You grow bitter with age. Each year, a larger part of you frays away, like the shedding of skin, and it’s so subtle that it goes unnoticed.
You begin as fresh the sun rising in the morning - a blade of green grass in the awakening of spring. You’re three years young, full of giggles and scraped elbows. You toddle along with the vague familiarity of living. You dance of your dad’s toes and ride down the five-foot-slide in your back yard. Life is a crumpled bunch of forgotten yesterday’s that blur to this very moment.
Time has shifted, but you’re much too busy to take notice. Growing up is a tenuous task. Valentine’s Day passed and you gave out cards to every person in your first grade class. The boy with the round blue eyes tried to hold your hand. You’ve not any time to think about boys, or anything really, for being young is much too momentous in the scheme of things. You’re learning to read and how not to spill your cereal all over the table. You wear your brand new pair of bright red sneakers with your blonde hair loosely in pigtails. On your sixth birthday, you grin as you blow out your sparkly candles, one tooth missing, your mom holding your baby brother on her lap. Everyone is awake.
Summer is dawning – the flowers in your front yard are sprouting almost as fast as your legs. The night sky is as clear as it always was, the air as warm as it always should be. You lay where your old slide once sat, now a square patch of dead grass, and watch the amiable stars stay happily in their place. Next door, you hear your best friend arrive home. She’s curly-haired and bright-eyed and wears a lot of plastic rings on her tiny fingers. You wonder why your dad hasn’t been at dinner lately or why your mom takes so many naps. “I’ll always be here for you,” you tell your little brother, freshly five, as he drifts off to sleep. You’ve been alive for almost a decade – don’t you have it all figured out by now?
Life begins to unfold before your innocent eyes. The world is muddled, like a swamp, a spherical blur of smudges and fog. You tuck your long honey hair behind your ear and let out a long breath. Tears well in your chocolaty brown eyes as you stare at your reflection, a shaking hand covering the imperfections of your stomach. You hear your mom and dad fighting in the kitchen - their words vile and cruel. Barely thirteen, and you’re already worried, wishing you could still fit on the tips of your dad’s toes. Metal braces line your teeth, tight jeans slim your legs, black mascara coats your lashes. Who are you? You want to answer, but you simply can’t find the words upon your tongue.
It’s your sixteenth February, and you’re so busy trying to be happy that you don’t even see the calendar deteriorate. You keep yourself busy as you grow inwards, like the roots of a tree. You don’t give any valentines, though the blue-eyed-boy still smiles at you when you pass in the hall. Waking up in the morning is becoming unbearable, for sleeping proves a much easier task than being fully ‘here’. With hair chopped short and self-esteem diminished, you don’t recognize yourself. And so, you down your very first shot of ***** and chase it with dusty memories, and chase the next with nothing at all.
Staring in an old photo album, shivers rake through your tired body. Six-year-old you stares back - smile goofy, eyes bright, posing in your old red sneakers. You can’t remember being her. You sit, numb and alone, in your college dorm, listening to your ex-boyfriend’s favorite song. It turned out that the blue-eyed-boy wasn’t interested in you so much as the curve of your hips and the length of your legs. The phone rings beside you, an irritating shrill. It’s your not-so-little brother on the other line, his voice being deeper than you remembered. “Mom’s on her fifth glass of wine,” he tells you. “Dad just bought a new apartment in the city. Things are okay, I guess, but I wish you were here.” Something inside of you snaps as you realize you aren’t there for him like you promised. You have stretched your body like a rubber band, prodded it like cork, and left it in tatters.
The sky is dark - a canvas of navy and speckled light. The aroma of sand and salty water fills your lungs. You lay on a crimson blanket, soft and light, hugging your from underneath. Your fiancé sits beside you, tracing circles in your palm, and life suddenly seems much less clamorous. He proposed to you hours before in the silence of the nighttime. Three years ago, you were ready to let yourself go, until a brown-haired-boy offered you his coat in the pouring rain. Hundreds of kisses later, you’re lighter than air, and you don’t remember exactly how you became so sad. Your brother graduates high school this Spring. Mom began getting up in the mornings - she’s been sober for eleven months. Dad has a new girlfriend that is just as kind as he is. You ran into your best friend last year at a concert. She stills wears a lot of rings and has a lot of freckles. You recently changed your major to Astronomy, in light of a new part of you that is just awakening from its slumber. Somehow, after all those years of feeling as though the world was just a sound to tune out, you ended up here.
You grow bitter with age and you also grow stronger. Each year, a larger part of you frays away, and an even larger part patches you back up. It all goes unnoticed, until one morning you wake up and realize that it isn’t so hard anymore. It all becomes worth it.