"Dear 15
When the car breaks down (again), you will reach deep into your pockets and offer up all of..."
Dear 15
When the car breaks down (again), you will reach deep into your pockets and offer up all of your measly life’s savings to fix it. Your mother will shake her head and you will not understand it. There is a lot you don’t understand, yet. And sometimes love comes in the shape of a “no” you are not equipped to accept. But 15 isn’t nearly so grown up at you think it is and the future is toddering toward you on shaky legs and it’s okay to be afraid of it. You don’t know who you are right now, but here are a couple hints: red meat makes your stomach hurt, pink is not the enemy, and girls are really, really pretty. And it’s okay if you want to kiss them.
Dear 13
Get a good look at this one—you’re going to remember him. The cherub face, the voice that rings louder than the one in your own throat; he is the worst thing that ever happened to you. But it will take four more years of being crushed into the margins of your own story to realize that. Right now, right now, he comes dressed as the answer to all of your prayers: looks like God right when you were starting to wonder if there was one. But, darling, if I could go back and keep you away from him, I wouldn’t. He is the atom bomb to your Nevada body and he mushroom-clouds everything that you think you know about yourself.
But he is also one of the only reasons you make it, at all. Broken things always grow back stronger, and now he’s a rumor of a boy with no home that wants him, and you are still standing. And you are stronger.
Dear 11
This is dangerous loving. You are too small, too soft. They are going to make mincemeat of you.
Dear 17
You took it too far—turned lonely into solitary confinement and apathy into a pissing contest. But the betrayals don’t hurt anymore so, hey, you did it. You let the ones who hurt you go. You let everything go. Your body is a steel wall, ninety degrees of unbending Empty. Your first kiss is a boy you hate; you are done leaving voicemails for a boy who might be dead, tomorrow; they are not the same boy, but they might as well be. You will snowball all this Nothing into an avalanche.
Dear 19
Please stop, please stop, please stop, please stop. You can’t set fire to the hurting.
Now
11 wants to know what you did with your hair. 15 misses Dad and 19 doesn’t. None of us even recognize you and we can’t tell if that’s a good thing or a bad one but 13 is in love and 19 is kicking the shit out of her. And 15 is in love and 19 is setting her hair on fire and 17 says she doesn’t know what love means. 11 cried her eyes out yesterday and 17 didn’t do anything. How did you grow up on the backs of so many broken things? How strong can a bed of eggshells be? 15 is starving for affection—can’t remember the last time she was touched. 13 still has nightmares about the boy on the bus and the grin on his face and his hand down the front of her jeans and the way her heart felt like a chicken-wire fence caught in a hurricane. 13 didn’t get out of bed today. 17 sees the boy and hugs him instead of hitting him and feels sick for weeks but 19 is a survivor and she tells the rest of us to get the fuck over it.
What we mean is… are you happy? Because 19 made homes out of beds that she didn’t belong in and we just want 21 to make it.
Are you making it?
- untitled, (1/30)
