Dear Past Me

Dear little me,

I wish that you did not have to endure all of the things that you did. I wish that you could have had a better home, that you didn't always feel so alone. You deserved so much more, and I am sorry that you got dealt a very shitty hand. I wish that your life had gone differently.

I look back on you and my mind fills with so many what ifs. What if you didn't get born into a family where the parents were drug addicts? What if you didn't have to eat cereal with water because the milk in the fridge was now a block of cream? What if your sister didn't have to be your mother AND your father?

I think about the troubles that you had and how they all started when you were so little. The way you fell asleep every night because you were silently crying and your head would start to hurt. The way that you craved the attention from your parents and they were too busy drinking and doing drugs. I look back and I see this broken, sad, lonely little girl.

I am so sorry that you had to go through the motions of your family being torn apart and having to keep it together because you were always looked at as weak. I am so sorry that you had to hold it together even when you were hanging on by a thread. I am sorry that you are scarred for life by the night terrors that haunt you 30 years into your life.

You should have had a better life. You should have been able to hangout with your friends at your home but you were soembarrased to have any one over because the house was always dirty. You shouldn't have had to go to bed hungry, take cold showers or do things in the dark because your parents didn't have the money. You shouldn't have had to resort to drinking and smoking at such a young age because you began to hurt too much. You shouldn't have gone to hurting yourself because some way, some how, someone was going to notice you the way that you had craved for so long.

What if you felt true love? What if you had a beautiful loving home where everyday you heard laughter and not screaming and things being thrown and broken? What if you felt what a real belly laugh was? What if you never knew what it was like to never want to go home? To never hate yourself? What if you were able to look in the mirror and not think that you are the biggest mistake that your parents had ever made?

I look back on you and then I look at who you are now, and I smile because you are a fighter. You never gave up. You survived and will continue to do so for the rest of your life. You know what happiness is now. You know what it's like to get what you want by working for it. You know that you are strong and you use your strength every day.

You, little me, had a sad life but that sad life made me.