A reflection on the difference ten years can make, and what ten more years can do. (Not the best title I could come up with, but then my titles are rarely good anyway.)

i.

I was nine, and already excited about turning ten. It was June, and I would not be ten for another four months, but I woke up every morning and glanced at my calendar to see how much closer it was to November, how much closer I was to being ten.

I still thought I was beautiful. I was happy in my skin -- except for the times he lined that skin with licks that left marks I had to explain away. I had a lot of friends, I was at the top of my class, and my family was still whole and functional.

I was still an only child, but I'd learned to ignore those little twinges of longing I used to feel when I saw my friends with their little siblings, because my parents "can't afford another child right now". And he told me I wouldn't dare bring a dog or a cat into his house.

I was nine, and my world was still hued in shades of red, green, blue, and yellow, with barely any black therein. My smiles were wide and genuine, and people used me as an example for their children to emulate. I was quick to hug, and I had so much love inside you to give, so much joy.

ii.

I sit here, ten years in what promised to be a bright future, ashamed of what I've grown up to be. I curse the time for moving so damn fast. It is June, and I will not be twenty for another four months, but I wake up every morning and curse my calendar for seeming to flip its pages so fast. In the blink of an eye, I will be twenty, and now that I'm so close to it, I wish time would just stop for a fucking second and wait for the rest of us to catch up.

There is rarely ever a day when I look into the mirror for another reason than to fix my eyebrows or put in my earrings (all in an effort to meet society's standards of beauty, which doesn't always work anyway); I can't meet my own eyes in the mirror because I do not like what I see. I wear all my flaws on my skin, and I hate myself for it.

Those licks have left their mark on me -- some physical, but most not -- and he hasn't been my daddy ever since I hit thirteen and he realized I was beginning to move away from his sphere of control and discover that boys weren't necessarily just playmates. He hasn't been my daddy since the nights when I was fourteen (or probably fifteen, I have taught myself to not remember) and he used to come in my room after my mother went to bed and showed me what I was "looking for". 

My nineteen year old world has been leached of its color, is now ten thousand shades of grey. Ten thousand blurry shades, because I've damaged my vision permanently by trying to lose myself in fictional worlds, and those days when I used to stare up at the sun and wonder if I could someday fly that high.

I have a little sister whom I love endlessly in a way I didn't know I could love -- who, incidentally, will be four tomorrow -- who I need to set some kind of positive example for, and I doubt sincerely that I'll be able to tell her about some of the things I've done so she could emulate them.

My family hasn't been the same since I was compared to Achan, a blight on the household, since I was told that I was a whore and that nothing good would come from me. It hasn't been the same.

So much has changed in ten years. I wear all my flaws on my skin, I look nothing like I wish I did (except maybe the skin tone), and I'm nine times out of ten a silent mess because I've learned the lesson that when you trust people it can come back and bite you in the ass. Learned that lesson a little too well.

I may not have had my heart broken the way my peers have, but I've been hurt by men because I refused to learn from prior experiences and let myself cry over them and punish myself because I didn't see myself as deserving of anything better.

I have hit rock bottom more times than I can count. I've been sitting at the edge of the abyss, conversing with it, weighing the pros and cons of allowing it to seduce me into its depths.

iii.

Ten years from now, it will be June, and I will be four months from turning thirty (!!!), and I will look back at my early years, filled with innocent joy and wonder, and my angsty, depression and anxiety-filled teenage years.

Maybe I'll finally have my shit together and be someone I can be proud of.

That's the thing about the future, you know. It's not set in stone. It's like a tree diagram (the math major I am appreciates this analogy), dependent on the decisions we make. It is fluid, ever-changing.

That's what I like about the future. It can change.

Maybe, ten years down the line, I'll decide that yes, I am devoutly heterosexual, I am devoutly theist, and be that way for the rest of my life. Maybe it will be that I'm not actually hetero (and I find that I'm not as cut up as I was when I first began to question), and I will still refuse to believe in anything more than the necessity of a deity, not its actual existence -- see past post re that.

The other thing I like about the future is that I'm the one who makes it. Not my family, not my friends. Me.

I've been listening to a song called Eyes to the Sky by Jon Bellion (shoutout to mandevillegirl for putting me on to his music) for months, and the chorus and hook never fail to resonate with me every time:

I'm tryna live, I'm tryna rise

Above the shit the devil tries

Which is why I keep my eyes to the sky

Insert something really dope right here

I'm s'posed to write a hook, but all I wanna say is

I just wanna be happy

I wanna be happy, yeah

I'm supposed to write a fucking hook right here

Money and bitches, blah blah, yeah yeah

I just wanna be happy

I wanna be happy, yea

In ten years, maybe I, the comprehensively curious little girl who never stops asking questions, will finally have answers for all my difficult questions.

All we wanna know is where the stars came from

But do we ever stop, ever stop to watch them shine?

...Or are we staring with, staring with ungrateful eyes?

Ungrateful Eyes, Jon Bellion

The title of the mixtape (or album, I forget which it is) is called The Separation. Feel free to give it a listen on SoundCloud.

--

Honestly, I started this post the way I always do, a little melancholy, somewhat angry. But as I continued to write, I felt that drain out of me and now I am as close to happy as I've ever been.

This, this is why I started blogging again.