This is for you

For your eyes only.

I’m writing this here because I want it to stick.

I don’t want it to go when your phone crashes or when you get a better one. I want it to stay somewhere in the clouds. Somewhere a little more permanent. Somewhere where it’ll feel more like a letter.

I loved you when you were 21. I love you at 22.

I’ve been through cycles of self discovery with you, through the exhilarating process of learning someone that sometimes doesn’t understand herself. I’ve hated some things, I’ve loved many things.

With you, they’re so scarce, those touches. Those moments of vulnerability, where you curl up to me and fold into a ball, asking me for some warmth. The kisses, and the pleasuring. The things that say I love you quite easily, they’re so scarce. You take the hard way around instead, the defiance and the subtle looks, the random midnight messages and the childish names. That’s how you tell me you love me, I’ve learnt.

It’s hard, but those moments drive me. Those moments remind me why us exists. They remind me how much I care and want to protect you from everything, including yourself. I don’t want to you be weighed down into moods, dragging your existence along every day. I want for me to always be happy, buoyant. Not because of me, but because of you. Because I hope I’ll bubble through you, and you’ll learn to cheer up around and without me. That you’ll learn to hold me without hesitation, to own me and let me own you.

I want nothing more than to make you happy, to help you explore your sexiness, to build your confidence around your abilities, to help you be a strong person and not just the facade of one but one who’s truly aware she’s going to be everything she wishes for. One who doesn’t hide behind walls of limiting thoughts and fears of the future. I want to be the thought that gets you out of the sinking moods, up until these moods don’t exist anymore.

I want to be your reminder that there’s happiness, beyond anyone but in yourself. In the things you can and cannot do, in the things you have and have not experienced. I want you to see places and experience cultures. I want you to have all the nicer things, to read the most interesting books, to lay in a bathing suit on a clean beach, and listen to Squirrel sing. I want you to get jobs that are difficult but possible, so you build your confidence, you trust yourself some more. I want many things for you. And this is another opportunity to wish.

So I’m wishing to the stars. My baby’s 22. I want her to have an awesome year, and I want to love her harder than I did when she was 21.

Happy birthday, Ezinneamaka.