She knew she could die at any moment, but she hadn't dared ask herself when. She was a survivor. She had proven that survival isn't assured for anyone – even the strong-willed, hard-headed realists, whose argumentative encounters often made them appear cynical and somewhat arrogant. But she was a survivor, nonetheless.
Her home life, despite its myriad challenges, had provided her with an array of survival skills, however precocious or clumsy. Her attitude toward the world had largely continued to mirror that of an ingenuous child at the tender age of thirteen. Looking back, she could not remember doing anything wrong.
Her mother had drummed into her the concept of "Moral: what you do is what you do." She had always been able to rise above the temptations of the world. But she had yet to learn that therein also lies the wisdom, the inspiration. Understanding this truth is an accomplishment in and of itself. This is one of a cluster of paradoxes on which she had been learning to focus.
"What you do is what you do," she had been repeating to herself, now for a while. "That can be said for all situations. You can't get around physics, or the laws in flux, but as far as I can see, in any given situation, these laws are just words. Nothing is set in stone. We've already shown how to bend the laws of physics in our favor, we just need the courage to do so. Or perhaps, as a young girl with a strong conscience, I see nature through a lens of idealism, that can be manipulated, rather than a lens of ineluctable reality. I don't know why this is clearer now than when I was younger."
She knew that she had to keep on moving. Her survival instincts had kept her alive thus far. But nowhere was safe anymore. They were all interconnected.
"Chaos theory," she quipped to herself.
She had long known that there was no such thing as one right answer – one certain way things ought to be. Yet, somehow, her experience of the world seemed to indicate otherwise.
She wondered how much of her survival had been due to knowledge, and how much to desire. These days she was more inclined to emphasize the latter, even though she knew desire could lead anyone astray. She was more reflective than she used to be. She didn't like to dwell too much on the past. It left her exhausted.
Not that her past ever left her in a great state of well-being. But back then, she understood it better, or at least she tried to understand it better. Back then, she could have sounded like a rational person who knew how everything worked – she could have sounded, like she was still the rational, logical, insightful little girl she'd always been.
"This is my story," she thought, "This is my life, I am what I am. I am what I am, and here I am, like it or not." She rubbed the scab on her arm, stalling for time as she tried to think of what to do next. "What would you do?"
She embraced the concept of "as it is." She wished that she had known that before, but it seemed too late to change things. She hoped that her children would have the same perspective on the world, and on life, which she had after a while.
"As it is," she reasoned, "might just be what drives us. People are driven to go their own way because they are motivated to do so."
She was stunned that she had never seen those words put together in this way before. It was quite a revelation to get.
"Me," she said, "I'm motivated to go my own way. My children need me.
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