This is my child and she needs and needs and needs. I can’t look at her. I can’t look at myself
My friend’s mother drops her at the school gate. Her mother kisses and hugs her before she walks in.
How pathetic, I think. How needy and nerdy. I can’t relate. Why does she need her mother to kiss her goodbye when she’s so grown up?
The days go on. I don’t talk much. School is my safe space, my happy place, where I’m seen. My teachers lavish attention on my eager mind. Still, I’m reserved.
Home isn’t a bad place, but it’s a lonely place. I do most things myself. I do projects on my own, homework on my own, go to sleep on my own. There are lots of siblings, but I’m alone. My mother is too busy to draw me out, too preoccupied to know who I played with that day and that I won a prize in sports.
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