A HYMN OF THE HEART → COLIN BRIDGERTON (c.s)

01 | i miss who i used to be

0001. CHAPTER ONE
— i miss who i used to be

IN THE REAL WORLD, PEOPLE ARE NOT EASILY DEFINED INTO ONE CATEGORY OF GOOD OR EVIL. No, the real world was much different than fiction, where it was easy to pick out the good guys from the bad guys. People are, well, to put it easily, they're people. They are not just good and not just bad; for the most part, people reside in a consistent state between the two. At its core, humanity needs the good to balance out the bad — something to remind people that time is limited; they won't have access to it forever. People need the good to remind themselves when the bad seems to be winning that there is a meaning to everything. There's a reason that these things are happening to them. And while, at the moment, it may be a foreign concept that they cannot quite grasp, one day, they will find themselves stronger for surviving through it. Others will find themselves wishing to go back to the past. Wishing they could revert to the person they were before something happened. Unlearn how to handle and cope with the life they had lived between then. Only, there was no such a thing with time. Once again, humans are fallible creatures — people with thoughts and the ability to act on their own free will. And sometimes (re: most of the time), people can only learn by making mistakes. And by making a mistake, they've lost some possibly valuable time. The time that could have been spent doing something else. Yet, people make it seem like they have all the time in the world. They sit on their feelings and bite their tongue because they believe they have time to do something. Because, for everyone who has not yet experienced the cruelties that time can hand out, time is an infinite thing that will wait on them.

Olive Fitzroy was not one of those who had the luxury of believing that time could give her everything she wanted. Because time had taken her mother away from her when she was barely old enough to be thinking of the world and what it would even have to offer. Time showed her its teeth, sending out threats as if it would be ready to pounce again another time. And she retreated, battered and torn, like a dog with its tail between its legs. There was no point in believing that everything would work itself out in the end. That all things were meant for a reason. They could not have been meant for a reason; there was no reason she could give for children losing their parents at such a young age. For parents losing their children. For anyone losing someone they love. Olive Fitzroy believed that time would never do such a thing to people if it were good. If time were good, if time were the best example for the purest of things in the world, time would allow for no one to understand loss and pain unless they truly deserved such a thing. Sure, some people learned only through loss, but Olive thought there were kinder ways to make people learn. Perhaps there was no such thing as learning without pain. Olive Fitzroy would not be the person she was at that very moment had it not been for the pain. For everything time had put her through. And while it was very different from the whimsical fantasy she had so often dreamed of growing up, she could not quite find herself disappointed in such a world. Time had given her the chance to heal, to grow, to find the good in life again while also being able to pay respect and homage to the small things. To the things no one would begin to think about until they had lost someone their heart held near and dear. She so often found herself clutching her sisters tighter at night when they snuck into her bed during a storm, or reveling in their expanding knowledge and studied through their governess. Olive thought, for just a moment, that must have been how any mother felt about their children.