Writing Assigment 5- Draft 2

I’d never seen hope like his. I still can not conceptualize his blind faith to God, or his ever-present optimism towards our world. All I had ever known was death in hundreds, and people being auctioned off as if they were property. I had accepted life as life, white as white. Black as black.
Our wedding had sort of just fallen into its right place naturally. This spoke to what our entire relationship had been up to this point—organic, genuine, and easy. He asked me to be his wife, I said yes, and that was that.
I was as giddy as any bride in her right mind should have been. I spent the morning with fifteen other women my age, most of which whose parents had come on the same ship as mine. They had pooled together all sorts of scraps of soaps, and rouges, from the house for me; we spent hours working on my materialistic beautification.
Finally ready to begin the ceremony, I started a long awaited walk from our compound to the back of the barn, where all of our family and friends were waiting. In the center of the boisterous circle, full of life, stood Jeremiah. My heart picked up its pace, and I fidgeted my hands.
The actual service-- the prayers, the broom, the drums-- are all a blur to me. It was when the party began did I regain consciousness. I looked Jeremiah as we danced, all attention on us. His smile was the best manifestation of the absolute trust he had in us. I couldn’t help but laugh at our differences. I, being such a cynic, felt so incredibly fortunate at that moment for having a man in my life like Jeremiah. I felt that I would never need anything more.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the master’s daughter peeking her head out of the back door of the barn. Rather than feeling spite or wonderment about her appearance, I merely felt sorry for her. I felt sorry because I knew she would never feel the way I felt at that moment, the way everyone should feel at some point in their life. Because without knowing pain, pain like the pain I have suffered as a slave, I don’t believe you can know true happiness.
She couldn’t know this feeling of absolute elatedness, and for that I felt sorry, yet cocked my head back in enjoyment all the same.