Dear AnyOneGirl…

Dear Claire,

The other day in hot frustration, I half yelled/half choked on my words: I hate needing people. They leapt out of my throat and left the sour taste of truth on my tongue.

When I was a little girl, about 2 years old, I would insist my mother let me wander in the backyard on my own. I have an image of her in my mind watching me from the door frame; white knuckles gripping the swung out door and one bare foot on the concrete porch, ready to sprint over if I fell. I would pick endless daisies and tear straggling flowers from bushes, bringing them back to her in squashed fistfuls of posies. Since then have I left her in many more doorways, watching me walk away into some swampy decision of my own.

A keen hunger for independence has always gnawed at me and and like most good things, there is always a fight to earn it. But once you’ve clutched it in both hands, skinned-kneed and grinning; feeling it ebb away from your being is like watching yourself fade, all your colour and shape droned out by a dull fizz of static; cold electricity crawling through your veins.

Lately, there have been things stopping me from being myself, and I know it’s all temporary, and I that I just need to be patient, but every day I feel the growing softness of my bones. Sometimes it is nice to be looked after and to rest in the shade of other’s experience; to examine closely their beards and pipes of perspective. But there is nothing quite rewarding as being the ruler of your own garden, to pick the flowers when you please.

Love,

Amy

I think this is my favorite letter so far xxx Read more of Amy’s words here