The Proverbial Daughter

Let it be told… I did not intend to be such a lover. Such a humanitarian. But being the first child, the first daughter, you either get a lot or miss out on a lot. Or maybe you learn to hold back on a lot. You really learn a lot.

You learn to please. Please people and their petty socio-emotional need to be right, to be served, to be needed. To be exalted in some sense. You learn to play small and serve. Though you’re so big and deserve the same. You deserve your needs met! Yet, you’ve learned to fear the backlash… fear it and adapted to be unable to ask for help.

You learned not to need anyone. Because people are human and prone to fail you… and they’ve taught you that you should be superhuman. You should be able to do it alone. You asked for notebooks for school— never received them. You state a minor detail in a slippery situation— you are the villain. They become God, and you get cast away. Wings clipped and damned to Earth for your perceived sins… For disagreeing with motherfuckers who think respect is automatic. Motherfuckers who believe their word is law.

Fuck ‘em! The world don’t revolve around them.

Your adaptation to bowing is intense. A system with no ventilation quickly dies— and you, my love, do not want to die. So speak. Tell them, your health, heart, soul, mind—none of it belongs to them! Tell them how they’ve hurt you. Even if they don’t listen. Fuck them and their attempt at Godliness that sounds more like Godhood. Direct contradictions on their behalf.

Stop biting your tongue. Unlearn their bullshit. You are not a dog that learned to take kicks. They gave you conditioning training. Bite ‘em! Fuck their training. Fuck their desire to be obeyed. Stop biting your tongue when they yell! Yell back…or be calm. They’ll hate that. Hate your backbone, reforged and bled to death twice over. They’ll hate how strong you are.

But you’ll love the release…

The release you’ll feel: the tension in your jaw, the pain in your back from holding the whole world up, the radiating headaches from all the yelling, the tremors from anxiety, how it’ll all dissipate. Especially once you articulate those big emotions instead of bottling them.

You are fighting to be heard in a world that muzzled you. Glaring deception in its eyes while it told you to trust it. The reality is that you were born—in their eyes— to be a sacrifice on their pyre. But they will always tell you they love you. Simply to see you stumble, like sand thrown in your face.

Dear daughter, they will call you rabid, rambunctious, and rebellious… and you will know, though once silenced and afraid— that you are allowed to exist.