Once upon a time, a boy and a girl had a baby.
They were just too young, and it wasn’t the right time to know how to hold a life that small without dropping pieces of themselves in the process. They tried, in the ways young people try, but love was not enough to make them ready. So they let her go and told themselves she would have a better life without them.
And in some ways, she did.
She was loved. She was taken to see parts of the world she might never have seen. She was given opportunities she wouldn’t have had otherwise if they had kept her.
But a better life does not erase the wound of being left.
It did not stop her from crying into her pillow at night, trying to understand why she was the one who had to be given away. It did not stop her from wondering what was so wrong with her that loving her meant letting her go.
And when they kept the ones who came after, even the ones not bound to them by blood, something inside her broke open.
Because how do you tell her it wasn’t because she was unworthy when all she can see is everyone else being chosen?
She tried to outrun the ache.
She drank it down.
She smoked it quiet.
She talked about it until her throat went tired.
She tried to understand it, name it, forgive it, and fold it neatly into a story that made sense.
And while she could numb it temporarily, while she could grow to understand that people do their best with what they know at the time, nothing was enough to stop the pain. It kept festering, no matter how desperately she wanted it to heal.
So it stayed.
And in some ways, she is still that little girl.
Still curled beneath the covers.
Still asking the dark what made her not good enough to be kept.
Still trying to become someone no one could leave behind.
Still hoping somebody will look at all the broken pieces within her, take her face in their hands, and say,
“You deserve to be kept.”
And finally mean it.