Letter to myself at Six

Kate,

This is the year that you have learned what terror is, though you do not yet know this word. And hand in hand with that terror, you feel an odd sensation that you will describe in your later life as "a hand of ice over the heart." Honey, this word is called dread. Up until now you walked through the world expecting to laugh, read books, charm the people you meet, and walk unflinching into new situations owning them before all is said and done. But this year is the year you will start expecting to fail, become unsure even of the things you know, that you will learn to wait for cues of coming danger. This is the year everything in your life—at home and at school—will tell you that you are not safe. The words that go with this feeling, sweetheart, are worthlessness and shame. This is the year you will become afraid of dogs. This is the year you will begin to believe that you must settle for crumbs, and be grateful to have been thought of at all. You will be 29 before you are even able to consider that you deserve something more.

You splintered inside your own screams, dating your life from the day your father blackened your mother's eye. I am sorry to say you will see him beat her again, at least 5 or 6 times before you really leave their home. You will hear him call her stupid everyday for about 13 more years. You will learn that your intellect frightens him and earns his respect at the same time. So to feel loved, you will only ever show anyone this part of yourself. Later, you will add your anger as expressed through sarcasm and unyieldingness to your arsenal. Kate, you will hurt so many people. You will wound your own soul deeply, too.

And you will move forward with your life in this vein, shunning your withered parts, afraid to ever dance, or need, or play again. You will pick men to love who will be openly astounded by your intellect, but who will have none of your heart, and you will internalize this as further proof of your unworthiness. At one point in your late twenties, it will not be enough for you to have a man respect your mind (as you told yourself it was), and it will feel as though the bottom has dropped from your world, because it is the only trick you will think you have up your sleeve.

You will be a writer, and will know that you are a writer as early as at 10 years old. Two of the men you will love will champion your work, the closest thing to your actual heart, and you will want to believe that this means love. One of them, in your early twenties will paste your poems all over his wall while he dates and eventually marries another girl. The other, in your later twenties, will tell you that he carries them (the corpus of your work, he will call it) with him wherever he goes. He will put your poems alongside his paintings on a web site, and will tell anyone who'll listen about you, saying that your work is beautiful, that it is erotic, and ignites the imagination. He will even ask you to write him a poem in exchange for one of his paintings. It will feel in that moment like pure adoration for him to ask this of you.

He will introduce you to people at parties before you have a moment to introduce yourself; He will say that he never cared for poetry before your work opened him up. Before any of this happens, though, you will ask him out, and he will say that he is not interested in a relationship. You will hear of two dates that he goes on within weeks of that answer. When you do, your knees will buckle, and your heart will open and then crumple like a biscuit tin. You will still love him when he is no longer talking to either of those women, also within a few short weeks. You are the one who will still be there, looking him full in the face.

This is the man you will meet at a wedding reception where you will be miserable because the man you thought you cared for at the time will be there, three tables over, with his girlfriend. Sadly, this is not a new scene for you at the age of 24. It will be pretty par for the course. This man, the one you are so miserable over when you meet the painter—the love of your life—will not even care about your poetry. He will think he could have written better. Sadly, this will not be a warning sign to you while you wait, wanting something to come of your feelings for him.

By the time you are 30 you will still not know how to drive because you remain haunted by the agony of your father helping you with math homework. Six is the age you learn that you would rather never try than try and fail on the first attempt. If you cannot do something right the first time, you will not do it. This paradigm will ruin so much for you for so long. You will live your life embarrassed by the smallest failures and oversights, and will have a difficult time recovering your equilibrium afterward.

But you are tough, too, Kate. You grow up to be very generous, eloquent, and dignified. You are an artist honey, not in spite of your pain, but because of it. You are a writer because of your wounds. And you will never make the mistakes your mother did, because you understand the value of an object lesson. You have a real gift for assessment, collating the data presented in a given situation, and interpreting it, anecdotally, and you know how to implement an action plan, girl! You are punctual, analytical, funny, and you yearn passionately...

You do make it to college, just like you're always talking about; you will even go to graduate school to become a literature professor. You have friends who love you. You have two sisters who look up to you. Your parents' terrible marriage will end. And you, little girl, do survive.

So much Love,

The Kate you will become