Going Home

At twenty-five, she fell from the heights into an abyss.

As a pop singer, she felt her world had become a wasteland.

A betrayal, carefully engineered to frame her, cost her career, friendships, and love all at once.

And the person who had once shared their deepest feelings with her chose to stay silent when it mattered most.

Silence can make you an accomplice, too.

She used to say that every Wednesday was her day to be reborn, because September 30, 2014, fell on a Tuesday.

For the next eight years, she became a one-woman army, tough enough to be impervious to attack, but with walls built high around her heart. In love, she became an island.

At thirty-three, a variety show gave her another chance to stand on stage. She met a group of people she could trust and found precious friendship again.

“You have people in China now!” Those new friends gave her the courage to face the darkness.

At the same time, she met someone worth entrusting her life to.

With a sincere heart, that person helped fill her painful memories with sweetness, piece by piece, and gathered up the fragments of her broken self until the girl who once laughed and cried so freely was whole again.

And when her lover let her own vulnerability show, she saw another closed-off soul, wounded by her parents’ divorce and hurt by her family of origin.

She understands me, just as I understand her.

Two wounded people became each other’s salvation and gave each other a warm home.

“Let’s go home together” was the most moving declaration of love she had ever heard.

Eventually, she was able to face the people who had hurt her with a calm heart, and finally tell her twenty-five-year-old self, “You’ve been through so much.”

Past is Past.

It turned out that true reconciliation isn’t about forgiving others. It’s about letting yourself go.

This is a story about how to put yourself back together after being broken.

Reader advisory:

1. This story is entirely fictional and is not intended to refer to anyone. Please don’t read it if that bothers you.

2. Please don’t try to match the characters or events in the story to real people or incidents.

3. Peace & Love. If anyone insults the cook while eating their food, the cook will insult them right back.

4. The main characters are all precious to me. Insult one of them, and I’ll insult you.

Theme: Returning to the stage takes a great deal of effort, but finding the courage to start again is even harder.