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The Falling

Summary:
In the action itself, she is weightless and free. The flight is not to be feared, only the impact. A story on the life of Esme Cullen. Image Hosted by ImageShack.us Banner By incredible Iris!

Notes:
I may submit this to the official site. What do you think?

39. Chapter 39

Rating 5/5   Word Count 567   Review this Chapter

But even that shelter falls away,

The dress is white.

Untouched.

Totally pure.

For the first time, looking on my wedding gown, I feel a sense of shame at what I felt- what I feel- for Carlisle.

I am getting married to a man I do not love. I am not a girl, as I once was. I have loved, and I should not have, not if I am going to be what everyone expects of me.

But it was never my choice! I never chose any of this.

Does anyone ever choose anything?

I didn’t choose to fall in love with Carlisle. If I could have, I probably would have, just to experience true wonder and joy and life, but I still didn’t make the decision. It just happened. I certainly didn’t choose to marry Charles. That I was shepherded and bullied and eventually simply forced into.

I’m sure my loving mother would have actually tied me up and dragged me to the altar if she’d had to.

So my sin, such as it is, isn’t my own fault. But then, is anyone’s action truly their own responsibility?

I’m marrying Charles because my mother forced me. But my mother is only doing that because she believes it best, because of the world she grew up in, and the person she is, something controlled by the traits she got from her parents and the ideology they used to mold her and the soul God gave her- all without her conscious knowledge.

We never make a choice that is not precisely the choice we must make, given all the things we are, all the things that have happened to us.

And yet, we must behave as though each man controls his own destiny. If we allowed people to escape recriminations simply because they had no choice, society would crumble.

Suppose a man, born into poverty, steals another man’s food. It is not his fault if he’s starving, not really. But if we do not demand him imprisoned, every single person in the world feels his fellow’s food is his own. Respect and lawfulness disintegrates in a single act of mercy. And perhaps there is a reason they paint Justice blind. Blind to circumstance and blind to causality. We punish for acts without any eye to the cause.

And perhaps that’s as it has to be.

I know my punishment is coming, an entire lifetime spent lying about who I am and whom I love. And what have I ever done wrong? I fell in love with someone irresistible and unattainable. I was born a free spirit into a binding life.

None of which is my fault.

But I will pay the price nonetheless. I don’t have a choice.

And maybe I shouldn’t. Perhaps this is the way the world has to work in order to work at all, that individuals give up their true freedom for an illusion so that they may fulfill their part as brood mares and worker bees for civilization.

And I don’t have a choice about it.

That’s the way it is.

“Lovely dress,” I say.

“I’m so pleased you like it,” Mother replies.

Because there is no way to stop the fall,