Letters to the Child I Was, and Still Am

I have written you a thousand letters, little one.

None of them ever found a mailbox.

But they found their way into my bones, into my sighs, into the long silences where no one could reach me but you.

You, sitting cross-legged on that cracked balcony, beneath a sky too vast for your small body to hold.

You, building fortresses out of broken chair legs and stolen moments of peace.

You, who smiled when you should’ve screamed, who laughed so they wouldn’t hear you cry. I write to you now, not as a ghost of the past, but as the scaffolding of my present. I write because you deserve to be answered. Finally.

Dear Little Me,

I’m sorry they made you carry all that weight.

You were just a child, fragile and electric, filled with questions no one wanted to answer.

They told you survival was your job, but never paid you for your labor.

They called you “resilient,” but never asked if you wanted to be.

I see you now. Every jagged edge, every trembling hand, every moment you made a universe out of a shoebox and some string.

You weren’t broken. You were making do.

I’m not going to lie to you and tell you it gets easier.

It doesn’t, always. But it gets real.

And real is better than pretending.

You still live inside me, little one.

Not trapped, not forgotten.

But breathing, finally, freely, in the cracks of my grown-up life.

You show up when I create, when I laugh too loudly in empty rooms, when I pick up a paintbrush or build a miniature world where no one hurts and the monsters sleep peacefully under glass.

And I know what you're asking me, in that tiny, fierce voice of yours:

Did it matter? Did we make it out? Did we become something worth becoming?

My answer is messy, but true:

We made it this far. We became a work in progress, a survival poem, a mosaic of almosts and still-trying. We became someone who writes back. I wish I could give you a safe childhood, but all I have are words and weary hands.

So here, take this instead:

Permission to rest.

Permission to stop being brave all the damn time.

Permission to love yourself exactly as you are, unfinished and extraordinary.

I’ll carry you with me, always. But you don’t have to carry the world anymore. That was never your job. It was theirs. And they failed. But we didn’t.

With love and fire,

The woman you became.

Still figuring it out. Still showing up. Still yours.