““And it is up to me, to not make the same mistakes as my mom. She tells me, when I find time to call her in the lonely spaces that come upon me, “Honor god and find a good husband.” The best advice she has to offer, and I accept it. I accept her advice, from my mother who wants nothing but the best for me and has taken pain that wasn’t what she deserved, all to protect me. I see her weary soul in her eyes and I hear it in her voice, and I want to turn back time for her but I am unable because I am only a 19 year old daughter in an unfair world. So instead, I turn over her words, over and over in my head like chewing gum in my mouth because they stick to the corners of my mind instead of my mouth and I can’t seem to let it go. I keep it in my mind because I see her and I see my family and my siblings and their rage and loneliness and resentment that they try and try to shed before it poisons them just like it somehow poisoned my father into becoming a person made of hatred, and I know, I know my mother has put her hope onto me to be nothing like any of it. I am the last child, and she has let me know what the title of youngest means. This is my responsibility.“”
— n.c. // how do I find love that looks like nothing I know.
