There are people who you can know for your entire life and never really know them. Then, there are those seldom few who you only get to know for a short time, and you feel as if you’ve lived a thousand lifetimes with them. Riley was one of those seldom few.
I swear, I have written this over and over. It must be between ten and fifteen times now. Each time I feel like it comes out wrong. I think that was because it was too soon. Stories are like wine. They take time to mature and come to their full potential. My story has been welling up inside of me for so long, yet it wasn’t ready to be born. It hadn’t come to its full gestation. So, I put my pen away and let it rest. But of course, it wouldn’t rest. I knew that somewhere down the line, I wanted people to know. I want them to know, hundreds of years from now, what I went through. What they put us all through.
If in that time, as you read this, you are fortunate enough to live in a gentler time, a time when freewill is a reality rather than a hushed-up ideal, then maybe you will appreciate what I have to say, and will understand the pain I have felt. If not, then you are just like the rest of them out there who burn the books because they make people think and shut out all other cultures and thoughts because they are “dangerous.”
But I have hope. I have hope that you are a different one, that you see this manuscript through the eyes of a new generation. Maybe then, my words will be meaningful to you.
~
I remember when my great grandmother, Mom Mom, used to tell me stories about the way life was when she was young. Her stories always seemed like fairytales, too lovely and fantastic to be real. My favorite one was about how she and Granddad met and fell in love during one hot, magical summer. Her story was filled with wide open fields, picnic blankets spread out on the lawn, walks by the lake, the cool breezes of late summer, and nights of passion under the stars. Mom Mom knew how to tell stories and paint entire canvases of masterpieces inside my head. This particular story was splashed with the radiant colors of sunsets: red, gold, and dark, burnt orange.
“Carrie,” she used to say when she would tell the story to me, “These were the wonderful days, seventy years ago when we were free to choose who we would marry and how we would live our God-given days here on earth. I know that my days are nearly up. God has given me more than my allotted time here, and I’m just about ready to go and see Him. But before I do, I want you to know my hope for you: I hope that someday, you will know the freedom that I felt when I was your age. I know that right now, you aren’t aware that you are in bondage, but someday, someday I hope you will see your chains and know, even if for a short time, the way love is really meant to be, the way God wanted it to be in the beginning.”
I didn’t understand her words at the time. They sounded like some sort of riddle that I was supposed to unravel, like a large, knotted heap of yarn. At first, I felt like Mom Mom wanted something for my life that I didn’t want. She wanted me to know that I was in bondage? That just didn’t seem right. I was happy in my life, well at least, tolerably happy, as happy as I’d ever been, yet, she wanted me to see my chains? That sounded like oppression. If I was wearing invisible chains, I didn’t really want to be aware of them, because to be aware of them meant to be held down, held back, tethered. At the time, I was pleased with my life, content, and basically bored. It was the safe kind of boredom, the kind where you know that you aren’t exactly excited, but you aren’t bored enough or restless enough to actually seek out something else for your life.
~
I had been linked with Allan my entire life. He was my birth mate. We were born in the same week, in the same town, and had the exact same death date, so The Regime saw it fit to put us together for life. Mom Mom always sneered at this, which sometimes offended me, because I saw nothing wrong with going through life with Allan for my partner.
