Vachon Imagined

She learned early that crying was a crime. Not because anyone said it, but because every time her throat tightened, the world tightened harder. So she swallowed her tears like poison, letting them burn the back of her throat until the rage tasted metallic. Don’t cry. She obeyed. She held every tear hostage until they rose like floodwater and drowned her from the inside out.

She broke quietly — the kind of breaking no one sees, the kind that happens behind locked jaws and steady breathing. She collapsed on floors she never told anyone about, floors that held her more faithfully than people ever had. And still, she prayed. Not to be saved — she’d stopped believing in that — but to be understood. God never answered in words, only in wounds, only in timing, only in a language she had to suffer to learn.

And she learned it. She learned the grammar of grief, the syntax of silence, the dialect of rage. It rewired her. Softened her. Not because the world was kind, but because she refused to become what it had been to her. Her gestures changed first — less sharp, less defensive. Then her gaze — no longer scanning for danger, but for truth. She realized she was the labyrinth, and her breath the dragon — not a beast to be slain, but a force to be wielded. A fire she alone could command.

She worked tirelessly, fueled by every podcast preaching make it happen, don’t take no for an answer. They shaped her into a hardened wrecking ball, forged in someone else’s pipeline — a system that filtered out the “bad” for the supposed “good,” leaving her with a judgmental mind and a chaotic heart. And she followed their lead, because surely they must know best.

With every panicked, racing heartbeat, she stepped into the world carrying a bright new vision. But destiny met her with an open palm and struck her down, pressing her close to the pavement — the same cracked pavement she once hopped across as a child, singing that old rhyme about breaking her mother’s back.

Over time, her talent dimmed. Her drive grew sorrowful. What began as determination faded into something dull, and the wrecking ball she had become began to lose its shine.

The men who judged and the women who followed them no longer impressed her. Instead, she grew curious — about the crack, the nail, the wrecking ball itself. And as she looked closer, everything began to crumble.

Right there in her own hands. Right there in the sound of her own voice.

Magic, she thought. Or maybe something grander — a glimpse inside destiny itself. And as her heart swallowed the pain, a new shield rose in its place: not obedience, not allegiance, but something steadier.

A shield where nothing could harm her. Where nothing could dim the flame.