girlhood

love & longing

and maybe girlhood is all about- chronicles & narratives of fraught women, frayed collars of old coats, neurotic women’s diaries, vanilla-scented body butter; lingering on waxed skin, rotten thoughts, religious imagery, satin ribbons tied gingerly into hair; only to slip loose by the day’s end, the ache of longing for love; respect and understanding, the weight of unsent handwritten letters; letters that will never feel the warmth of human touch again, allegorical literature, tears of fury & frustration, tin cans crushed out of anger, unbridled devotion, motel keys, strands of hair clutched tightly in the nook of the palm, pocket knives, and the loose satin pajamas that were never meant to fit a body so uncertain of itself.

but how do you forgive your father for loving you when you did not deserve any of it? when you did not feel worthy of it? the kind of love, unearned in your mind, that cuts deeper than the lack of it ever could. forgiveness is labyrinthine, because how does one accept a love they feel undeserving of?

but i’m convinced, his love was probably a reflection of all the light he recognized in me, of all the things he saw in me, unfaltering & ardent, given without any restraints, and i, a whirlwind of contradictions, could only meet it with guilt. and maybe forgiveness begins not with absolving, but with trying to see yourself as he did. forgiveness begins when you allow yourself to believe, just for a moment, that you were worth it all along. and that love doesn’t have to be deserved. it’s given because it’s there, because you exist and so does love.

and perhaps the hardest part of girlhood isn’t the longing, the rage & restraint, the bitterness- it’s learning to forgive yourself, so you can finally let others love you without an apology.

maybe, in time, we’ll learn to accept the love we’ve been running from.