For Kyra
When you were about four or five, you said you wanted to be a princess. So mom and dad bought you a pink dress that sparkled, and pretty little shoes. I bought you a scepter and a tiara. You smiled like only a little girl can, as if you had stars dancing on your lips, as if happiness really could be found at the tip of a plastic wand.
That pink dress is gone now. Those shoes have long been outgrown. The scepter and tiara, I imagine, are both broken.
But something of that memory remains.
It’s a little harder now.
My princess is confused and defiant and uncertain and obstinate as only a fourteen year old can be. She is pushing against walls, testing her limits, walking on new ground. She is burning with new passions, testing new drives. She is aspiring to new heights. Her mother doesn’t know this new dance, and the missteps are many, and the implosions are palpable.
There’s no one to translate. No one to mediate. There is no one to smooth the edges, no one to pacify egos.
There is no one to be the axis, and sometimes I fear that the center will not hold.
I worry about you all the time.
I worry that you will live your life in a sheltered, pampered vacuum, not knowing what real pain feels like. Not knowing what it means to bleed from the inside. Not knowing what it means to starve and to suffer on the altar of a dream.
I worry that you will fail to see what’s on the other side of the wall. That you won’t hear how hard children can cry. That you won’t know how to offer comfort to the people who need it most. That you won’t know what it means to feel tears slide like sandpaper on your red, raw heart.
I worry that you won’t let the other parts of who you can be unfurl and bloom in the sunlight.
I don’t know if the things I hear are exaggerated, or real, or a mixture of both. It’s hard being on the other side of the world, not knowing how your life is unraveling in a space that must feel so strange to you.
I know, because I’ve felt alien in that same space, the roundest of pegs in the squarest of holes.
I can hear the worry in a mother’s voice, anxious for a daughter she can’t seem to understand. For a moment, I don’t know if I’ve given you the right advice, after all. For a moment, I feel myself sucked in the nightmares that a string of wrong choices could spawn. I soothe her as well as I am able. It’s not always easy.
But then, I put the phone down, and I remember. What I told you is what I would have told myself, even knowing what I know now.
So, little sister, know this. I trust you. I trust that you will figure this out for yourself. I trust that you will come out alright. I trust you that you will see more than what is put before you, that you will know how to read between the lines.
I trust you, mi hermana querida.
I trust that in the end, you’ll figure out how best to fly.
Originally published on Tumblr, July 2010.