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“We can’t go back to being the people we were before. It doesn’t work that way anymore.” Carol shrugged, leaning against the railing of the porch. “The world can’t work like that now.”
“You don’t think that we can start over? That there is forgiveness for what we’ve done?” Tara let her knife spin between her hands, not looking at the other woman.
Carol was silent for several moments, thinking, “It would be nice to think that there is, but I don’t think so. We carry all of these burdens with us, and every time we seem to get to a new place it all follows. Even after the first and second times that everything fell apart I hoped that we would be able to start over again; as though we could just pick things up and rebuild our lives like they had been before. It didn’t work.”
“You don’t think this will last either, do you?” Tara glanced up at her, pausing over the contradiction of Carol’s words and the flowery cardigan she was wearing. She looked like the nice second-grade teacher, or someone’s stay-at-home mom, and yet she carried herself as though she could defend against any attack.
“I don’t. Maybe that’s what destroys it all; preparing for the worst really shows a lack of trust in anything getting better, but after we’ve been betrayed and attacked by other people so often, how can we ever really trust outsiders? Without trust you can’t build community, or society, again.”
“That makes sense. All of the ties we have with other people are based on the trust that they will act in certain ways, and now we can’t be sure of any stranger. Some may be good and potentially be allies, but there are a lot of bad people out there who would hurt us to get what we have or just to amuse themselves because no one is stopping them.” Tara nodded and flipped her knife over into her other hand.
“Not a lot of hope for the future then, right?” Carol sighed, “I wish I could be optimistic and have hope that things will get better, but when I look at the path we’ve traveled it feels like the future will be just as dark and dangerous. It’s comforting to believe in something, I wish I could be that naïve again.”
Tara smiled, “Things do sometimes change for the better though. Eugene was a coward but he protected me. Maybe every change for the better has to come with each person as they become better than what they once were.” She shrugged, “We all face trials and our choices are what will make the difference. Even if we can’t go back to what we once had, or who we were, perhaps it isn’t all bad.”