Stage III: Kairos
~BlackRoseRaven
Excerpt from I Am, You Are
A lot of people get confused about some of the things I say, and that's understandable. Stuff like how... pain can be good, and how I'd never trade my life for anything else. That I'd never... want to go back, and not go through what I've gone through. Yeah, part of that is definitely because I'm scared I might somehow end up going through something even worse. But part of that is because I know that... what I've gone through, helped shape who I've become today.
I know I can be a bastard. I know I've hurt ponies who didn't always deserve it. I know I have tainted morals, and this side of me that just... craves power, and revenge, and hates anything to do with unicorns. It's embarrassing to admit this, but I'll pass a unicorn on the street, and this flurry of various nasty racist epithets will just rise up my throat and shoot through my brain. I know that's not fair, but it's just the way my mind works, because of what I've been through. I see a unicorn, I think of Bramblethorn and North Neigh, and poof. If I hadn't gone through what I did up north, I wouldn't hate unicorns so much and I'd probably be more pleasant to be around.
But I also wouldn't be me. Good things came with the bad. Horses of Heaven, that's so hard to say, but... what happened in the North formed who I am today, taught me a depth of empathy I don't think I would have learned anywhere else. I also learned that even when you live in an absolute hell, you can still find peace and serenity. I learned that you can make choices that determine your own fate, even as a slave. I learned that pain teaches, as much as pain hurts. And I learned that even when you want to die, the body often struggles to keep living for a reason: because it knows that after you hit the bottom things can only get better from there.
I used to hate who I was... hell, sometimes I still do. I don't have a lot of things I like about myself, but I know all the same I'd never want to change who I am. I don't want to hide it from the world, either: what's the point of pushing through your life pretending to be someone else all the time, especially if you've just crawled your way up out of... well, some pretty bad stuff.
I want to learn from my past, and my pain. I want to think about the things I've experienced and gone through, and the help I've been lucky enough to receive and give something back. I don't want to just show ponies, tell ponies, there's hope out there... I want to be able to offer that to them. And most of all I want to do it in the right way, be the right kind of pony.
It would be so easy, after all, to just... stop trying to reach out. Live my selfish life within my safe circle of friends and family, lashing out at any unicorns I come across, being rude as I please, using all this power and influence I've built up to hurt. But I don't want to hurt. Hurting is all Bramblethorn did: he used ponies, he hurt ponies, he lived a life greedily snatching up every little inch of power he could. He didn't care about anyone or anything, faked his way through life, thought he was so superior to us all but... how much of that life was spent alone, and in fear, and just as a writhing mass of hate and contempt? And when I saw him that last time, I saw a terrified... no, he wasn't even an animal. He was just this lonely, sad thing.
I don't want to become Bramblethorn, even for a moment. I know I have all these bad parts of me. I know that no matter what I do, Bramblethorn will always be my father, but... painful as it is to say this... him being my father is a big part of what made me who I am today. Of what showed me the difference between strength and weakness, of what I should dedicate my life to: being not Bramblethorn. Being my own pony, living life by the standards I've set for myself.
I want to be a better pony. And I think I can get there, with the help of my friends and my family, and by remembering where I came from and not taking for granted everything I have around me. Because once upon a time I was just a kid in a cage, without even a friend, and now I'm the adult that can maybe, just maybe, be the one to smash those cages and help the ponies still trapped inside.