Name: 【TEDx】My story | Elizabeth Smart | TEDxUniversityofNevada
Uploaded: 2017-02-06T15:11:36.000Z
Duration: 11 min 37 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

I don't know anyone who has a perfect life; nobody.

And I know that every single one of us  have our own personal challenges,

and trials and there are days when we wish

There are days when we wish we could pull the covers back up and hibernate.

We have the choice to stay in bed and keep the covers pulled over us,

When I was 14 years old, nothing special stood out about me.

getting ready to graduate from junior high, very excited.

in a room that I shared with my sister, in a bed that I shared with my sister.

I remember waking up to the voice, a strange voice, saying

"I have a knife at your neck; don't make a sound.

That started a nine-month-long nightmare.

I remember this strange man taking me way up into the mountains behind my home,

I mean, I remember being brought so far up into the mountains.

We crossed right over the top of the mountain,

We were about a quarter of the way down the other side

when we came to a grove of trees, and nothing stood out about it,

but he directed me inside this grove of trees,

and I saw that part of the mountain had been leveled out.

There were tarps lying on the ground, hanging up in the trees.

I remember seeing a huge hole in the ground behind the tent,

where they had laid logs across the top, and then thrown dirt up on top of it.

But the most scary part of this whole scene

was the woman that emerged from the tent.

She brought me in, and she sat me down on a bucket,

and change me out of my pajamas into strange robes.

I grew up in being very, very shy and very, very self-conscious,

and that was just about the most traumatic thing

I remember begging and pleading with her just to let me do it myself,

that I wasn't dirty, that I had just showered the night before,

and that I could change myself; I didn't need her help.

Finally, after - I don't know - 15 minutes, probably,

of begging and crying, she finally just passed me the robes.

I wiggled them on, she scooped up my pajamas,

and she left me alone in the tent, sitting on an upturned bucket.

and crying, and thinking of what had happened to me.

How had just yesterday I had been at school with my friends,

looking forward to graduating, ready to go to high school.

How had my world turned from day to night,

Had this man gone through my house already,

The only thoughts that I could think of were going to happen to me, were:

He's going to rape me, and then he's going to kill me

I have never seen a happily-ever-after in a kidnapping story.

Every story the news repeats, it's always the same.

Maybe it's days later, weeks later, years later, a body is found,

As I sat there crying, I'm being so scared,

I remember the tent door unzipping, and in walked this man,

and he had changed out of the dark clothes he had kidnapped me in,

and he knelt down next to me, and he started to speak.

and what had happened, and what was going to happen,

I couldn't even begin to think to listen to what he was saying.

Finally, some part of me pulled myself together long enough

to hear him say the words that I was now his wife,

and that I was supposed to perform all wifely duties.

and it was time for us  to consummate our marriage.

Now I grew up in a very traditional home.

That's what I'd always intended on following.

that I was supposed to consummate our marriage,

and I may have grown up in a bit of a bubble.

the most forward-thinking 14 year old in the world at the time.

Part of me wasn't even sure I knew what "consummate a marriage" meant.

The other part of me was praying and hoping

I remember begging and pleading, and crying,

and tried to come up with every reason I possibly could

to try to convince this man to let me go, to not hurt me,

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【TEDx】My story | Elizabeth Smart | TEDxUniversityofNevada

empathy

suppose

traumatic

emerge