And after the darkness must always come the sun.
I don't know how I ever got to sleep last night, my chest so tight with anger I could barely breathe, my thoughts racing at a thousand miles an hour. When I finally did sleep, my dreams were haunted by flames, by charred corpses covered with a film of ash as fine as new fallen snow. At points I'd swear I could hear demons laughing beneath my bed, happy that once again they were being set rampant by men's anger. When I finally woke, I was even more tired than when I lay down, my tongue heavy with the foul taste of death, my throat on fire as it would be had I spent the entire night screaming.
At last, still exhausted, still remembering my dreams and the laughter of the demons, I gingerly went to my computer and flicked it on, worried about what new horrors today might bring, only to be surprised by a glimmer among fear and anger, something as small and pure as a white rose forcing its self to the sky through the ruins of a world destroyed: I found hope.
Fire is a heartless killer, cold despite the flames; it devours anything it touches, no caring whether what it destroys thinks or feels, hope or dreams, or is simply there, along the path it wants to follow. An uncontrolled fire can destroy everything, only to leave you looking at the ashes, trying to remember what life was like before it removed your whole world. But this Murfreesboro fire hasn't just destroyed, it has kindled a spark that may purify, not consume.
I don't cry over many things that other people do, anger is my usual response, anger at stupidity, at intolerance, at the sheer destructive closing of minds that other people can live with. I don't think I'll ever understand any of that; much as I try, it never makes sense to me how people can be so willfully ignorant. Moved to tears, I was however, when someone who up till now had spoken against freedom of religion, all to willing to condemn the many for the sins of the few, spoke out before me, my friends, and the world at large to admit they were wrong.
Like most other humans, I hate being proved wrong. I'm not as bad as some other people I know when it comes to making up excuses about why I'm not wrong, or pointing out minuscule imperfections in a hypothesis to prove why my ideas are correct, but it still sticks in my throat when I have to admit I'm wrong, and my stomach flips in on its self when I go to ask for forgiveness. This person had more strength than I can ever imagine to step up and say they were wrong, to say that they have left behind the friends who thought the way they used to, and that now they will do what they can to make sure the truth is spread, rather than the lie.
Right now, this person is my hero.
And so while my chest is still tight with anger from yesterday, I'm not as angry as I was, and I'm not afraid. Over and over again I have seen the people I am lucky enough to call friends denounce hatred, to remind us all that condemning the many because of the destructive actions of the few doesn't make us any better than those we despise. It's so easy to hate, to lift your fist to the sky and swear vengeance for the wrongs done to you. Far harder is it to forgive, to admit when you are wrong.
Today, someone became my hero for admitting they were wrong to spread hate instead of love. May tomorrow hold many more heroes that bring tears to my eyes.
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