It has been years since I have looked at you without wincing a little. I have started avoiding looking at you and sometimes I am surprised when I find a little thing to appreciate about you, as if you had always been something horrible and villainous to happen to me.
When people ask me why I had scars on my knees, I used to smile and recall how many times I fell down while playing and skating with my friends as a kid.
Now I just pull my dress a little down and hide them away.
Different mirrors show many different versions of you and it is highly possible that I have never seen the true you, the real you, after all. Or maybe I just never wanted to.
I forget that the skin and the bones and the fat in between (for which i have hated you particularly), is not all that there is. There are millions of cells, a few thousand irreplaceable neurons, a three pound jelly which makes the silliest decisions and the craziest ideas and a four chambered beating heart which holds all the secrets and wishes of my universe. I forget.
As a kid you should have been treated better.
Your mom, the one who made you, should not have made you felt concious about your soft tummy in that pink dress. You were 8. You are now 18 and you have never worn a skirt again.
And your brother should not have followed her example and called you fat, regardless if you were or not, regardless if it was a joke or not. You shut down when someone points the calories in food anymore. And you feel disgusted by yourself.
Your dad should have never hit you or tried to shut you up when you cried or made you feel down when you were shorter or less smarter than the other kids in your class.
But now that you have grown up, you can block them out, slowly and steadily, and never do that to someone else.
Now that you have grown up, you can start moving on.
I am sorry for what happened. I wish things hadn’t turned out the way they did but when does life, ever?
And maybe there will come a day and time when I can love you regardless of everything that happened.
But that time is far away, for now.
Barriers and walls are being broken down, one brick at a time and till the time comes when I take the last brick down, I hope you will wait for me and stick around till then. For it is then, I will love you truly and forever, everything you deserve.
