Dear You,
I remember vividly the nights we stared into each other. You, me, and our one reflection. I remember the sound of hair splitting against the blade - vividly, despite the dream-like haze. I remember the sound because we did it in bulk, in huge pieces that required strength - it remains very clear in my mind, that sharp split.
I remember the brief feeling of release (so brief) as we washed away the clumps of hair, watched them swirl down the drain.
I remember the mornings after, the shame and the brushing and the frustration. I know what you wanted: quiet destruction. I know what you wanted: acceptance in your self-prescribed ugliness. I know what you wanted: someone to notice that there was something wrong, bubbling out, somehow. Someone to be able to put into words what was wrong, to say it aloud.
Things were wrong. Things weren't. But what I found most curious was your hesitancy to allow it to be any different. Your quickness to cut off any growth - or your persistence to not allow any growth. Sometimes I feel as though it served as a reminder: that the girl with the shoulder-length curls in the mirror will never break free of the prison that is her body. She is unchanging. She is still and docile in her suffering.
And there’s aways the matter of our body, which, under the curse of puberty, became public property. I wonder if you kept the hair short to keep our reflection foreign. You never even glanced down at your skin, at your curves, at this thing which carried you - it was only the hair that you saw; only the hair that everyone else saw. The truth is, in keeping it done in a way you disliked, you could disconnect and be somewhere else when under the hands of a sexually-repressed boy. You could be another person - you could disconnect, shake your head at her weakness, and see her as an unlucky stranger in a bad situation.
In forgetting your body, you wouldn't feel it Me.
After the boy finally released you of his shackles, we spent hours in bathtubs discovering each other, again. A series of first-times and love-spells and introductions. In the dark and warm of a small body of water, I cleansed you, as softly as I could, and did my best to nurse the scars of the war you’ve finally come home from.
Yes, my girl, I know, I know - you spent your youth searching for a home, thinking it was another pair of arms or, occasionally, a new building, but I had to teach you that the body you wince at is the only home this world will ever provide you with.
Eventually, by some unseen force, we became one.
Sometime in the near-future, the ends of our hair will hang just over our waist - and the unbearable urge to cut angrily into the curls will have dissipated. Time, as you know, is grace. But it is interesting, don’t you think, that for our entire lives we’ve run from an empty feeling in the small of our back, and the solution had been so obvious and so simple: to allow this hair to create vines that protect this Achilles heel of ours, to cover the spot our body most craves warmth. It turns out we had roots that could grow so long, so thick and strong, that they could create a physical energy field of protection. A black mass which dances with us, whenever we move.
Dear self,
This is the life lesson we cannot run from any longer.
My girl, you already know,
that the floating is easy - it’s when you start thrashing that the drowning comes.
With so much tenderness,
Me
enjoy the movement please
Me when i realize what the love letter is addressed to 🫨