An awareness of my birth started with the first word. I savoured it even as I didn’t know what it meant. More words were added, and a sense of meaning began to form. The writing – margins and paragraphs, commas and full stops, capital letters and sentences – filled my pages until I felt full with their presence, pregnant with their meaning. I revelled in the feeling of my pages – two of them – pristine, neat and smooth. Ordered lines of writing covered my first page, the message completed on the top half of my second page. The empty white space beneath, a blissful freedom, neither waiting nor pining to be filled with words, at peace with its lot.

I shared the writer’s excitement which grew as she read and re-read the words on my pages. I was to deliver a message, an important message. I sensed the writer’s anticipation of a response to the message on my pages. Pride rose in me, pride that I had been especially created for this, and a sense of something else…that I was rare, that my appearance would be an unusually pleasant surprise for the recipient, somehow. The awareness came with the understanding that other ways to deliver messages were more usual. That, in part, I understood was the reason that I was uncommon, unique.

I wondered if the words I was carrying determined my personality, my energy, and my worth. I had a sense that it did. Unable to see the words, I could not even guess at their meaning. But it didn’t detract from my happiness. I had a purpose. I had a responsibility that only I could fulfil, and no one else. It made me extraordinarily happy. I was content.

But my tranquility and cheerfulness was suddenly interrupted in a way I could not foresee. I was being folded. Oh, no! My smoothness was being disrupted. One fold. No, two!

I could hardly stand it. How could anyone do this to me? It was clear that the writer didn’t have any remorse. Apparently, she considered this ill-treatment normal. She didn’t seem to understand that I would never be the same again. I had been changed forever. From this day, I would always carry the scars of the folds on my pages. The folds were severe. They diminished my size. I was now a third smaller than I used to be. Paralyzed from the shock, I froze, but the worst was still to come.

I was being stuffed into an envelope. Of all the indignities! My edges were being straightened within the envelope before it was sealed above me. Light disappeared. I stayed as still as I could, wondering what other horrors were to come. Hopelessness washed through me. What could I do? I was pretty sure I had not done anything to warrant such abuse. I had trusted the writer, felt safe with her. This was such betrayal. My thoughts swirled round and round. How long would I be contained in this envelope? What if the writer didn’t send the envelope off immediately and I had to languish here? What if the envelope got lost en route to the recipient? How would I ever escape then? Or what if the recipient didn’t open the envelope immediately, or worse, just threw it away? I tried to stop the suffocating panic from driving me crazy.

On one level, I was deeply disturbed at being forced into a situation I had no control over. But on the other, I realized that my thoughts were not helping my situation. If only I could control them… It was difficult to think of anything other than my immediate dire circumstances. But I had to… I tried to calm myself and look logically at what had happened. Had the folds in my pages killed me? No. Had being stuffed into the envelope killed me? No. All that had happened as a result of those two scenarios was that I’d been changed. But my panic level was still sky-high. My chaotic thoughts, although the truth, did not help me to gain any new perspective. Come on, think. THINK!

It worked. The terror faded slowly.

As I thought about my purpose, about the message on my pages and how I was the only one in the whole wide world that could deliver it, I started to feel better again. I could live with the folds on my pages. Okay, so it changed how I looked but it didn’t define who I was. Luckily, the folds didn’t disturb the words. The message I carried remained intact. My reason for existence, my worth, remained unaffected despite the ugliness of the folds. I was even beginning to think that being put into the envelope might have been a good thing. Perhaps the envelope’s purpose was to keep me and my message safe. Even though uncomfortable, it was a temporary situation and I could see now, necessary, for me to deliver my message in the best possible way.

The writer clearly trusted the process. Why shouldn’t I? But I wasn’t so sure about trust. I had trusted the writer and looked what happened. Forgiving her might be a long process. Change, however, seemed inevitable. I could see that. I understood change, appreciated its constancy. It was all I had, apart from my message. No matter how scary, how painful, how uncomfortable, change allowed expansion, transformation. That was the prize; the shiny new me with a wider perspective, and a deeper appreciation for myself, being reborn again and again.