Our lives are too often taken for granted. We do not like to think about what we may have been like had we been born into a different life, one that is worlds apart from current reality. Would we be altered, would we have the same religions, the same morals? As we grew older would we become the people that we see in ourselves today? We can never answer this question.307Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnulZLmlPGb
I am Shana Stevens, and I am going to tell you the story of a girl who is different. By ‘different’ I do not mean mentally retarded, or physically mutated, she just grew up in a world none of you could imagine. In her world pain meant love, and there was no such thing as pleasant words, they were a foreign language that she did not understand. This was because this particular little girl had lived her whole life in a damp cellar, with a small pile of stone, loose thread and other long forgotten substances for a bed. When her ‘father’ came down he hit her and beat her. The harder he punched, the more pain she felt, meant the longer he stayed down in her prison. The attention she longer for and craved was delivered by blows that she began to understand was affection. It made me cry when I understood her logic. No-one should ever feel like she did, especially not an innocent little girl. All he ever called her was names, and the only thing he ever told her was how much he hated her. Words like, hugs, kisses, even simple things like dog, she could not understand. Having never encountered these things she had no comprehension of what these words meant. You might as well be speaking German. She was what her circumstances had made her.
So this isolated girl lived in a cellar all her life, never knowing what went on in the world above, and the world never knew what went on in that little cellar she called home. Seven years of her life passed and no-one noticed her existence, no-one missed her. I have thought long and hard about her mother. Whether maybe she died, or was forced away from her little girl crying and screaming, swearing to find her. But we may refuse to acknowledge it, not everyone is a hero or heroine. Not everyone wants to save the day and bring peace. Her mother could have walked away knowing what life her child would lead, without a regret. She could have left a screaming bundle on the doorsteps of some warm church hoping that she would have a better life. Not all of these would have been wrong choices; I do not know the situation, or even comprehend what this woman felt. The consequences of this unknown factor affected a baby who depended on others to make her own decisions. I may sound naive and young, but I want to believe that her mother is dead, as horrible as that sounds. Because then she has a valid excuse for not finding her daughter or holding onto that little body so that the cruelty of the world could not tug that life from her arms. I would like to imagine so, but the reality is probably vastly different to what my mind will dream up. I am after all what the world would call an optimist. The reason I am going to tell you this story is not to disgust you or force enough guilt that you will give money to abused children, it is so that you will understand Candy, and how the worst experience of my life was her saving grace. As I gaze outside I can see Candy, legs flung high, arms shoved forward at odd angles, smiling at a sun she has only just found existed. It gives me hope that people can change, that it is not just my innocence talking. I also know of the shadow that hangs over our lives, because real evil exists. People are evil, plain and simple. He is a terror that haunts my every thought, and the reason Candy refuses to sleep, because he is in her nightmares. And he will come for us, for Candy and me in her new world. He is still out there, and while he is we will never be safe, not until we die. The locks on the door, the cameras that monitor every small movement miles down the single road that leads to our sanctuary tell one story. We are hunted.
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