Work Text:
I don’t know what to say. I fear the only way up is to start climbing, and yet! My hands! Oh my hands.
They do not know the agony of working in a field all day; they do not have the callouses to protect my nerve endings.
They are soft.
So soft, so delicate that I fear even though I can see the sky, I can see the way up to freedom and the world around it, I cannot be a part of it. I fear that I was raised to be protected. Raised to be surrounded by warmth, laughter, and kindness.
One does not like to think of these things as faults, and yet– Here I am. Stuck in a hole because I was not made to climb rocks or hillsides. I was not made to sweat and toil.
That is not my fault. But it is my burden.
I believe it’s too late for me. I cannot unlearn what has made me who I am, nor do I want to.
But, for the future– for the girl I see sitting across from me in the corner, who has tired, scared eyes, who hasn’t bothered to look up and see that there is more to her world than what she sees around her. For her, this girl who used to be me– I will teach her.
She will become everything I want, and it will be unfair, both to her and to me. She will want only softness as she grows, and I will give her none. Her hands will develop calluses, her arms will gain muscle, and she will climb her way to the top. She will hate every minute of it. And once she reaches the world above, she will see it in all its glory and gruesomeness. And then she will throw the rope down to her people, and we will cling to it as she pulls us up.
She will be burdened with the glorious purpose that I instilled in her, and it is not fair. Still, she persists, and by doing so, I do too.
No one wants to be the one to give future generations a better life. Some might say that they do, but no one really wants to put in the work, the effort, to go against a society that has thrown them down a well. It’s just so tiresome, and it would take someone's whole life. What a waste it is to spend it like that, don’t you think? And yet, here is someone who decided to sacrifice a child. A child who would have grown up in the well anyway, and instead told her to climb.
To suffer, and to keep suffering, so that she would be the last one to suffer.
Why didn’t someone from above help them?
Why must the ones who already are at a disadvantage be the ones having to help themselves?
It’s not their fault they’re in a hole in the ground. I have so many questions, and none will be answered.
Human selfishness is the root of our being, which, I believe, causes all of our suffering. It has also been the reason for our success. Is it worth it, though?