Somebody's Daughter

Kids can always tell the difference between adults who want to empower them, and adults who want to overpower them.

I’ve heard people describe panic as something that rises up inside them. For me, panic radiates in the threads of my muscles, bangs in the back of my skull, twists my stomach, and sets my skin on fire. It doesn’t rise or fall. It spreads.

I did not know that there are miles between running out of things to say, and running out of the strength to say them.

When you write about you and me? Just tell the truth. Your truth. Don’t worry about nobody’s feelings, especially not mine. You gotta be tough to tell your truth, but it’s the only thing worth doing next to loving somebody.

For the rest of my life, I would seek out the library the way some search for the soft light of a chapel in the dark.

I was tempted, as I always am, to take the bait when my mother offers me empathy. Tempted by my fantastical belief that one day I will lower my walls, and she will do the same. Then I end up blaming myself for not remembering to stick to the conversational paths offering the least resistance, furious at myself for veering too far into the unexplored or exiled.

When my life was new, I understood in my bones how little it mattered what anybody else was doing, or what they thought about what I was doing. I believed my bones then.

I wanted to be seen, but I didn't want to be watched.

When you don’t grow up with a certain kind of affection, even if you know you’re worthy of it, it can be hard to accept in adulthood.

Ashley, you’re the only person who has to live in your skin, and wake up with the consequences of your choices. That’s why you can’t let other people make the big choices for you. You have to do what it feels right to do, and you can’t let anybody stop you.” I heard the stifled smile again. “Not even me.

No matter what you wanted to hide from yourself, you couldn’t hide it from the people whose particular brand of bent matched yours. The effort was moot. Weird kids always find each other.

Despite everything my father had done, I was still so eager to be claimed by him. To be protected by him. To the world he was a bad man. To me, he was my dad who did a bad thing. I was still trying to figure out what it meant to love someone who had done such a bad thing, but I did love him. And that was enough for me to show up, and say so to his face.

she’d lost her voice somewhere down in her chest, somewhere they couldn’t reach in and grab it.

If my mother and I shared anything without having carefully considered it, it was this undying ember of a dream that we will someday, somehow find ourselves reaping the bounty of a blooming mother-daughter bond, the roots of which we both refuse to tend in the meantime.

When children are small, our desires seem small, even if we want the sky. Anything we want seems to be only a matter of time and effort away. It’s too early to imagine what’s already holding you back.

I did not mind getting hurt as much as I minded being surprised by the pain. I wanted to see it coming.

I was an anxious driver. I was afraid of highways, and driving alone anywhere more than thirty minutes away scared me. Operating a vehicle is a lesson in individual control and mutual trust. I was skeptical of both.

though I tended to hold adults to impossible standards, I seemed to have infinite patience for children. Unlike some adults, I never quit remembering what it was like to be one. Their small plights were familiar to me, as were their big feelings.

I learned to carry the secrets of my badness silently and alone.

My mother didn’t know I could do bad things and still have the sun. She didn’t know I could keep my own truth and memories inside. But I knew.

Feeling any of it felt like the beginning of losing control, and losing control felt like certain death in my body, if not my mind. If I didn’t process the feeling, I wouldn’t feel it, and if I didn’t feel it, it couldn’t kill me.

wear. It doesn’t take long for children to teach themselves not to want what they’ve already learned they won’t have. I couldn’t find a good enough reason to torture myself by acknowledging my futile desires for more stuff.

We don’t give up on our people. We don’t stop loving them.” She looked into my face, her eyes watering at the bottoms. “Not even when we’re burning alive.

My mother wasn’t perfect. Our relationship was complicated, and difficult. She was my imperfect mother. We were two different people, and found that hard to accept in one another. But I was hers and she was mine. That’s how it had always been. Who would I be, if not hers? I didn’t want to be without her.

It was easier to laugh at the jokes after you'd forgotten the pain.

I knew I couldn’t have the sunrise or its colors for my own. Some things were too precious not to be shared. They just had to happen, and you just had to make sure you were there when they did, and then, you were part of something with everyone else who showed up at the right time.

When I was four years old, I taught myself to lie awake until morning. I wanted the sunrise, and I only had to stay awake to have her. When children are small, our desires seem small, even if we want the sky. Anything we want seems to be only a matter of time and effort away. It’s too early to imagine what’s already holding you back.

But each time I left campus to come home, I spent ten minutes in the mirror reciting the same phrase like my therapist had taught me: I like myself the way I am. I like myself the way I am. I like myself the way I am. I like myself the way I am. Then, I would promise myself not to forget.

There are few words worthy of the wonders they describe, but sunrise sounds like it feels. A u sunken to the bottom of one's throat, and an i, pointing upward and onward to a warm beyond.

It wasn’t lost on me that I mostly spoke my truth in the spaces where my family was absent.