Thank you.

A simple statement. Yet, it holds everything and more.

Where do you even begin, thanking the 7-year-old who made a wish in the front yard that she could live somewhere it was always summer, leading you to the desert where you meet the one person who would keep you up and alive even when your knees were weak, and all your eyes did was leak.

the 8-year-old who was forced to do the hard uncomfortable things so now you can do the hard uncomfortable things with a little more ease, because if she could, then I can. 

the 9-year-old who could play endless hours of make believe, living in so many worlds, reminding you that an active imagination is not something to be belittled, but encouraged and cherished. 

the 10-year-old that spent endless hours drawing pictures and pestering her stepfather that “bigger families were better”, leading to the adoption of a brother she can’t imagine doing life without.

the 11-year-old, who finally decided showers weren’t a complete waste of time and we should really learn how to do our unruly hair.

the 13-year-old who spent any possible moment with her nose in a book, doing the hard thing of simply surviving even when we began to feel that maybe our brain wasn’t completely right. 

The 15-year-old who read her bible every night and tried desperately to be the best version of herself.

the 17-year-old who was brave enough to leave and set the pace of forward motion.

the 19-year-old who broke in so many ways but still picked herself up to try again.

the 20-year-old who worked 6am to 10 pm just to achieve the dream of something better than simply surviving.

the 21-year-old who packed up everything and moved despite every voice that told her to stay where it was safe.

the 22-24-year-old who simply chose to live one more day.

the 25-year-old who made the call and finally got us the help we desperately needed.

the 26-year-old who was shattered and forever changed but refused to accept defeat.

the 28-year-old who accepts who we are without apology.

         You have given me the gift of continuing to try even when the circumstances seem bleak. You remind me all the time to just wait a little longer, that animal, or ourselves, simply needs time and patience. You taught me that determination can take us miles upon miles. You have given me the gift of being able to sit with myself. You have shown me that little kid dreams can be achieved, even if they are as crazy as having seven dogs run the wild with you.
         While I would never blame you for what you did to survive, you have cost me the ability to be open, to love freely, to be vulnerable. We may let people into the courtyard, but we will never allow them in the door to experience everything that we are. You vowed at 13 to never cry again over a man that left you before your tiny eyes could see and your soul could ever comprehend what his loss would entail. If only you could have known that wall would never come back down. You latched onto the idea that people never stay and engraved it into our soul. You tried so hard to fight the hate that ignited everything in your home but eventually it became more natural to accept it as a part of yourself. You let anger become our best friend, despite how hard I know you tried.
While there are some ages of us that I am not ready to face or don’t know how to deal with. I am here, with all of us. I am learning to acknowledge each of you. Embracing each age that I felt rejected. Loving each age, I felt unlovable. We don’t apologize for existing anymore. We are learning to take the space we need. We do not live every moment in fear, we have begun to embrace the hard things that make us better. We don’t hold angers hand the way we used to. We are learning how to love, and how to ask for the love we need. We are slowly coming out into the light.  

I had this thought today, what if my grandmother rejected the idea of my mom’s new husband so much because it was the second chance she never got to have.

I pictured myself composing the text to my mother, “What if grandma was so awful because you were getting the second chance that she was never going to get?”

Then I rolled my eyes before I could even begin the search for my ever elusive phone. The conversation would lead to nothing but a more than likely weepy mother. If I even thought some of the things I wished to voice, I could see her crumbling before me.

That is the beauty of her though, we will never have to talk about the hard things.

My thoughts continued to think of my grandmother. Of her loss. She wholeheartedly rejected the thought of this thing that, I fully believe, she at some point must have wanted herself. I know because it’s a move I would pull. I would try to be so against something I knew I could never have. That may not be her dream now, but it must have been once.

I wonder if maybe we’re all more alike than I ever could have dreamed.

I picture her in her thirties, pushing her bangs from her face, staring out that window overlooking the land. His voice in the background, growing foggy as he droned on about her failures of the day. She wonders what it would be like to be loved by a man who cared about nothing but assuring her that she was everything. She thinks of how he would come in, wrap her in his arms from behind, whispering in her ear that he thought about her all day, asking if it was his turn to make dinner tonight. She would smile, thinking about how different this man was. How somehow he managed to prove all the others wrong. He would heal the wounds that began their creation before her first steps. He was not full of criticism and harsh words. He never shamed or made her feel small. He was life, and freedom, and love.

I don’t think she longs for this kind of life anymore. I think now she longs for the safety of her own company. But I think the younger version of her sometimes peeks her head out, reminding her that they wished for that life once. For the second chance at having a life loved.

This version of me cries for her. I reach through time to the teenager being forced into a decision she didn’t want to make. I hold her close, feeling her anguish at her lack of ability to choose the life she wanted. I hug the woman who dreamed of her husband changing, and being someone she looked forward to seeing at night. I hold the hand of the woman who probably cried desperately as she felt all those emotions from her former self, as she watched her young teenage daughter make the same mistake that she had. I feel her fierceness as she told herself, she will not be like me.

I wish I could tell her that her daughter wouldn’t be like her. But in a lot of ways, she would be. She would be trapped loveless for too many years. She would warped in cycles. However, she would be freed. She would find someone who loves her in every stage of weight, who does the dishes, who never makes her feel small. She would get the second chance.

What I do not have to wish to tell you is, the baby she carried would be different. She would see you for who you are. Someone to be loved, cherished, and appreciated. She would settle for nothing less. Her husband would tell her to order both when she couldn’t choose. He will vacuum because he knows she hates it. He will get the help he needs because he wants them to be the best versions of and for each other. He will wrap her in his arms when he gets home because she is his breath of fresh air. He will encourage her dreams, ask her opinions, and value her knowledge. He will look at her body the same way even as she knows it has changed with time. He will teach her what it means to apologize first. He will love her but leave her wild and free. She will run in that freedom, always reaching and hoping that one day you’ll join her. Only you hold the key to the chains that keep you bound.

If I’ve learned anything after all my years on earth, it is this. Old is never as old as we think it is. Do the thing. Live the life. You’re never too old, but you can be too late. I hope younger you can hear me across the lines of time. I hope she reminds you of who you once were and that you set her free.

The fabric our souls is thin and worn. We must be gentle and love tirelessly.

I think, perhaps, some of us were just born with thinner fabric making up our beings. We came into this world, slightly worn, needing hands that touch us without tearing, seeing us for who we are. Something to be cherished, caressed, loved with the respect that we may not last in this world.

Sometimes we are born into the wrong hands and sometimes we fall into them. We feel the deep tears in who we are. We wonder why those around us don’t seem to have these gaping holes. These spots where they’ve been stretched beyond their limit. They don’t have the memories of not being able to hold up under the weight of pulling pressure. The fabric slowly giving free under the weight of something it was never meant to carry.

Imposter.

This is the word I used when I told her why I was so hesitant to tell the church I would like to go to Africa with them. Because that is exactly how I feel. Even now. Even after I told them, yes I’ll go. My insides are screaming, we are no longer the same. We no longer believe the same. Does that mean we do not belong in that world?

When I come up for air I remember that I am a good listener. I will never look at someone with judgement. I will hear gracefully, only offering if they are asking to receive. I will never force what I believe on someone else. I will simply exist with them and hope that my presence offers whatever is needed.

Sometimes I think about how disappointed Bryan would be if he knew me now. I wonder if maybe that’s why I disconnected any emotional attachment I had to him. It was easier for me to just leave him in the past with that other version of me. The one he was proud of, invested in. She needed him, I don’t.

I know some of the things that are coming. Speaking our testimony being one. All I can think of is the blink of my computer, waiting for me to write it. Write anything. But it just blinks and blinks and blinks. How do you write out something with a beginning, middle, and ending when you barely know the first sentence?

My breath hitched as the scene before me played out on the screen.

We sat there on the couch, far enough apart that you didn’t hear my sharp inhale. You didn’t feel the way my muscles tensed as my brain grabbed hold of a memory I had buried down deep. You didn’t notice the way my grip tightened on the pillow and I fought to bring myself back to here and now.

On the screen, Tess sat in the bathtub, Harden behind her tracing words onto her back that she had to guess. Her laughter in my ears faded away as I heard my own. I was no longer looking at the tv, I was staring at the ceiling. The ceiling of that room.

I lay there, my shirt slightly pulled up as he lightly laughed and traced letters on my stomach, telling me to guess what he was spelling.

I… l..o…v…e…y…o…u…

My breath hitched then too. He was shy about it. This was not something rushed. This was not a heat of the moment. It was obvious it was something he had been thinking about for awhile. In that moment, I believed him. I believed in the way he tugged me against him, in that oversized bed. I believed in the way I felt so safe and protected in his huge embrace.

In the present I sat next to someone who not hours before had been fighting with me about how little he knows about me. I never know what to say when he says this. I came damaged and then he caused damage. He wants to know when I’ll let him in. I think we both know the words I won’t say. I may never.

For in that bedroom where a different he traced sweet words onto my skin, he later in time pulled forth bruises. He whispered he loved me then shoved me away. He offered his warmth only to make sure I knew just how cold the world was without him.

I finally admitted that I don’t cry because every time a tear slips from my eye, I blink and I see that room. I am curled up. I am laying on my back. I am crying. Always crying. Staring at my surroundings, memorizing every crevice. I think he looked at me a little differently after I admitted that to him. I think he just saw tears when I cried before. Now I think he sees that I leave this place and am tortured by another all over again.

One day, maybe, I’ll tell him about the caresses that turned to burns that turned to scars that eventually faded beneath my skin, only surfacing in distant memories.

Loom.

An apparatus for making fabric by weaving yarn or thread.

A Loom journal. Designed to weave together parent and child.

I can think of nothing being more appropriately named. For loom it did. Right there on my kitchen table. I found myself watching it out of the corner of my eye as I wandered around my house. I opened it. I closed it. I greatly debated setting it on fire. I sobbed on the floor for awhile. Is the possibility of let down, again, really worth the pain? I let this part of me go. I accepted we are just what we are.

Beings that should have been but just aren’t.

Despite it all, I picked it up. My pen stood poised above the pages for what felt like hours. I read and reread the questions over and over. In the end, I was honest. I decided he would be the one person I didn’t protect from myself. He would know that we seem to carry the same dark spaces. We prefer ourselves to anyone else. For as much as I don’t know him, I’ve always felt I understood him.

I wrote about my dark threads. I wrote about the small memories I have of us together. I kept the fact that I’ve held those memories like they were gold in my muddled brain all these years. He can find out just how unhinged I am later.

I think I’m dragging my feet putting it back in the mail because I will wait anxiously everyday after for its return.

I like to think, that in another life, you chose me.

We spend our minutes together, completing the things on that ridiculous list, adding new lines all the time.

We laugh at the time we snuck into that hot tub, just as the clock rolled into two am. We tell our closest friends about how your shoe got dropped in the water upon our haste to flee, just sure we were caught. How we couldn’t catch our breath as we laughed and wheezed, spent from running back to the waiting vehicle. We would tell them about soaking wet we ordered Chinese and ate it upon the hood of your car as three clicked into place. As the story comes to a close we would lock eyes and both think of how we fell into bed, our hair damp, and hearts light from adrenaline.

In this other life, you taught my heart how to be calm, okay with where I stood. In this other life I taught you how to be wild and free, letting your spirit run towards every adventure.

In this other life, no part of me resents you. No part of me wonders if I would have been spared so much heartache.

In this other life, I sometimes think of the moment I stood in front of you, asking you to choose. Here, you chose me.

Sitting in my body now, thinking about who I had to be and who I am now, I am struck by many things. The light feels too bright on my skin, for I spent so many days in the dark. I had to build the walls. I had to stop allowing those pounding on the door to come inside. I had to finally tell my demons to sit down and shut the hell up. They can be just so loud sometimes.

I was reading through some of my old journals the other day, laughter tears rolled down my face but a part of my heart ached. I mourn for that girl. Even among private writings, I was who people wanted me to be, not who I was. I wrote in a way of trying to convince myself to be who they wanted. Speak this way. Write this way. Be. this. way.

My counselor and I talk about it a lot, who I was, who I am today. She smiles at me with pride in her eyes. She asks, “How does it feel to be this version of you?”

For once I can say, “It feels really really good.”

She lets me slowly articulate the difference between then and now. We talked about when I stripped my hair of color, fulfilling a childhood dream and desperately painting my face to be the versions of people I considered beautiful. It didn’t work. I was still unhappy. I didn’t feel beautiful. I didn’t feel at home inside the confines of my house or the confines of my skin.

I often leave that version of myself in the dark. Finding the touch of her inside my mind often bites, so I stopped reaching out. Maybe she doesn’t want to be found. It’s so dim and blurry within those recesses. I don’t tell my counselor, but I suspect that version of me hides out of shame. I’m quite certain that’s all I felt then.

Go into that space. Feel around. Where is that version? She’s lost. Lost inside the dim townhouse. Everything feels negatively charged in here. It’s full of unmet expectation, misunderstood anger, fear, rejection, feelings of failure.

She’s here somewhere. I can feel her within the blanket left on the couch, where she curled into herself, hoping to disappear for just long enough to live to the next moment. I feel her staring into that closet, hating herself for letting her body grow beyond the stitching of her clothes. I hear her internal screams echoing down the hallway, into their room. I hear her begging him to just fucking see her. She wanted to die, and I think a lot of her was.

What words does she need to hear?

We will get help. We will get a better job that we love. We will go to the gym because we love it. We will up our weights over weeks and we will be so proud of the inside of our body, not the outside. We start reading again. We will be spared making an impossible decision. What was asked of us, was unfair and it never should have happened. We will stop screaming to be noticed, for we learn that we are enough. We begin to learn to take the space we need. We stop apologizing for existing. We wear what we want. We toss the extensions, return to our dark roots. We rarely reach for the foundation. We find our way out of the dark fog.

I see your struggle. One day, I hope you can come out of the dark. Until you are ready, I will wait and continue to fight for us.

I started writing it. My book. My story I guess.
I just want to get the things inside, out. I don’t know if I’ll ever be brave enough to truly tell my story, but I’m hoping this can help me heal from some things. Understand some things better for myself.

I don’t know if i’ll finish it or ever let it leave the confines of my computer but we’ll see. I’ve been surprising myself a lot lately.


“lex and I talked about how it’s beautiful to see you do you. Nothing holds you back.. we love the Angelica vibe!” -Jess.

I cannot begin to articulate the way the words washed over my soul. I tell myself on a consistent basis that I am not someones perception of me, believing it most of the time, but never stop to consider that maybe not all of their perceptions are bad ones. Maybe some people looked at me and saw more. Saw someone who isn’t afraid. Someone full of creativity. Someone unashamed of themselves.
It’s the good thoughts that are almost too much for me.

I’ve been catching the spirals better lately. Not giving in to their temptation to take their hands and be whisked away into dark oblivion for hours or even days. I can see myself stand before the dark swirls, the dark slim hand extending out towards me, like its asking for a dance. The whisper of words, sliding like wind around me. They play with my hair, caress my skin, invite me to join them. I feel my muscles tense inside my dangling arms as I stare down at the hand. I’ve done this dance to many times. This time I won’t take the hand. I’ll take a step back, then another, and another. I will not be swept away into the depths, only to be returned battered and bruised.