Dear Little Me,

I don’t remember exactly what age we were when we realized there were men better than our father. I wish I could recall it now, but maybe you know.
I’d always known it, maybe, or I like to say I did. You would tell me that too, that you’d always known it. But false maturity got the best of us and we found love in men just like him. We still do. We still try not to.
You remember, of course, when we wrote those letters to him, our future husband, with expectations, or more so standards, of who he would be. He was nothing like our father, and we were treated better than our mother. We fell short of that. But we felt it, didn’t you? I always knew you’d leave.
When our mother left him, and we were twelve years old, you didn’t understand the strength it’d take out of a woman just as sentimental as us to do so. We were excited about the change, the new house, we were excited to be in a place he wasn’t. A place without a constant fear that we were doing something wrong.
And you’ll hate me when I tell you this, we put ourselves right back in that place at twenty-two, tip-toeing around a man for the sake of love for two more years that we didn’t even have in us.
The realization crept in throughout the summer, brewing from the previous spring where we’d grown to hate him—the boy we’d called love for the past two years. The realization was rooted in the strength of our mother, and her hope for us. It bloomed from the love our best friend’s (you know, the one from hat day in fourth grade) husband showed her—showed us, even. We saw a reality that you’d never believe was real at the age of eight years old, where normalcy was set in an angry man in the home.
You’ll read at eighteen,
“if you’re raised with an angry man in your house,
 there will always be an angry man in your house.
 you will find him even when he is not there.
 and if one day you find that there is
 no angry man in your house—
well, you will go find one and invite him in!”
And at twenty-two you’ll believe it.
But now we know, at twenty-four, that it doesn’t have to be. We can take that angry man, and tell him goodbye. We can still have love for him, but know it is not our burden to hold. We can feel that anger in ourselves at times, but make peace with it in the end.
We realize again, at twenty-four, that there are men better than our father. I’m sorry it takes us so long to leave.

Love always,
A Stronger You.