming to be the source of all destructive and bad. I was it. Yes, and just like the young king Sundari, I tried to deny it. Which only made me feel more pathetic, I just not only found out that I was the worst person I could ever be but I wouldn't even admit it to myself.

But you have to understand, it's hard to accept when you have spent your whole life believing that you are on the 'good side'. That's not you, you would never do that. Even though you know you will make mistakes in life, there are just some things you'd never do or become, afterall the choices are left in your own hands. And I will not try to say I didn't choose those choices. They were all of free will. But little did I know, free will can easily be manipulated when you are on your own just like a drunk always comes back to alcohol when they should be aware it is destroying everything.

So...there I was. Feeling that if I held atleast a SMALL bit of honor left within me I would accept that I had become like in that story, a 'changar'. I knew that there would be nothing I could do to change it for the rest of my life and all of my life before I had claimed that I would live through the punishment of it, if I had to. So I would continue on believing that I was a monster forever and be damned forever but it was my choice, I deserved it. I can honestly say that if there is hell, this is what it feels like. I was my own worst nightmare and no matter how much I wanted to, it was real. I couldn't take it back, it was real.

Then, looking at my father, something shifted within a second. He loved me. A feeling more then a voice, or maybe it was a knowing placed an understanding in my heart and within one moment, I forgave myself. Many voices within my head argued that, that was the most dishonorable thing you could do because that means you are forgiving THAT kind of person. Someone so terrible to you before, you are willing to forgive. That proved that I was not only terrible but a coward, I had no honor left.

But those voices stopped the second I forgave myself. Because, nothing could deny that I had been forgiven, heart and soul. I literally didn't feel like a bad person anymore, I felt like me again. Beautiful and free but most importantly, loved.

Kerli once said, "Love is acceptance." For a long time, I didn't know if I thought you could place it so easily under something like that but now I do. My brother once said, "What makes a monster is not it's ability to hate but it's inability to love."

That knowing was belief. Because you don't have to have any evidence to back up if you truly believe in something, it's just true. A voice within my heart said to me, "Elizabeth, remember who you are." Because in my eyes, I saw that my father remembered that person. He believed in me. He didn't see me as a monster and  I know honest to my grave that he never truly will or would. It was the reflection of myself in his eyes that reminded me of who I really was. In my darkest place, he still saw his beautiful daughter, Elizabeth and I remembered love.

And that is my message. No matter what you become, no matter what you do, you can never be damned. There is always a second chance for you, your life is not ruined. Love CAN return to you and things CAN change. Because love will never leave you, that is the truth about love because love is acceptance and will accept you no matter who or what you are. All you need do is forgive yourself so that you can let it back in.

I want to help people see the light within themselves, when no one else can, like what was done for me. And to hear that voice within their heart that says, "no, remember who you are. Yes there is darkness here but it's not who you really are. That's the truth, this is not who you really are." And then forgive yourself. The consequences of your choices may come but that does not mean you are ruined or that things have to be miserable for you for the rest of your life. You would be surprised.

My message is that there is always hope and that there are some things worth fighting for no matter what. Which means believing, no matter what evidence comes against you because that is what it means to TRULY know something. Believe in something that really matter. Love. Love is forgiveness, love is acceptance. Fight for it always.

The message has always been the same but now I truly see it for it what it is and nothing will stop me. That is not an inner vow, that is belief. I truly believe in this message and I believe that just like in Whale Rider that my father showed me, I will see that there is more to life then that darkness, that despair. That no matter the crisis, there is no mountain too high. Because courage is seeing that there is something more important then fear.

I truly see it now. There was a show that my brother showed me and he said this character reminded him of me. This character is revered by her other alien kind for being able to conquer her own darkness even though she had murdered the one that she loved. It had taken her years but she had done it. One particular person was almost going mad from the darkness within her and wanted to make this sacred connection with her so that she could learn how to control it and help the other people. This connection was very intense because the two people are interlocked together spiritually. The girl ends up betraying her and tries to take all the knowledge from her so she doesn't have to take years mastering it.
The girl resurfaces and she is completely consumed by the darkness and had just been betrayed by the other girl. It turns out the other girl, in trying to destroy her darkness became it and even though she'd stolen the knowledge she began killing people.

The main character is still struggling with her darkness when the other character in the show says that he will make the spiritual connection with her and show her the good again. So they make the connection and he begins to see her darkness but she warns him not to focus on it or let any of it inside of himself. Instead he tells her to let herself see herself through his eyes.

He could still see the kind and loving person that he loved in her and all of the sudden she remember who she really was and started fighting to be that person again. Long story short, she regains control of it. And the funniest thing is his name was John. :]

Dad and I seem to find a connection with God through John. And really, I only do because dad did. And just like how John in that show reminded her who she really was by letting her see herself through his eyes, I feel dad the same for me that night. He believed in me.