To walk in her shoes

I have never lived in her name.

I know her name, she is my aunt,
but I cannot even utter that I know
what it's like
or that I can try to comprehend.

Here's what I know:
she deserves to have a full life,
now I'm not saying normal because
what does that mean and have any of
us ever fulfilled our normal life?

There is no normal, plain and simple.
Normal may be what's already set
in the nature around us, or it may be
linked to fairness, but not everything is
fair and we must move on....

She deserves to be a teacher, like how
I learned that is what she was studying
in college, when she first learned she "had"
the illness.
She deserves to fall in love wildly and
unconditionally, but there are conditions-
not able to hold a job, little chance of a family,
too many factors people hold to her why
she's looked at abnormally.

Don't pity her, admire her.
Her heart is larger than the Grand Canyon
and Rocky Mountains put together and much
less attributed. She cries out to Jesus, has prayer
chains for all her neighbors, and hates herself
when she can't be the best.

But she already is, and some people don't understand.
So don't say you know her just yet.
Don't say you can imagine what it's like to feel
surrounded, because you can't.

I can't. I won't try to.
Though sometimes I wish I could take the burden away
with walking only a hundred miles in her shoes...

-
Written 4/02/13 @ 11:09 pm dedicated to my aunt.