Arizona,
Ah, my love.
We’ve been having so much fun lately. You’re sixteen months old today (also
Happy St. Patrick’s day!) and you are the light of our lives. Your daddy and I
moved back to Tennessee from your birthplace Hawaii and we’ve been living in
this sort of in-between space for the past several months as we navigate the
transition. Nanny and Poppy have been letting us stay in their guest bedroom.
It’s been so great to see your relationship with them develop while we all live
together – Poppy keeps his door cracked so you can always push it open and make
a mess of his bedroom. He’ll sit you in his computer chair and hand you pens or
pieces of paper or DVDs to play with. And when he ventures into the living room
you’ll always run over and reach for him. You sit on the fireplace together and
he’ll call you spoiled, laughing because you tell him where to sit and he sits.
With Nanny it’s a bit different – she’s busy cleaning or playing her computer
games a lot of the day, but she keeps her bedroom door open and sometimes you’ll
wander inside and sit on her lap, watching her play. You guys eat cereal
together and she buys you pretty dresses and fun toys. Did you know, she’s the
one who taught you how to blow kisses? For the longest time she blew you kisses
without reciprocation, and then one morning you woke up blowing them back. You’ve
spent the past week blowing everybody millions of beautiful kisses, and I
cherish your innocence.
But there
are lots of sad days for me during this in-between time. It’s hard to crave the
future so much. I can’t wait to get into our own home (closing is in two
weeks!). I can’t wait to be able to sleep with your daddy in the same bed
again, to be able to cuddle and wrestle and relax. It’s dangerous for me to
say, “I can’t wait,” though, because it always feels like I’m wishing life
away. I wish I could just enjoy each day as it comes.
You’re the
part of each day I enjoy, all the time. Always.
But I am sad
a lot. I feel bad about it because I know it’s bound to take away from
experiences in the future. I want to try and explain why I get sad, but it’s
nearly impossible. It’s always a culmination of so many things.
My childhood
was so grand. I always played outside with a group of friends in the trailer
park. We’d have such a blast riding bikes or rollerblades or driving Barbies
down the hill to see them crash or playing made up games in the woods. We’d go swimming and play in the sand box and
basically run wild. I never had a care in the world – I remember literally not
having a single care, just playing from sunrise to sunset. I honestly enjoyed
each moment.
And then
some bad things happened.
When I was
around seven, bad things happened outside my control and I lost it. My
childhood – it just got eaten by the bad things, and I wasn’t that innocent
little girl anymore. Probably anyone who tells you about who I was as a
teenager would say I was innocent and naïve – but that was always an act. I’d
pretend during every conversation not to know things, just so the people around
me would think me innocent. Still to this day, probably most people see me as
innocent and naïve. But it’s a lie – it’s a lie I’ve tried to maintain not just
for other people, but for myself. I wanted people to think I was innocent so
that maybe I still could be, so that maybe it could still be true. Because I
loved who I was as a child, that carefree fun-loving person who saw the world
as a giant playground, never thinking about the future, living always in the
now. When the bad things happened, I hated what I turned into. I remember the
first day I ever felt sad – the crushing sort of listless sad, the type where I
could hardly will myself to do anything. I was still little, perhaps eight or
nine, and I remember laying on the floor in the living room just staring up at
the mirror that was on the ceiling. My mom asked me what I was doing and I
said, “Nothing,” as she passed by. I had turned into someone who hated being
noticed, who couldn’t bear anyone’s attention. At school I could hardly say
words to people. I didn’t like meeting new people, I pulled away from everyone
who spoke to me, I just needed to be left alone. Every time I was noticed, my
heart would race and my hands got all clammy and my stomach hurt, and I’d spend
days hyper aware of any interaction, any at all. When I look back on my middle
and high school years, I hate them. I hate how scared I was back then, how
threatened every stray encounter made me feel, how stifled I was. I don’t even
consider myself a person during that period of my life – I was like a ghost,
too panic-stricken to make any friends or do anything fun.
I hated
being a ghost.
You know –
it wasn’t until I met your daddy that I felt like I could move away from that
persona, that I could become a person again. Bad things from the past kept me
from having a present for a long, long time. Now whenever I crave the future,
it makes me panic a little bit. Like I’m not living in the present again, like
I’m back to being that ghost. So this in-between time, these weeks leading up
to owning our forever home in Tennessee, it’s been rough on me. Brings all this
stuff back to the surface, stuff I wish didn’t exist.
I see you
now and I think, man. That’s childhood right there. Laughing all the time,
exploring, learning and playing and running to your momma whenever something
feels scary or new. You bring a piece of childhood back to me, and I am so, so
grateful to you for that. I hope you never lose it, but I know deep down I can’t
protect you from everything that’s coming. I just hope – well, I just hope that
we can keep your sense of self protected. I hope that you never feel like you need
to become a ghost. I hope that being noticed doesn’t scare you as much as it
has me. It robbed me of so many good years, and I regret that all the time. I hope
that you know you’re awesome. If people notice you, it’s because you’re good.
You are my light, your daddy’s light, and I hope that instead of hiding away in
the dark like I did… I hope you let yourself shine.
Happy sweet
sixteen months, angel. Know you are loved.
Your momma,
Ashley
