No one has ever talked to me about what it’s like being the youngest child. You have spent your entire life watching fire unfurl before your eyes before finally stepping out of the house and lighting your own (and making sure that it won’t burn you as you walk.) No one has ever talked to me about how lonely it could be exploring the rage, the love, the desire — everything that lives within oneself.
Being the youngest has made me witness everything I needed (although didn’t want, sometimes) to see before I started the adulting journey. I have lived in the shadows of my elder siblings, I have walked hand-in-hand with a prayer that I may always be the best in the room. Now I have a stack of things I want to learn outside the house and unlearn from the inside. It’s rough, and no one has ever talked to me about it.
(Will I continue to live in the shadows of people before me? Will I become like them too, because their blood flows in mine and my flesh was made up of theirs?)
(Isn’t it too scary to detach and identify myself as my own person?)
I moved out of the house at seventeen. I’m nineteen now, only a couple of months away from my twentieth birthday (if God wills), and I have gotten braver. I love louder now, and I can cross the road without having to hold anyone’s hand along until we reach the other side. I’ve learned in what forms rage could manifest from mother and my elder siblings, and I have learned how to tame mine. I no longer stutter when I ask for help, and I can say no now. I don’t regard being alone as walking in an endless tunnel anymore, I read my books on my own and cook my own meals. I used to have people taking care of everything — my ticket and ID when we were about to board on a plane, the groceries, my laundry, my luggage when we were on a trip, myself when I was ill — but I can take care of all of them on my own now, and I’m living well.
(No, you won’t.)
(And it’s not.)
I was wounded early / and early I learned / that wounds made me. / I still follow the child / who still walks inside me. (Adonis, Celebrating Childhood.)
I am still the same kid who enjoys road trips, who likes being in control of the car playlist, who cries very easily upon the smallest notions of sadness, who loves people and wishes to die in the arms of someone I love, who still needs help from an elder figure to help me walk through life’s catastrophes — but I’m a lot braver now, and I no longer live in the shadows. I am my own sun, my own halo.
