Reaching Peace

Part 5: Letting Go Of Living.

My mom, Sarah, was twenty when I was born. She always told me how happy she was when she found out she was pregnant, and how she had chosen the name Rebekah before she even knew that I was going to be a girl. At the time, she was studying ballet at one of the best schools in the country, but had to give it up when she got pregnant with me. When she told me the story, my mom never sounded remorseful. She always told me that My sister and I were the things in her life that she was most proud of. 

My full name is Rebekah Noelle Harrison, and my younger sister's name is Avery Harrison. My dad chose Avery's name, because he says he had no hand in the choice of my name so it was only fair that he got to name Avery.

Avery and I were always best friends. We never fought and we played together all the time. When she was four and I was eight, Avery came home from school with a cut on her knee from another girl pushing her down in the playground. That was the day that I became, not only her best friend and big sister, but her protector. We started playing together at school and I would make sure that the other girls stopped picking on her. 

For my eighth birthday, my dad took me to work with him for the first time. He trained racehorses and told me that one of them had hurt her leg and couldn't race. The horse's name was Bay. She was a beautiful chocolate brown colour with a single white stripe down her back. I loved being at the stables with my dad. His name was Travis, but I called him 'Travie'; I never called him 'Dad'. This small detail of our relationship seemed to baffle other people, which really just made me love him all the more. The stable was the place that I spent all my time in the summer. I would brush Bay and clean out her stall, help my dad to train the horses and laugh with the various other trainers and horse owners that were there. 

All in all, I had a happy childhood. I was loved by my parents and my sister. I got on with my classmates and spent the majority of my time with a smile on my face. 

When my father died, my whole world came crashing down. 

I was ten and Avery was six. The hardest thing to do was move on, though that's what my mom said I had to do.

"People die sometime, Rebekah. That's just how life works. But we have to stay strong and move on." She would say sometimes when I couldn't sleep or didn't want to go to school. 

When I was eleven, my mom met Garrett. They dated on and off for a year and a half, every he treated her badly she would leave him, but she would soon go back. Then when I was thirteen, well, you know what happened.

My mom taught ballet at a local studio, but her salary wasn't enough to pay the bills and it wasn't like Garrett was helping out. We had to sell the house and move to Las Vegas before the bank took the house from us. Our new house was tiny and in one of the worst parts of the city. Though it was difficult, I tried to make it seem like home. I painted my room my dad's favourite shade of blue and put a picture of the two of us on my desk. Even though I had to move on, I was never going to forget my dad and I would never stop loving him.

So the most important thing I learned from Ava was the art of reflection. Before I died I wasn't particularly good at looking back at the good parts. All I did was regret my bad choices. Of everything she did for me, teaching me to reflect on my life is the thing that I would like to thank Ava for the most.