This is the first part of a creative writing story.

Compassion for life. Even as a young girl, I’ve always had the same compassion for life. I can still remember I was about 6 or 7 when I was walking around the woods when I found a dying deer. This was my first encounter with death, and I could never forget it. I ran to that deer and knelt next to it. I felt its pain, felt the fear that was still lingering in its eyes, the fear of whatever had just stolen its life. I sat there for what felt like hours next to that deer, doing whatever I could as a small 6-year-old girl to comfort this deer trapped in the jaws of death. I didn’t care what killed it, or that it could be coming for me; if I only I would’ve known, but I didn’t care what lay in the future. All that my little brain was concerned with was making sure this deer didn’t die alone, and that its last moments weren’t consumed by fear. I wish I knew what was to come, maybe I could’ve prepared.  

Maybe I wouldn’t find myself in the same position time and time again. Maybe I wouldn’t be sitting here, by her side, feeling her pain, her fear. As her hand gripped mine, tighter and tighter, only to loosen. If I had prepared, maybe I wouldn’t be here, watching the life drain from the eyes of the woman I love. I like to find comfort in “maybe”: it allows me to dream and fantasize about what could’ve been, or what could still be. It allows me to feel a little sense of hope, even when hope seems so out of reach, but it isn’t. Hope is still there, it’s always been there, it’s been here. I don’t have to sit here like I’ve done all these years, this time I can do something. I can take all the dreams and fantasies, all the maybes, and make them my reality.