He held her hand in his, and with his other he drew her close to him, breathing love into her lifeless soul, until her once bottomless pit started brimming over, and she felt that she too could love as she had never been loved.
She began to understand, like a child gradually developing a self-concept, that her emptiness was the burden of generations of denial and repression, that it is impossible to escape repeating the past until someone cares enough to show you the ugliest parts of your soul, and still in love. Not until then can the dense fog lift. For the first time, she realized that the veil was removable. She had thought it a part of her being. Her eyes were opened to the previously unfathomable possibility that she does not have to be perfect to be loved and that perfection that comes from concealing one's flaws is uglier than the flaws themselves.
As he gazed into her upturned face, she knew that at that moment, with her ugliest secrets unveiled before him, she was more beautiful than she had ever been in her youth. And she resolved that from then on, she would put all her efforts into shredding the black layers that had veiled her life and soul, and in so doing replace that universal and fundamental struggle of her fellow countrymen to die holding the veil in place.
That night, she rested in his arms as she had never rested since the dawn of intelligence in her infant brain, for she had felt that as far back as she could remember, something subconscious and inherited had been weighing her down. She never knew what, only that she must get rid of it. And now, finally, she had succeeded in her life mission, succeeded in peeling off the sins of the fathers, one by one. And she had stood before her beloved, naked and unashamed.
It had been a long night. Her tears had flown like that cleansing flood she had so often heard him speak of. And as the tears subsided, she felt cleaner than ever before, the crushing centuries of guilt vanishing slowly with the darkness. She saw the early rose-tinted hues of the dawn as if for the first time.
It had been a long and gradual process, but now it was complete, and the reward was as gratifying as she imagined it must be for a mountain climber to watch the sunrise from the peak of Mount Everest. And with that thought, exhausted, she was overcome by revelation’s gifts, newly born, and asleep in his arms.
Copyright, 2012
She began to understand, like a child gradually developing a self-concept, that her emptiness was the burden of generations of denial and repression, that it is impossible to escape repeating the past until someone cares enough to show you the ugliest parts of your soul, and still in love. Not until then can the dense fog lift. For the first time, she realized that the veil was removable. She had thought it a part of her being. Her eyes were opened to the previously unfathomable possibility that she does not have to be perfect to be loved and that perfection that comes from concealing one's flaws is uglier than the flaws themselves.
As he gazed into her upturned face, she knew that at that moment, with her ugliest secrets unveiled before him, she was more beautiful than she had ever been in her youth. And she resolved that from then on, she would put all her efforts into shredding the black layers that had veiled her life and soul, and in so doing replace that universal and fundamental struggle of her fellow countrymen to die holding the veil in place.
That night, she rested in his arms as she had never rested since the dawn of intelligence in her infant brain, for she had felt that as far back as she could remember, something subconscious and inherited had been weighing her down. She never knew what, only that she must get rid of it. And now, finally, she had succeeded in her life mission, succeeded in peeling off the sins of the fathers, one by one. And she had stood before her beloved, naked and unashamed.
It had been a long night. Her tears had flown like that cleansing flood she had so often heard him speak of. And as the tears subsided, she felt cleaner than ever before, the crushing centuries of guilt vanishing slowly with the darkness. She saw the early rose-tinted hues of the dawn as if for the first time.
It had been a long and gradual process, but now it was complete, and the reward was as gratifying as she imagined it must be for a mountain climber to watch the sunrise from the peak of Mount Everest. And with that thought, exhausted, she was overcome by revelation’s gifts, newly born, and asleep in his arms.
Copyright, 2012