7.18.22

Talking to my inner child

There is a little girl who sits alone in the alleyway of a crowded city. It stinks of gasoline. Plastic wrappers of discarded food sit coated with mold. Dumpsters overflow with trash unattended to. 

This little girl bears strawberry blonde hair that flows down to her shoulders. She curls up in the shadows, outside the reach of streetlights as night stretches onward. She keeps her sobs quiet as to not alert anyone walking by of her presence. Her clothes are muddied. It rained yesterday and she is still outside.

I see her. I was looking for her, in fact. I heard her crying from blocks away, when no one else did. I find her off a busy road, down a twisting path and near a wire fence between two cement buildings. At first, she ignores my ringing footsteps, the crunch of shoes against asphalt, the squeak of rats skittering away from a newcomer. But when she realizes the sound was growing louder, she looks up. 

Her face is freckled, as is mine. Tears stain her cheeks and her eyes are bloodshot. She runs her nose along the purple sleeve of her jacket.

“You found me,” she whispers.

“I always do,” I say back. I kneel down in front of her, the grease of trash soaking into my jeans. “You know that.” 

“I thought you wouldn’t this time,” she murmurs. A tear trails down to her chin. “Aren’t you scared?”

I offer a small, tender smile. I move to sit next to her and pull her into my lap. I wrap my arms tight around this child. 

“Of course,” I say. “I am afraid of messing things up. I am afraid of being too much. I am afraid of everything we heard growing up.” 

“Being too dramatic,” she breathes. “Not being right.”

“Not being who I’m supposed to be,” I say with a nod. “I know you remember the lessons well.”

“What does she want us to be?” little me asks. 

“Ourselves.” I gently comb my fingers through the child’s hair. “She wants us to be ourselves.” 

“She can love that? She can be happy with that?” 

“Yes,” I say. “We have to believe her when she says that.” 

“But–”

I kiss the top of the child’s head. “We have to believe her.”

The little girl curls up into a tight ball in my lap. She buries her face in her arms. “But they didn’t love us when we were ourselves.” 

“She isn’t them. You have to remember that.” 

“It’s all I know.”

“We know something else now.” I squeeze her. “And it’s amazing, isn’t it?”

“It’s… scary.” 

I nod. Again, I offer a small smile. “Do you want to see it? The place she made for us?” 

The child lifts her head and looks back at me. Her brows knit together. “See it?” she repeats. “You can take me there?”

“I can take you there.” 

She hesitates. She looks around at the alley we sit in. “It’s all I know,” she says again. 

“You hate these streets,” I say. “You hate how it smells. You hate how caged you feel here. You hate the walls people built to keep you in. You keep running to something else but you’ve never gotten the chance to escape the city altogether.” I lift her off my lap and set her down beside me. I stand, dust myself off, and hold out my hand. “I can show you the way out of this wretched place. I can show you the path I take that winds through a valley and a field. I can show you the woods. I can show you the sanctuary she built for us.”

I watch the younger me’s wide, green eyes. I watch the way her face contorts with anxiety, debating the path to choose. Will she come with me? What is this new place? She is curious, and she is afraid. A new place means new changes, means not knowing what to expect. She knows the pain here, the invalidation, the lack of safety, the way she must censor her own life in order to be remotely palpable to those around her. She knows this. She does not know the forest.

“You always dreamed of being safe,” I whisper. “All your life, you’ve dreamed of being safe. You’ve dreamed of being loved for who you are. You’ve dreamed of being able to be yourself in a way no one else has ever let you be.” I crouch. I grasp one of her hands in both of mine and she meets my gaze. “This woman–she has made you feel safe in a way no one else has. She has made you feel loved and cherished. She has made you feel like you can be yourself, like you can laugh and tease, that you can make jokes and relax into your own dorky nature. She has given you space to talk about what hurts you, to gush about what you love, to daydream about your future with her. We can breathe fresh air when we sit with her in this sanctuary she crafted. We can be loved just for being us.” 

The child does not know what to say. Her eyes well up with tears. She swallows and looks down at our hands. “Is she sure? Is she sure she loves us?”

“Yes.” 

The child closes her eyes. Then she stands, clasping my hand still. “Okay,” she says. “Then I want to see it, and I want to see her.” 

I smile. I stand as well, and, step by step, we leave the city of petrol and rot, and take a thin, dirt path to the forest. By the time I reach the trees, I am alone, and I enter the forest with a hum.

“Hello, love,” I call, pushing past brush and vines. A woman stands in a clearing ahead of me, resting on the deck around our cottage. Her crystalline eyes lift to meet mine and she smiles. 

“I’m home.” I climb the steps to reach her, and when I do, I grasp her hand and kiss her gently on the lips.