A Letter To My Future Daughter – Always Stand Up For Yourself, Always
To my future daughter,
Though you are nothing but a far-off speculation that may never exist, I have so much to tell you about this world you may possibly see.
If, in years and years to come, your little legs one day touch this Earth, I hope they take you places vibrant with color and saturated in excitement. I hope they lead you to sights that make them weak and still, and you have a brief second to appreciate the beauty in everything. When your legs are motionless and the sun kisses your forehead, I hope you take a moment to look at the stars. I hope they remind you that, just as they are infinite, so are the opportunities that lay in front of you.
I hope your delicate hands reach out and are not afraid to touch them as you lay on top of clouds, watching those below wonder how you got up there. When you release those shining spectacles and they fade from the sky, I hope your eager fingers wrap around someone who has a heart full of fireflies and eyes that tell love stories.
Oh, my future daughter, the reason you are nothing but a far-off speculation that may never exist is because the world that I hope you see is the world that I had ripped from me.
I enclosed my fingers around a hand concealing switch blades and loved a man that had razors in place of his tongue. He cut into the seams of my skin and scrapped innocence off my bones. When he left, he left nothing but the chalk outline of my hallowed body; a crime scene that would never share the presence of detectives and caution tape.
I began to confuse healing with the high and allowed my life to become an endless cycle of attempting to mask the pain. I stared at empty liquor bottles, faintly recalling just as empty promises to not drown my demons in ethanol. Sadly, my fingers caressed the porcelain of their necks; my lips slowly reached for theirs, and we’d share a connection that only lovers feel in movies.
Lilac outlined my neck as reminders that love is synonymous to lust. Crimson scarred my ribs from holding in screams that never reached my throat. Marigold stained in between my fingers from lost wars waged in my head.
My future daughter, you may never be born because I never stitched myself back together.
I continued throughout life with this hole in my chest; my heart and soul slowly falling out of the gap. I thought if I pretended it didn’t exist then it wouldn’t hurt; I stuck flowers in my vertebrae and glazed stardust over my eyes, hoping no one would notice the clouds that followed me.
But I still write this because I hope you one day exist. If, one day, I feel your short arms wrap around my calves, then that means the world transpired out of its night, and the clouds dissipated with time.
It means I will find a man who handed me happiness instead of lukewarm beer cans. It means I found someone who was more interested in the things I said than the lips that said them. It means I found a way to adjust my eyes to the dark and appreciate the beauty in nothing.
I hope one day I rub your chubby cheek with my thumb as I clasp your chin in my hand because you will be the reminder, my beautiful daughter, that even in the absence of everything, there is still something.
When you crash through the door of our house surrounded by thunderstorms, I will tell you that the clouds will pass in time, and the sun will dry the tears that flood your eyes. When words aren’t enough, I will wrap my arms around you, and I will lean your head against my chest so you can hear a heart that has been shattered and how it still beats; I’ll run my fingers down your spine as a reminder that God gave you a backbone to stand up for what you love, and that one of those things should be yourself.
And when you ask how I know all this, and how I know it will be okay, I’ll smile and say, “You.”
Oh my daughter; my wonderful, beautiful daughter, I hope I meet you one day.