Dear, Little Me.

Today I turned 24. Twenty-four, and I am not celebrating but I will let myself talk to the little version of me for a while. I wish she’s doing fine, wherever she is inside me now. So, Instead of candles, I’m giving her this.

I'm sorry.

I know that’s not enough. I’m really sorry. I know two words can’t undo years, can’t smooth over everything that happened after you stopped being the one in charge of this life. But I need to say it anyway, out loud, even if it’s just to a version of myself that doesn’t exist in any mirror anymore — I’m sorry.

I’m sorry that you were so innocent, baby. You didn’t know yet what the world does to soft things. You didn’t know that love could come with conditions, that home wasn’t always going to feel safe, that the people who were supposed to protect you would sometimes be the ones you needed protecting from. You were just a kid. You believed things would be okay because someone told you they would be, and you had no reason yet not to believe them.

I’m sorry that innocence didn’t get to stay intact. I’m sorry it got worn down by things you never should have had to carry.

I think about you sometimes. The version of me that existed before all of this. Before the exhaustion. Before the grieving became a permanent tenant in my chest instead of a visitor that eventually leaves. You didn’t ask for any of what came afteror to learn how to make yourself smaller so the people around you had less to be disappointed in or to lose people you loved without ever getting a real explanation for why they left. You were just trying to grow up. That’s all you wanted. And somewhere along the way, growing up turned into something closer to surviving, And I don’t think that’s fair to you. I don’t think you deserved that trade.

I’m sorry that the future you were dreaming about, whatever that looked like in your small, hopeful imagination isn’t the future you got. I’m sorry that I, the person you turned into, feel messed up most days. Tired in ways you didn’t have words for yet. Grieving things you hadn’t even lost yet when you were still small enough to believe the world was mostly kind.

I know you didn’t picture this. I know if you could see me now — twenty-four, worn down, still learning how to breathe through the weight of everything, I bet you might not even recognize me, no? And that breaks something in me, because you deserved to grow into someone who felt proud of the life she built, not someone standing here apologizing to the ghost of who she used to be. But I also want you to know something, even if it’s complicated, even if it doesn’t erase any of the sorry. You didn’t do anything wrong. None of what happened to you was because you weren’t good enough or careful enough or lovable enough.

You were a child.

Children aren’t supposed to have to protect themselves from the people who raised them or brace for loss or learn early what it means to grieve something before they even have language for grief.

If anyone owes an apology in this story, it’s not you. It was never you.

And I say this gently, because I don’t fully believe it every day either — Maybe I am not a finished disaster. Maybe I am just a person who is still standing after a lot of things tried to knock her down. Maybe being messed up and still here aren’t contradictions, right? Maybe they can be true at the same time. You gave me the beginning of this life with everything you had, your innocence, your hope, your trust , your dreams and even though the world didn’t always meet that with the same gentleness, I’m still here, baby. Still carrying pieces of you. Still trying.

So I’m so sorry, little baby, the younger me.

I’m sorry the world got to you before I could protect you from it. I’m sorry I couldn’t stop any of what came next. But I promise you this , I’m not done, okay? Whatever mess this life feels like right now, I am not going to stop trying to build something out of it, for both our sakes. You didn’t get to choose what happened to you. But I get to choose what happens now for us, baby. And I choose to keep going, for the girl who used to believe things would be okay because maybe, someday, slowly, they still can be.

Little One,

I wish you were proud of me. I wish, wherever you are inside me, you could look at who I’ve become and not have to cry for me because none of what happened to you was ever your fault, not one piece of it. You didn’t cause the storms that came later. You were just a kid standing in weather she didn’t choose, doing her best to stay standing. I wish you could see past the mess, past the tiredness, past the version of me that sometimes still feels like she’s barely holding together and see instead that I made it here. That the storm didn’t wash me away completely, even when it must have looked like it would.

I think about it like a tree that’s been through too many winters bent in places it shouldn’t bend, scarred where the wind was cruelest, but still rooted, still standing come spring, even if some of its branches grew back a little crooked. I want you to look at that tree and not just see the damage. I want you to see that it’s still alive. Still here to be looked at, still capable of holding new leaves someday, even after everything it survived to get this far.

I know so many things happened to you that you never should have had to carry, losses you didn’t ask for, people who left without explanation, a home that wasn’t always the shelter it should have been. And still, somehow, both of us made it to twenty-four. Not whole in all the ways I wish I were. But here. Surviving another year, carrying you with me the whole way, even when it felt like too much weight for one person to hold. I hope that’s something you could be proud of. I hope that, someday, I can be proud of it too.

I wish that after all the storms, there’s finally some sunlight waiting for both of us — enough that I could show it to you like something I’m proud to hold up and say, look, we made it here, baby! Look what we built out of the wreckage. I hope one day I can brag about that to you, not because everything is already perfect but because we’re finally somewhere calm enough to breathe in.

Happy birthday, little one.

I still carry you everywhere. In the smallest corners of myself — in the way I still look at the sky whenever life becomes too heavy, in the way I still believe tomorrow might arrive with gentler hands than yesterday.

I often wonder if you’ve been waiting for me.

Waiting on the other side of all these birthdays, sitting quietly with your knees pulled to your chest, asking only one question.

"Did we make it?"

I don’t know how to answer you, baby.

We made it here.

Every birthday, I meet you, again.

You stand there with your tiny hands folded, eyes closed tightly before blowing out the candles, believing wishes travel faster when they leave the heart all at once.

To be happy. To be free.

I've whispered those words so many times that they have become the heartbeat beneath every prayer I've ever made. Sometimes I spoke them softly, afraid the world would think I was asking for too much. Other times I cried them so loudly inside my own head that I thought heaven had no choice but to hear me.

I wished. And wished. And wished.

Like someone standing at the shoreline, sending paper boats into an endless ocean, hoping at least one would reach the place where miracles are made.

Every birthday, I tucked the same small seed back into the earth, as though hope were something that could survive being planted over and over again. I watered it with wishes, with prayers whispered until they became part of the wind. There were years when the soil offered nothing but silence, when I wondered if I had mistaken waiting for growing. Yet I kept believing the roots were simply learning patience in the dark. That somewhere beneath all that unseen work, spring was finding its way to me. And when it finally arrived, happiness wouldn’t bloom because it had been granted permission—it would bloom because flowers have never asked the sky whether they deserve the light.

So today, on another birthday, I don’t have a brand-new wish to make. I’m still holding the same one the little version of me carried with both hands, protecting it like a tiny candle from the wind.

I hope one day we won't have to whisper it anymore.

I hope one day happiness will stop feeling like a distant country I’ve only seen on postcards and start feeling like home.

Until then, happy birthday to the child who never stopped believing another year might finally be the year.

I still wish.

I still pray.

I still believe.

That one day, somehow, somehow... I will finally know what it feels like;

To be happy and free.