I. An Open Letter to my 13 Year Old Self
I am sick with grief.
I feel you, like a tornado, forming and dissolving.
Still not coming into fruition.
Touching houses when in need of connection.
Hard touch, not soft.
So frustrated.
Your face screws up into the shape
Of a hurricane over empty oceans.
You think no one can hear you.
There is a scream inside your box.
You are scared of everything, you are scared of nothing.
It just depends on the point of view.
Who told you that you had to handle this all alone?
I’m digging at your surface like you are pure
gold under ancient clay floors.
You sit there like Mount Helen, just awake from a winter’s nap.
You haven’t fully learned that to spew is unacceptable.
Your rage rolls down your sides like liquid obsidian.
Your center pulses deep and hot.
They’re already beginning to notice the fire.
You are molten glass.
You’re not in safe hands.
They will continue to mishandle you for years to come,
Until you are fully shattered.
No one will teach you how to piece together your future.
How to love what you’ll become.
See me now, I am on the other side.
No one taught you how to love me.
II. An Open Letter from my 13 Year Old Self
I will try to be like Mary.
I will try to submit to the pain.
I will play by the rules but won’t like it.
I will search for every escape route and flee through every open door.
I will back myself into every corner and then I’ll claw my way out.
I will make them love me and then I will break their hearts.
I will never, ever, ever, believe false promises of safety, of freedom.
Anyone can bend your hand at any time.
Kick your arms, slap your face, throw you down.
Kick you out.
I won’t care.
I will wield my own knife and make my own scars.
I’ll hide my bleeding.
I’ll never expose myself for my own healing.
I’ll let it rot in darkness.
I’ll die before I’m humiliated again.
You will never, ever hold me under your power.
I am no longer afraid.
III. Stop.
I am no longer myself.
Grieving is the broken parts of me, activated all at once.
It’s too much sensation. It hurts.
So I shut those parts down. To stop them from activating.
Some of them keep turning on automatically.
Sometimes, I reset the ticker.
It’s been 0 days since I’ve imagined myself being hurt by a physical object.
Often I want to give up. Why try?
Today I choose to sew up a wound in front of a live audience.
It’s my work, my healing work.
IV. An Open Letter from my 44 Year Old Self
I know you’re scared.
Always hypervigilant and desperate for security.
Looking to others to find it.
To find some way forward, some path, some leader.
Thank goodness for mentors.
They’ll watch over you at some of the worst times.
Like when you’re deciding whether you are, indeed, invisible.
They’ll see you. Let them be lights on your journey.
I am not here to make you beautiful, you already are.
You will forget, remember, doubt. hope.
Someone in the future will tear down the last shreds of belief
until you feel like a lump, a potato.
This is not true and you will one day rediscover this.
I am here, waiting on the other side.
No one taught you how to love me.
I’ll start now by loving you.
V. An Open Letter to my 44 Year Old Self
I would have loved to have you in my life.
Thank you for loving others the way you wanted to be loved.
Thank you for letting them know they were seen.
One child never slouched because you encouraged her
to always stand her full height.
Another child never gave up the joy of drawing
even though she never got better at it.
One child had a family figure when her mom left home.
Some children gained a community of friends.
Some children found you a safe person to come out to.
Some children became writers, artists. A handful won awards.
Some told their painful stories for the first time.
Some grew in self-compassion and empathy.
Let them love you
The way I would have, if you had been in my life.
Let them remind you of who we’ve always been.
It’s not too late.
It’s not too late for us,
Not too late for them.
9/30/2019
