Reclamation
She married into his family assuming all families were like hers, and would welcome any partner their loved one chose for the simple and profound reason that their loved one had chosen anyone at all. She let this assumption take her down paths of greater discomfort and disappointment than she could have imagined possible as she laid down bricks and mortar to mask and protect her real self, the one that was being assimilated into his family's Borg-like reality rather than accepted and welcomed for its own unique other-ness. After the initial discomfort subsided, she began to think she could accept life as an assimilated one, and despite occasional reminder pangs of who she thought she was, who she'd once been, or who she'd assumed she would be, she enjoyed her position of perceived acceptance in his family and ignored the fact that it was conditional, and fatally so to her identity.
She assumed she'd always be willing to go on this way until the birth of her children, when she realized the bricks and mortar masking and protecting her real self would have to be piled around them as well, but how could she mask what even she did not yet know, and why would she want to? The assimilation of these two, the concealment of their unique and profoundly beautiful selves would be more crushing than hers, and in her refusal to seal them into a reality not their own, she knocked a few bricks loose from her own protective guise. His family went about the same calm assimilation process they had faithfully relied on for years, but she wouldn't budge, and she succeeded in protecting the two she refused to brick over.
The family turned their attention to her, not yet frenzied but no longer as calm in their work, still utilizing the same techniques that had brought them this far. But what they found wreaked havoc on their trusty system: the harder they worked, the more bricks she knocked down. With hardened resolve in the knowledge of every implication of what she was doing, she removed the concrete walls and fortress structures around and on top of the self she'd damaged in the process of concealment and attempted protection. Underneath the rubble she found vines and seeds that hadn't been destroyed, and she let those see the light of day even if she couldn't yet eagerly cultivate them, all the while letting her children run wild and free of the Borg as the others, the beautiful and different others. She gained strength as the seeds caught hold and forced life through what was once covered in concrete; in enough time she became aware that not only were the bricks and mortar gone,but a wilderness grew in its place, one abundant with a resolute energy she had almost forgotten. She claimed it, exclaimed it, reclaimed it her own and not theirs, and not to be destroyed, and not to be concealed.
His family, reacting to these system-threatening circumstances, solved their assimilation malfunction problem by proclaiming a collective choice not to assimilate her, in the spirit of, "you can't quit; you're fired," which is the only way the Borg can survive in the wake of one who reclaims what was thought to be theirs, of one who escapes with her self and her family intact.
She assumed she'd always be willing to go on this way until the birth of her children, when she realized the bricks and mortar masking and protecting her real self would have to be piled around them as well, but how could she mask what even she did not yet know, and why would she want to? The assimilation of these two, the concealment of their unique and profoundly beautiful selves would be more crushing than hers, and in her refusal to seal them into a reality not their own, she knocked a few bricks loose from her own protective guise. His family went about the same calm assimilation process they had faithfully relied on for years, but she wouldn't budge, and she succeeded in protecting the two she refused to brick over.
The family turned their attention to her, not yet frenzied but no longer as calm in their work, still utilizing the same techniques that had brought them this far. But what they found wreaked havoc on their trusty system: the harder they worked, the more bricks she knocked down. With hardened resolve in the knowledge of every implication of what she was doing, she removed the concrete walls and fortress structures around and on top of the self she'd damaged in the process of concealment and attempted protection. Underneath the rubble she found vines and seeds that hadn't been destroyed, and she let those see the light of day even if she couldn't yet eagerly cultivate them, all the while letting her children run wild and free of the Borg as the others, the beautiful and different others. She gained strength as the seeds caught hold and forced life through what was once covered in concrete; in enough time she became aware that not only were the bricks and mortar gone,but a wilderness grew in its place, one abundant with a resolute energy she had almost forgotten. She claimed it, exclaimed it, reclaimed it her own and not theirs, and not to be destroyed, and not to be concealed.
His family, reacting to these system-threatening circumstances, solved their assimilation malfunction problem by proclaiming a collective choice not to assimilate her, in the spirit of, "you can't quit; you're fired," which is the only way the Borg can survive in the wake of one who reclaims what was thought to be theirs, of one who escapes with her self and her family intact.
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