origins and new wishes

the girl who inspired me to write this blog told me her mama used to put letters into her lunch box. and i remember thinking, i wish my mother loved me.

i wish my mother packed a lunch box for me. i wish my mother cared whether or not i ate food.

i wish my mother wrote letters to put into my lunch box.

i wish i had a mom.

the girl who inspired me to write this blog no longer speaks to me. she has her own trauma, i have mine. we were friends for a little while. she went on her own adventures and as far as i know she is doing fantastic, amazing, living her best life. i am happy for her.

thank you for inspiring me to write this. thank you for letting me revisit this, all these years later. thank you for sharing some school days with me. for showing me what a happy childhood might look like. what it looked like, for moments. however scarce.

to my mother:

i believe you when you say you did your best. i need you to know that your best was not enough. not even close. thank you for trying. i hope you get the help and healing you need, too. i hope you are okay now. i hope your other children are still on speaking terms with you. and if they are not, i hope you understand why you are alone.

to all the motherless daughters:
we raised ourselves. i hope you make it. i hope you live. i hope you learn how to mother yourself, and i hope you grow up knowing that you are worthy and deserving of unconditional love and compassion. you are worthy of care, of kindness, of respect.

i hope you learn how to give love that is unconditional, and not masochistic. it looks similar, but there is a difference between unconditional love and masochistic love. love will sometimes hurt, but not always. love cannot be earned, only freely given and received. you cannot love someone who is hurting you and stay with them. love them and yourself enough to leave them. it does not serve you or them to let them continue to cause you harm.

give the love you hope to receive, and know that you never have to earn it. you deserve it because you are a person. you deserve for your existence to be celebrated. be glad you are alive.

i am glad you are alive, even if we never meet again.

my new wish, my only wish, my always wish:

  i wish for everyone to treat everyone with unconditional compassion from now until forever backdated to the beginning of time