Everything You Are

The little things count too, you know.

You always beat yourself up for all the big things you weren't, and all the things you thought you ought to be. You never quite reached your own expectations, quietly hoping you would but secretly assuming you wouldn't. Who made you believe that you couldn't?

It's like you had your mindset on being the victim, the one that would give and give but would never receive. Did you really think you weren't worth the world?

Come to think of it, I don't think there was a single day I've spent with you where you didn't insult yourself.

I remember thinking, mid-sentence of you talking about how you didn't understand something and have never been able to and therefore could not ever, that if only you would try.

Why do you give up before you even try? Why is it over when you haven't even begun? I've always wondered but you still haven't told me who clipped your wings off.

What secrets do you keep?

Young and angry as I was, I thought you were weak and I resented you for it. I needed someone who was strong in the way I wanted to be and you weren't it. It wasn't completely my fault, you practically drilled that in me. Did you realize that whenever you talked about yourself, it was always something disparaging? You must know I've tried to change your mind, but I don't think you were ever listening.

I get it - you've been through the wringer. You've said so many times. A one-man woman, the only man you ever loved betrayed you and left you with a bitter taste in your mouth that lingers still. I never said I didn't believe you. Silver spoon-fed baby, you had everything you needed until you didn't. How could someone like me set you free? A series of regrettable decisions and missed opportunities, things you still kick yourself for, it seems at every moment you're at your edge about to give up and throw in the towel for good.

...but you don't.

Something in that stupid little brain and heart of yours - your own words not mine - holds on.

You still try new things. You seek out the best creams for the sagging skin you've become so aware of. You're even eating more vegetables and taking longer walks all by yourself at our favorite trail, despite having broken your foot a year ago and in spite of the fear of being someone who looks and speaks like you.

If you really hated yourself, if it truly is the end and if the end is what you really want, then why do you do that? Why do you keep getting better? Don't kid yourself or try to downplay it - that glimmer of hope you have is something to wear proudly.

It was only until my own heart and spirit were crushed did I even begin to understand how you might've felt all those years ago. Alone, yet surrounded by people in a harsh and entirely new world such as this, you knew very little of its language. Married although unloved, you had three growing girls to feed and no one else to rely on.

For years, your challenges went over my head. As I look back now and imagine being in your tennis shoes then, knowing what I know now, the distress you couldn't hide all those years ago somehow seem less unforgivable. The forgiveness I do have, I admit, I'm still hesitant to give. Sometimes I find myself wishing this wasn't the case but it's still hard for me to forget the times you took it out on me, your swords piercing my little heart.

Our story is a complicated one, and in many ways it still is, but yet here we are, we've done it. We've somehow made it through all of it somewhat intact.

I know this isn't how you imagined things, that this is not what you wanted of your life, but I just wish you would see that this could be your very beginning.

You said you needed and still need all the help you can get - that you are all these things we don't call the people we love - but all that you were and are able to do, no matter how little or insignificant you deem them to be, count.

For a long time I believed a truly strong and incredible woman is a woman devoid of anger or imperfection, but that's not true. When I wanted and expected you to be strong in the magazine way I was desperate to be, I didn't yet understand that strength was not measured by how much a woman can do all on her own, but rather, what a woman does even though she is trembling.

And to think, you didn't have anyone in your corner then for all those years! As angry as I am for your shortcomings, I am well aware of my own. I just wished you didn't yell so loudly and so closely to my ear, or that your mysterious sufferings didn't manifest in a withdrawal from me and a silence that sometimes spanned for what seemed like weeks, ending unpredictably as if nothing happened.

You were a beauty queen who fell for the wrong guy, yet without him there would be no me, and whenever you said that I knew you regretted me too. I am not the one to try and change your mind.

I meant it when I said your unexplained hot and coldness was toxic to our already delicate, complicated, bond. So I'm sorry that I do not always want to talk.

I was only a child.

Fragments of me still remain there.

You were just a child too, weren't you? Parts of you are still stuck there. What happened? How did you get lost along the way?

Could you maybe, someday, tell me all about it? Leaving no detail behind?

That's another thing about you: it's hard for you to talk about how you really feel. Your throat tightens and your voice constricts whenever I've managed to strike a place you haven't visited, and then you change the topic, turning it back to me or to someone else.

I too have been afraid to be seen or visit certain places.

But see your unwillingness to embrace your pain wholly is not where the strength I've come to know you possess originates. Your strength is because of all the times you did what you had to for us even though you were cracking. I knew then your knees were about to buckle, but you held us up for as long as you could anyway.

You knew how much I loved and looked forward to the book fair and exhausted as you may have been having to pay for all that you had to pay for and doing all that needed to be done, you never missed a month. A small thing, sure, but it was you who went through my wish list and it was you who put the exact dollar amount in the little envelope. Did you know, you only miscounted once? And when I told you, you even apologized.

You believed then that warm milk would give me strong bones, so every night you made me a cup. I grimace at the thought of drinking that now, but they had you convinced I could not do without.

Believing peanuts were good for my growing brain, you boiled them for me in salted water and put a stuffed ziplock of it in my lunch bag. You even gave me an extra bag to put all the empty shells. You made sure I always had snacks and drinks I liked. The seasonal plums were my favorite, especially when they were a little tough. The bright orange persimmons you cut up in bite-sized pieces a close second.

It was you who woke me up on time every morning, despite begging for five more minutes every time. You did my hair every day, you put me in clothes I envy today. You made sure I had all my things and that at the beginning of every semester, I had all the supplies I needed. You rubbed baby cologne on me, even when we used to sleep on cardboard boxes that we laid on top of the red metal frame of that old rusting bunk bed.

I remember many visits to the same black and white shoe store, sitting on the plastic chair, you right by my side urging me to get a bigger size but I wanted the small one because my friends had small feet. You said alright and then when I grew out of them not long after and my toes began to curl, you said I told you so. I never told you how much my feet hurt after because I knew that if I did, you would buy me another pair.

And although I didn't always use or spend it in the best way, it was you who made sure I always had pocket money. You told me about saving but I didn't listen.

Maybe they'll never write an article about someone like you. Maybe they'll never take your headshot or do your makeup. You weren't that good with math and knew very little about science, but you sure knew how to sew, cook, and clean. Every home we lived in, guaranteed, had a cabinet full of all your cleaning supplies and a fridge stocked with frozen meat and fish, the soft broom hanging on a nail in the closet. I still hate it when you use vinegar on the counters.

You don't have a single Michelin star (yet), but everything you cooked was delicious and you have a green thumb. You're not a CEO and maybe you'll never be, but you are not one to miss a day of work and you sure know how to be on time. You may not know much about the stock market, but your credit history is excellent and you know about your Roth.

Let the others be superwomen. You were more than enough, you always were. You just didn't know it. If I could go back to that moment when somebody had you thinking were nothing but a stupid little helpless girl who would never amount to anything, I would tell you that they were bad, that they were lying. I would take your hand, answer all your questions, and listen to all that you wonder about. Then, I would hug you tight, kiss your cheek, and play whatever you wanted to play.

I'm sorry that I ever went along with what you believed about yourself because of what other people told you.

PS - Sixty is not old. Sixty is not the end. Sixty can be the beginning if you let it.

I love you.