Creative Writing Challenge - Task #7 - All the shades that darkness brings

This is my entry for @steemfluencer's Creative Writing Challenge - Task #7 - A tree of life

The Challenge

Take a look at the objects below and write a story with these objects based on a predefined idea.

Here's a list of the predefined ideas:

Without excuses: write about someone who never gave up until he has achieved a certain goal.
Old memories: a fictional essay about someone who's sharing his most exciting story from his youth.
A Tree of Life: a non-fictional essay about life, compromises and self-awareness.

I choose "A Tree of Life"

I am going to give it a go and participate to practice my storytelling in English as it´s not my native language ;)

All the shades that darkness brings

It can be strange how once life evolves. Some say "you are what you eat" that "you harvest as you sow" or that "karma bite´s you in the ass". Perhaps there is some truth to all of that but at the same time some people get all the heartache in life despite how they start out and others just swim on the surface like gees that newer get wet by the water. Well we all start out rather innocent and genuinely good.

Emma did not get a menu with her birth certificate describing her future shock waves. No manual of how to deal with violence or "bad karma" in any way. And even though brought up by good people in a safe environment she did not come prepared for the darker times in her life. Or did she?

She was an innocent child who had made an effort to be a good person and in her kindness she trusted people and enjoyed life. At the age of fourteen Emma was raped by a young man. After the brutal attack her rapist sent her a love letter. In an effort to bury the incident in her now foggy memory the letter was like a fuel on her flaming heart. It made her even more confused about her self worth and what had happened to her.
It would have been better for Emma to receive a letter with guidance of how to work through the trauma she was going through but no that wasnt´t the case. After burning the love letter she started to sink below the surface. With the pain in her black lined eyes she appeared more like a living dead then like a prospering teenager.
Broken and torn she identified her self with other people that were broken and torn so quickly she found a new crowd to hang out with.

Emma started to use drugs and even sell drugs with teens in the hood. She even sold her body at times as her body was now worthless to her. Still she didn´t know why or how but that was just the way she felt. She left home as she did not want to be loved by anyone and her parents were loving people. At that point her parents were very confused not knowing what had happened to Emma or why she behaved like this but they didn´t get a manual with her either.

The girl felt dirty and bad while trying to tread her way forward in the dark step by step but thankfully she did not have access to firearms as she was suicidal at some points. Some days the cash was flowing, mostly after drug sales but some day´s she didn´t have a penny in her pocket to buy food. She didn´t care about food anyway´s. Her life was very chaotic, she was like a lost foreign tourist in a big city. A mouse stuck inside a mace.
Emma didn´t know this at that time but this was only her first puzzle to solve, her first trauma of many to follow in her life and the first mace to get out of.

In the manual she never received when born, it say´s that on the end of a rope you could find a lifebuoy. After yet another trauma when Emma was seventeen years old, streetwise after the life on the streets for couple of years she found that safety ring. She got some spiritual guidance that she used as crutches to get through her mace. That spiritual guidance served her as a lighthouse on the turbulent sea of life for the future to come.

Being born with a good spirit and making an effort to live her life well Emma feels like one of the lucky ones in life despite all her heartache. Maybe it´s all because of that lighthouse. If you can see a light through all the shades that darkness brings you, you know your way home.