Celine... Why Must a Woman Be Killed Twice?

Celine... Why Must a Woman Be Killed Twice?

Celine was fifteen when the decision was made to take her out of school.

At that age, she did not know much about life, but she knew one thing very well:

She wanted to become a judge.

She imagined herself in a courtroom, listening to a woman who had come seeking justice, then saying to her with confidence:

“Don’t be afraid... the law is on your side.”

She loved the idea of justice before she knew all its details. She felt that there were so many women who had no one to speak for them.

But her dream stopped at fifteen.

When she was deprived of her right to education and removed from school, Celine could not understand why everything had to end this way.

That day, Celine cried bitterly.

She was not crying only for the school and the books she would leave behind.

She was crying for her dream.

And in silence, she kept repeating:

“Today... Celine was killed.”

Then life went on...

She married and became a mother of two.

She loved her children and raised them with all the love and patience she had. But every time she opened a book for them, something stirred quietly inside her.

She would look at them and think:

“What if I had continued too?”

She did not hate her life, nor did she regret becoming a mother.

But a part of her remained standing at the school door, at fifteen.

Celine grew older, her children grew older, and that thought inside her never disappeared.

Until she reached thirty-eight.

Then she began asking herself:

“How many more years will I lose if I keep convincing myself that it is too late?”

And that was when she decided to return.

It was not easy.

She had to start again, study what she had been forced to leave behind, and face the feeling of sitting among books after years of marriage and motherhood.

But she did not feel that she was starting from zero.

She felt that she was returning to a place she had been forced to leave.

It was a school.

It was a university.

It was a dream.

It was the woman who had once wanted to become a judge.

Celine studied.

She grew tired.

Sometimes she failed.

Then she tried again.

And every time she felt exhausted, she remembered the fifteen-year-old girl who had never understood why she had to stop.

Celine succeeded.

She earned her secondary school certificate, then entered law school.

She was not the youngest among her classmates, but she carried something many of them did not:

A lifetime of experience.

She knew what it meant for a woman to need someone to listen to her. She knew what it meant for a girl to be forced to give up her dream. And she knew that law was not merely articles to be memorized, but rights, lives, and human stories.

That was why she excelled.

She was not studying to prove that she was better than others.

She was studying to prove to herself that the years she had spent away from education had not been able to extinguish her ability to learn.

Then came graduation day.

Celine stood holding her degree and looked at it for a long time.

To others, it might have been just a piece of paper.

But to her, it was much more than that.

It was fifteen.

And thirty-eight.

And forty.

It was motherhood.

It was the nights of studying.

And it was every time she had told herself:

“I can.”

She left the university carrying her degree, but in truth, she was carrying more than a degree.

She was carrying a dream that was twenty-five years old.

And she had everything she needed to say:

“Now... it is my turn.”

But she came face to face with something she had not expected:

Age.

The Judicial Institute required applicants to be younger.

And some employers were looking for people at the beginning of their professional lives.

And there, Celine’s younger self stood before the woman she had become.

And she felt the bitter irony.

When she was fifteen, she was told that education could wait.

So she waited.

And when she returned at forty, studied, graduated, and became ready to work, she found doors telling her:

“You are too late.”

She looked at her degree and thought:

How can a person be too late for a dream they were denied in the first place?

How can a woman be asked to stop at fifteen, and then be blamed at forty because she did not start at twenty?

How can she be denied education when she is young, and then denied work because she is no longer young?

The first time...

Celine was killed at fifteen.

The dream was killed.

The judge she had dreamed of becoming was killed.

The road was cut off before it began.

And the second time...

When Celine returned, studied, struggled, succeeded, and carried her degree with all that pride...

She found age standing in front of her.

As if Celine were being killed all over again.

Why?

Why must a woman be killed twice?

Once when she is denied her right to learn.

And again when she reclaims that right, only to discover that the doors are no longer waiting for her.

Why should she have to pay the price for something that was never her choice?

Celine did not choose to stop at fifteen.

But she chose to return.

She did not choose the years that passed.

Her story is not the story of a woman who was too late.

Perhaps it is the story of a woman who returned.

She returned to school.

To university.

To law.

To her dream.

And to herself.

And she returned to that fifteen-year-old girl who once cried and whispered:

“Today... Celine was killed.”

And so the question remains:

Why must Celine be killed twice?