Page 44 - Revelation

Svetlana de Rohan-Levashova. Revelation

young woman to become a normal person again one day.

Fate had treated her very cruelly. While still a small, but absolutely normal girl,
she had the bad luck to fall off the stone steps and strongly harm her spine and breast
bone. At first the doctors were not even sure whether she would be able to walk. But
time went by and due to her determination and persistence this strong cheerful girl
succeeded in rising from her bed and slowly but confidently began to take her "first
steps" again.
It seemed that all ended well, but over time, to everybody's shock, an enormous
and absolutely ugly hump began to grow both in front and at her back and later
completely disfigured her body. The most terrible thing was that nature, as if mocking,
endowed this blue-eyed girl with an amazingly beautiful, light and refined face,
probably wishing to show what a marvellously beautiful woman she would have been,
if it had not been for such a cruel fate.

I don't even try to imagine through what heartache and loneliness this amazing
woman had to go, trying to find ways to get used to the frightful misfortune whilst
being a little girl; and how she could survive and not break, when many years after,
being a young lady, she should look in the mirror and understand that she could never
experience a simple woman's happiness, no matter how good and kind she was. She
accepted her misfortune with pure and open heart and probably exactly that helped
her to preserve a very strong faith in herself, without getting angry at the surrounding
world and crying over her wicked and distorted fate.
Even now I remember her permanent warm smile and joyful luminous eyes
which met me every time independent of her mood or bodily condition (but very often
I felt how truly hard it all was for her). I loved and respected this strong light woman
very much for her inexhaustible optimism and cordial goodness. It seemed that it was
precisely she, who did not have the least reason to believe in good, simply did, even
though in almost every way she was deprived of the chance to feel what it was to live
a full life. Or, maybe, she felt it much deeper than we?
I was then too little to understand the abyss of difference between such a crippled
life and the lives of normal healthy people, but I remember perfectly that even after
many years my recollections of my wonderful neighbour very often helped me to bear
offense and loneliness, when it was truly hard not to break.

I never understood people who always were displeased with something and
constantly grumbled about their permanently "rough and unfair" fate... I never
understood the reason why they thought they had a right to consider that they were
destined to be happy right from their birth, and had the "legal right" to happiness,
disturbed by nothing (and absolutely undeserved!).
As for me, I never believed in my "obligatory" happiness and probably therefore
did not consider my fate "bitter or unfair". On the contrary, I was a happy child and
that helped me to overcome many obstacles which my fate very generously and
constantly presented to me. It's just sometimes there were short-term frustrations
when I felt sad and lonely, and it seemed to me that I just needed to surrender in my
heart, stop searching for reasons for my "uncommonness" and fighting for my

"unproved" truth, as everything would fall into place; and there would be no offensive

Back to content

43