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Sometimes I hate seeing pictures of myself when I was younger. Baby pictures, homecoming photos, the embarrassing high school Facebook selfies. The nostalgia is there, sure. But when I look at that girl, sometimes I don’t recognize her. I don’t feel any true connection to BEING her. But I do envy her. It’s not like I hadn’t experienced pain and heartbreak yet. I was born into trauma, so I’m not sure there was ever a time when heartbreak wasn’t my rain cloud. It’s always been there. No, I think I envy her because she’d experienced pain and tragedy but she didn’t fully understand it yet. She thought she did. But she also thought she’d dance again. She thought her first love would sweep her off her feet and never let her touch the ground again. She thought stars never burnt out and that there were always happy endings. She thought the sun always eventually came out from behind the clouds. She thought men respected the word “no” and mothers came home to their babies. She had naivety disguised in her heart as hope. Optimism. She saw the world in color. She never dreamt that she could lose that outlook on life. But she will. In just a few years, she’ll feel that hope fade. I wish I could go back and hold her. But I wouldn’t tell her. I wouldn’t tell her that her first love uses and abuses her. I wouldn’t tell her that addiction takes over her little brother too. The only person who truly understands her pain on a personal level. I wouldn’t tell her that her mind and body are hiding secrets from her to protect her from the trauma those memories will awaken. I wouldn’t tell her that mom doesn’t show up to do her hair for homecoming or even to see her graduate. I wouldn’t tell her that the burn from the trauma only gets worse. I wouldn’t tell her that the rainbow doesn’t always come after the storm. I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t take that from her. I would let her keep that mirage of eternal optimism for as long as she could grasp it. I wouldn’t tell her that we don’t see the world in color anymore.
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