She had a painting on her wall. In a hand that curved gently and with sweeping touches on the ends. It said, She will move mountains. And so she grew up believing that. That she would move the mountains. That she could move the mountains. But see, all she moved when she was small, were hills. It wasn't till she was older that the mountains came.
Hundreds of thousands of feet tall. It scared her. The heaviness of it all.
No one said anything.
One day, she woke up and realized that she couldn't move the mountains.
So she took the painting down. She laid it against her wall near her metal bed-frame and the table her Father had built for her, and slowly it was covered in dust and other things and banners that contained the lies the people who didn't even love her told her. On her wall hung less daring phrases. Things like, It will be okay, or, One day at a time. And later on there were those that should never have been there. They said, I never do it right, and, You are worth nothing. Even, I should just stop trying.
She had tried a lot of things. At first she tried to climb up them. And later on she tried desperately to go around them. Sometimes she begged a young man or two to carry her up. That never lasted though; they always simply left her somewhere and then she was lost. Her Mother tried to push some of them for her, but that didn't work either.
You have to move your own mountains.
In the end, she simply turned around and went backwards.
She gave up.
No one said anything.
One day, at the bottom of the highest peak she had ever encountered, she realized that it wasn't that she couldn't move the mountains. She had just decided not to.
So she hung the painting back up. And it wasn't any easier. Her back still hurt and her shoulders were small and she was frustrated by the task. She wailed and wept and pulled her hair.
It's not fair, she cried. I can't do it. She sat on her white mattress and kicked the metal bed-frame and knocked her Father's table over.
No one said anything.
She almost took the painting down again. I think it was the sweeping letters that stopped her though.
She will move mountains.
Someone had written that, for her, before she was even born. It was in the future tense. A tense that explored in a slight way and spread before the occurrence that was coming actually came. She was living in that tense. She was supposed to be living those words. But she had given up. Walked into the past. Failed. Denied herself the joy of discovery and robbed herself the hope of now.
She had done that.
She will move mountains.
She had not done that.
No one said anything.
But they didn't need to.
When you are small, a hill is a mountain. But when you are small, everything is possible and you believe anything.
When you are older, a mountain is a mountain. And when you are older, everything is harder.
She will move mountains.
Everything is a choice. And nothing is impossible.
And so, she moved the mountains. Because she believed.
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