What I’d Tell Her

If I could sit next to the girl in the quiet house I wouldn’t tell her it gets better. I’d tell her it gets hers.

Better is a lie we tell children because the truth is too complicated for small hands. The truth is it doesn’t get better. It gets different. And different is where the work is. Different is where you build the thing that’s yours from the wreckage of the thing that wasn’t.

I’d tell her: the eggshells aren’t your fault. The picking sides isn’t your fault. The silence isn’t something you caused by being too loud or too much or too present. You’re not too much. You’re a child. And the adults around you are failing at a job they didn’t apply for and you’re the one paying the bill.

I’d tell her: your body is yours. Not his. Not theirs. Not anyone’s who looks at it and has an opinion. Yours. And the war they’re about to start with it is a war you didn’t declare and didn’t deserve and you’ll fight it for decades but you’ll still be standing at the end.

I’d tell her: the thing that’s about to happen with the family member is not your fault either. I know you won’t believe that for years. I know you’ll carry it like a stone in your chest and build your whole life around the weight of it. But it wasn’t yours to carry. And one day you’ll put it down. Not all of it. But enough.

I’d tell her: you’re going to fall in love with the wrong people. Multiple times. With enthusiasm. And each one will teach you something you needed to learn in the most expensive way possible. That’s not failure. That’s curriculum.

I’d tell her: you’re going to have children and they’re going to save your life. Not by fixing you. By showing you what love looks like when it doesn’t have conditions attached. And that knowledge will change everything.

I’d tell her: you will only ever really truly be able to rely on yourself. And one day, instead of being the saddest thing you know, that will become the strongest.

I’d tell her all of that. And then I’d sit with her in the quiet house and I wouldn’t ask her to be brave. I’d just be there. In the silence. Being the adult who showed up.

The one she was always waiting for.