Is that it?

By sari geron light flow

Wed, 21 Jun 2017
  • 744 reads
2 comments
 

 

Chapter 1.
When I was ten years old, I remember quite an unusual moment that changed me radically.
I was hanging out in the evening with my neighborhood friends, bored, chatting, playing silly games. It was evening and I was tuned in the background of my child-reality current moments, to the sound of my mums’ voice, when ready, to call my name loudly from the second floor of the building – DINNER TIME! Strangers were passing by and I recognized one of them as an older girl from my brother’s high school. We greeted each other and started chatting. Everyone loved my brother as he was good looking and the opportunity to chat with me, his sister, must have made them feel closer to him. She told me she was vegetarian. I asked what does it mean and she explained. I listened with my mouth wide open,my jaw about to drop down to the floor and my breath was on pause until  I sprinted back home, not waiting for my mums’ loud invitation, and I announced to her, as I put my run into a sudden hold – I am vegetarian! I am vegetarian!
And so, began my journey of finding out things by myself. You see, I was in shock – the meatballs I have been feeding on, the schnitzels I consumed with speed, the liver pate I dipped my fingers in, those were ANIMALS – DEAD ANIMALS! I did not know that and I have been going to school – an educational institution and they did not teach me that!!!! I felt weird, I felt empty, I sensed new space in me, a confused one with many question marks until they all merged together and I had this one HUGE question mark in front of me throughout my teens, leading me everywhere, directing me how to be. I felt lost as I was only young and if I could phrase this question, if I could express my gasp into words – WHO WILL I ASK? Where will I find the answers? Are there any answers? WHAT IS THE QUESTION? I looked around at all the institutions around me – school, health, government – even family – and I wondered – the only question I could phrase as I felt it all over my body shaking my daily existence constantly - WHAT ELSE HAVE YOU NOT TOLD ME????
This was a shift. A gift. An opportunity to open my eyes and look properly – look with my heart and not  with the eyes only – and I could do that because my heart was shaking rapidly, impatient too, wanting to break through the bars around it, bars formed by culture and its rules and regulations.
Of course, at that age, the way I phrase it here on script, was not the way I was expressing my feelings to myself then. Then I was drifting between the feeling that there must be something else to what my parents and teachers told me that there is – or more precise – that there isn’t – 1. There is no peace – we need to fight. 2. There is no safety for women/girls – be careful – worry! 3. There is no love – don’t trust people. 4. Life is not easy – suffer. That constant struggle between hope and fear, between acceptance and suffering. I felt love inside me, love to animals and compassion to the slaughtered one, love to the murderers and compassion to their victims, love to myself and compassion to the fighters with force. There was a storm inside me, waves of happiness crushing the hard shore of what they told me to do – study well, fight with the army, go to university, build a career, make lots of money, get married, get a mortgage and buy a house, make children, work hard, and hopefully when you are in retiring age, you will still have enough power to enjoy the money you have accumulated. What? I was screaming inside me – IS THAT IT??

 

Certificate 15
Biography
chasing freedom
Unclassified

Comments

Submitted by skinner_jennifer on

Life can be so hard to grasp when you're growing up with its rules and regulations. Just when you think you've got it right, you're told something different by another.

It was interesting to read from the perspective of a ten year old.

Jenny.

 

Submitted by Insertponceyfre... on

I love that final, anguished scream : )