I hadn’t noticed her until recently, but I suppose she was always there. Maybe like me, she thrived more in the shadows out of the center of attention despite how badly she wanted to be acknowledged. Maybe she’s just more of a listener than a talker, saving the sharing of her thoughts for the people she could feel connected with. Maybe I’ve always known she was there, waiting to be noticed. Maybe I felt her there all along lending me her strength to survive the things I needed to. Or maybe she was waiting the whole time. Waiting for me to make things better for myself, for us. Maybe she was waiting to see where things ended up seeing if it was worth going through with all of it.

However she came to exist, she’s here now beside me. Though I may occasionally forget her presence throughout the week, she’s never far from me. She’s young; maybe 10 years old. She’s quiet – doesn’t say a word but rather expresses all she needs to with her eyes and her body language. I don’t find it difficult to understand the looks she gives me or what it means when she averts her eyes, and they start darting around the room. If she sits and fidgets her legs which refuse to sit still, I know she is ill at ease with something. Sometimes she looks at me with big, sad eyes as if she can see my heart and knows the things that trouble me before I even dare to speak them. Because she can. Because she’s me.

She’s the kid I used to be, the one I always think about. She’s the one who lost the childhood she deserved and now feels lost and hopeless that she’ll ever make it out of that situation. She’s the kid that tried all she could to not be a bother, and not let things between others escalate because there was enough fighting as is. She’s the one who couldn’t sleep half the time, too wired by the turbulent events of the day. She was the one who excelled in school to feel appreciated and to try to bring attention to something good rather than how things usually were. She’s the one who learned to close doors and set things down as gently and quietly as possible so as not to cause even a slight disturbance that would undoubtedly draw negative attention. She’s the one who studied others closely, to watch what things they did brought good and bad reactions, and then would replicate the positive ones.

She had to give up something she loved because of the illness that could have been avoided. She’s the one who lost out on normal kid activities and had to be taken out of school at a crucial age (or she will be; she’s not there yet.) She’s the one who took chances on people she liked only to have things thrown back in her face. She’s the one who tried to force herself into enjoying religion because everyone else seemed to and they all looked so genuinely happy doing it, and she just wanted to be happy too. She’s the one who spent most of her time in her own head; quiet to the world outside while her mind was alight with ideas of what the future might look like. Enamored and terrified about how things might turn out once she was on her own.

And now, she sits with me staring at me like she’s waiting for something. Something to happen? An answer? I don’t know. It could be she’s just waiting to see if we made it out okay, and if that’s the case, I tell her it could have been a lot worse than it is. But we didn’t make it out without substantial harm. All I know is she sits near me now, and she looks around at all we have, and she doesn’t really smile, but she doesn’t really frown either. Her mouth is kind of turned up on one side, and her lips are pulled thinner than usual. And her eyes just scan around her as she lightly sways her feet forward and back.

Whatever she’s doing here, she helps me. Whenever I start to go to deep into my past and I can feel the emotions still affecting me nearly as much as they did then, I look to her. And when I look, I am reminded of a couple of things:

1. I am not that kid anymore. I am not in that situation, and I am not as helpless and sad as I once was. I can take care of myself, decide things for myself, and love myself in the ways I was lacking back then.
2. Though I didn’t have anyone there for me then, I can be that person I always needed, for her.

It doesn’t really make sense because she’s just a figment in my head; she isn’t real. And I know this. I know she is only a thought in my mind, a culmination of many thoughts and emotions manifesting into this sort of self-therapeutic, coping mechanism. She’s here because I needed someone like me when I was her age. I needed someone older, who had gone through something similar and who made it out okay to tell me it was going to be alright. I needed someone to listen to me and who could truly understand the pain I was feeling. I needed someone to tell me that I wasn’t crazy for feeling the things I was feeling, or someone to look at my pain and validate it. I just needed someone who saw me. And now I can be that for her.

For me.

It’s strange, because in a way I feel the connection that she is me, and I am her. And yet, I feel like her parent or guardian rather than being on the same level, but she doesn’t really look at me in a way that feels like she thinks of me that way. I think she just sees me as her: nothing more, nothing less. Maybe she doesn’t have any expectations of me at all. Maybe she just comes and visits for a break from her daily life. Maybe she’s here to help me. Whatever the reason, I feel a better understanding of myself when I take the time to sit with her. Though we don’t exchange anything more than glances to each other, I understand her more than I’ve ever understood anyone in my life.

And even when I can’t see her, I know she is always with me. I can feel her. I feel her making me smile and laugh more often than I used to; can feel her making me dance to music more openly than I would have before. I can feel her inside my mind showing me that it’s okay to let go sometimes and enjoy the things we like. She encourages me to try new things, or to spend a bit of extra money for an experience I had previously convinced myself was never available to me. I can feel her egging me on to do the things I want, to not take on extra things that are not mine to handle, and to live as freely and unapologetically like myself that I can. And when I have a tough choice to make, she comes out. She sits with me a while until I ponder everything, and cry my eyes out, and come to a decision. And when I make it and start to feel at peace again, she vanishes.

But she’s never far from me. She’s always here in my mind helping me heal, and in my heart opening it back up after all the years of hurt. She knows I need her, and I know she needs me too. I need her to push forward, to live a life I’ve always wanted to. And she needs me to be okay; to have something to look forward to after all the trauma is done and to know that there is still a life worth living. So I try to live, with her in mind. For her and my sake, I will try.