A Letter to the Daughters

If I had a daughter I would tell her a story. I would tell her about the time I dated that same guy over and over and over again. I would tell her how in the beginning it hurt so bad I thought my heart was literally going to break and I couldn’t breathe. I would tell her about how crazy I felt and how confused I was. I would tell her how when you first start dating someone everything is so wonderful and beautiful and there are all these little things about the person that you like and you think they are the one. It’s always the little unique things like how they eat something, or where they grew up. You make a dream that it is meant to be and you line up all these reasons why. You attach yourself to the dream and it must survive in order to sustain you. You look past things that are important because the belief in the dream is so intoxicating you just can’t let anything ruin it now. Until that one day it gets really bad and you can’t deny it anymore and it is staring you in the face in the form of a blue nose ring on the counter in the bathroom that is neither yours and definitely not his. Or until the day you come home early from work and find him stacking all the coins in the house by quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies and his pupils are as big as saucers. Then the dream fades and what is left is the staunch, bitter, stale taste of reality. You look around at all the things that used to be so endearing and you see them in a completely different light. All of a sudden that old leather couch y’all rescued from Good Will together isn’t so Renaissance and is just a cheap used sofa with…