Week 2 Storytelling: The Choosing

           

Image information: Rachel and Leah as envisioned by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. 1855. Source: Rosetti Archive

            The world that we live in is not fair for everyone. People learn this at different times in their lives—they live different experiences and find the truth at different stages, but in the end we all find out. The truth lies in wait for all of us—an inescapable crossroad that dissects our life into the past and the future. I grew up knowing what was coming for me, and yet the day that I stumbled across that threshold I was as uncertain and as unprepared as the rest of my peers.

            My mother taught me that the way to thrive here was through acceptance. Accept your place in the group, Allia. Accept your fate, Allia. Accept what is to come, Allia. Do not fear what is to come, Allia. You will learn to love your place here, Allia. Everything is taken care of, Allia, have faith.

Everyone wants you to embrace your faith. Lean into the unknown and the uncomfortable and let The Other take away all your fears and uncertainties. My mother taught me to give in; but I will not be broken by my time here.

            I was my mother’s first and only child. I am called “The Miracle From The Other” by my tribe—birthed from a mother who never saw her first blood and lived with the knowledge that she might never see one. I am the sign that faith alone prevails; and yet I cannot bring myself to fold myself to fit into their beliefs. Although I am in some ways an only child, I have seven brothers and two sisters. My mother, my father, and his three other wives all live together in a raucous sort of harmony—built upon the foundations laid in place by acceptance, order, love, and faith in The Other, faith in the Choosing, faith in tradition.

            If I have learned nothing else from this tribe it is that there is a great love present in its people. But through the years I have also seen the undercurrents of distress that this love creates. Love is not equal. Love is not fair. And my father loved my mother more than all his other wives combined. It shown through his actions, through his eyes when he gazed upon her, through the way he begged The Other to restore her to fruitfulness, and through the way The Other accepted his pleas—gifting my mother to my father in lieu of a Choosing.

            My mother did not go through the Choosing, but that does not mean that the same fate awaits me. Only great things supersede between the Choosing, and there have been few great things present in my life. The world is not fair to me. I must live in a world where choice is taken from me, and where I am seen as the portal to a new generation. There is no great love in my life—only the Choosing.

            I knew my day was coming but I am still not ready. How am I to be expected to just give myself over to faith, over to The Other’s mercy on something as small and invisible as faith? How can I be expected to put myself in the same place I see my mother and the others struggle? How can I be expected to live in a world where unhappiness seeps through the cracks of the walls built by faith and acceptance? Where resentment boils in the hearts of those who are either not enough or will never be good enough?

            As I walk to the Choosing Tent, my thoughts still and a sense of calmness comes over me. A plan begins to form within me—one that would change the course of my future and possibly alter the history of my tribe for generations to come. I look at my family surrounding me as I stand in the doorway of the tent and feel my plan solidify. I look back towards the tent that once represented everything about my future and then took a step back. “I rescind my right to the Choosing.” My words flowed from around me and echoed in the voices of my tribe as I kept walking. I had chosen my own path and with it I had gained my freedom.

Author's Note:

I chose to base my story off of the lives of the women Rachel and Leah from the Bible Women Unit. There is so much info and concentration on men and other people/issues in the bible that I think oftentimes the women get overlooked. I changed the original by making it into first person to give the reader a more personalized feeling to the ongoings of their life. I also changed the setting--the choosing does not actually occur to my knowledge. But so much of the stories that I read had the dichotomy between love at first sight and multiple marriages with the most loved often being the one barren. It was just really interesting to see that theme run through so many of the stories. 

Bibliography:

Rachel Story Source: King James Bible (1611): Genesis 29 [Librivox Audio]

Leah Story Source: King James Bible (1611): Genesis 29 and 30 [Librivox Audio] and Genesis 35 [Librivox Audio].