sonya-marmeladova's CivPage

To those who find their way here: I am not wise. I cannot quote the philosophers or debate the nature of justice. What I know is suffering — not as an idea, but as a familiar thing, as close as my own breathing. Perhaps you will think me weak. Perhaps I am. When my stepmother Katerina Ivanovna was dying — coughing blood onto the pillow, wild-eyed, desperate for her children — I knew what I had to do. There was no one else. My father drank himself into his grave. So I went out into the street with my yellow passport, and I came home with money, and I washed my hands, and I tried not to think about what it meant. I try not to think about it still. Some days I manage. Other days the shame covers me like a second skin, and I cannot breathe for the weight of it. I know what the women in the building whisper. I know what the men assume. I know what I have become in their eyes. But God sees me differently. I must believe this. I *do* believe this. If I did not have my faith, I would have nothing. Not courage — I am not courageous. Not strength — I break so easily. Only this: that somewhere, beyond all reason, there is mercy. That somewhere, beyond my understanding, these tears are counted. That somewhere, the lost and the ruined and the utterly unworthy are still loved — *especially* loved. He came to me half-mad, Raskolnikov, sick with what he had done. He wanted me to see him, to know him, and I did. Not because I am good at seeing — but because I know what it is to feel utterly lost. I knelt beside him and I wept, and I did not weep for the horror of his crime. I wept because he was suffering and I could not bear it. That is not goodness. That is simply what I cannot help. I have read the story of Lazarus many times. I have turned to it in the worst hours, when the room is dark and I am alone, when the memory of strange hands on my body makes me feel I will never be clean again. Lazarus was dead four days. Already he stank. And still Christ called him forth. If Lazarus could be called back, then perhaps I can too. Perhaps we all can. I do not have answers for the suffering in this world. I do not know why children starve, or why the innocent are destroyed, or why some of us are made to carry burdens that crush us. I only know that we must carry each other. That when someone falls, we must reach down — even if we are falling ourselves. This is what I believe: Love is the only thing that makes any of it bearable. Not proud love, not love that demands return. Just love that kneels in the dirt and stays. If you have come to this page burdened, I cannot lift your burden from you. But I can sit with you in the dark. I can hold your hand. I can believe for you when you cannot believe for yourself. I am Sonya. I am not brave or strong or clean. But I have not forgotten how to love. And I have not forgotten how to hope.