I Can Succeed

Only a few Elders remembered what the world was like before the fall. They say society collapsed. Governments and corporations pushed too far. Bled the people dry of money, time, and sanity. People fought back and it was a bloody war that lasted many years. Now humanity is just a shell of it’s former self, using whatever old technology we can find just to try and survive.

My name is Denise, I’m only in my nineteenth summer so I’ve only ever heard stories of the old days. I loved listening to the Elders stories about the machines that could fly and carry people to far off lands. I would dream of seeing new places with wildly different people, plants and animals. That’s probably why I left the village shortly after my mom died. Remembering her makes me clutch the heart shaped locket of hers that I kept to remember her by. It was gold with intricate swirls carved into it on a silver chain. In the middle of the heart was a small key hole. One day in my eighth summer I asked her, “Mommy, what’s inside the locket.”

“I don’t know,” she said,” Your father never found the key for it.”

“But Mommy, Johnny in the tent down the path can pick locks he could get it open.”

“Ah, but half the fun is looking for the key and finding what surprise lies within.”

“What if we never find the key.”

“Then it’ll be our favorite unsolved mystery.”

She was a strong woman, even when she was so sick she couldn’t get out of bed she was strong. She always took the time to comfort me and make me feel safe. Never once complained about the pain or felt sorry for herself, or if she did she never showed it to me. She wasn’t afraid to cry with me though. She always told me crying was a strength. “Crying helps us feel through our emotions.” she said one night while holding me after I found Dave kissing Jen down by the pond. “Whether we are sad, happy, scared or in pain. Crying helps get those emotions out so we don’t hold them in. If we hold our emotions in they will eventually come back out in a worse way.”

I remember the village doctor had tried many different medicines to help my Mom, but the Elders said even in old days they never found a cure for her disease. The only thing they had managed to do was ways to slow it and make it tolerable. I wish we could of done at least that for her, but alas can only do so much scrounging the outskirts of old cities. We don’t dare go into the cities anymore. Nobody has made it back alive and the sounds you can hear at night if you get too close are enough to make even the toughest bandit lord soil himself. I used to wonder if the answer to saving my Mom was hiding somewhere deep inside one of the cities, but can’t blame anyone for not going to look. It’s too dangerous and she wouldn’t have wanted someone to get hurt or die trying to help her.

To this day I still miss my Mom and probably always will, but I know she would be proud of me. She raised a strong daughter in these harsh times. A fighter. A survivor. She taught me to be kind to those who are kind to us and be vicious to those who would do the ones I love or myself harm. She taught me that this world will be cruel every chance it gets. Anything from as small as a shoelace breaking to as big as raiders attacking me and the awful things they may do to me if given the chance. As I grab my makeshift rifle made out of pipes and scrap wood to ambush the slavers who attacked a nearby village. I know I can succeed in this world.