Little girl - you really didn’t know who you were.
This is not what you really wore on your wedding day.
But it is what you wore on a wedding day.
Did you really know what you wanted on your wedding day? Did you know how to ask for it? But of course you didn’t, because you really didn’t know who you were.
Who knows what you wore on your real wedding day? That day was a notion come to fruition. Run away and get married, be rescued from what is now. Start a new life, not a care given to what it will be, just what it will not be.
But full escape did not ensue. Hence the second wedding day, and this dress.
You wore it because it is what “she” wanted. Did you even get a say in what it would look like? She sewed you in, she had always been this way, controlling.
So appropriate - the collar chokes, the layers of ruffles look pretty but hide the true beauty that’s underneath, and it is awfully difficult to get out of.
Now it has been altered. You tried to reuse what your mother had given you. You tried to make it your own, make it more useful. Though it looks good on the outside, on the underneath side it shows your lack of skill.
You can’t fix it, you can’t reuse it, you can’t discover who you are in that dress.
That dress is you, and that is the problem, it is the old you.
The old you - the little girl who doesn’t know who she is, doesn’t know what she wants, doesn’t know how to be new.
Come away from not knowing. Come away from not being.
Shed and be naked. Although you don’t know who you are when you’re naked. Just stand there. Just be.
You are a woman beautiful and fragile.
That is where it begins.
People will often say, “you are definitely your mother’s daughter”, referring to some other mother and some other daughter.
But when your mother is dead, and has been since before you got a chance to fully grow up, you don’t ever hear that. Who knows if you are your mother’s daughter?
Well today I discovered I am my mother’s daughter.
At the age of 18, I was the same girl that she was when she was 18. But when I reached the age of 18, she was dead, and I was alone as a woman. I didn’t even know how to discover who I was, I wasn’t even asking that question. I didn’t care.
Just take me away from here, let me start over with something new. I will jump on this train and see where it takes me. This train took 20 years to arrive at a destination that I am ready to get off at. The destination is the discovery of who I really am, what I really want, and how to be. The only thing is... I have to step off this train naked.
And this is where I stand, naked with the dress that my mother wore, puddled at my feet.
Sweet Mother, I don’t think you got the chance that I am now getting - the chance to discover who I really am. I am not standing here with your dress puddled at my feet for me alone. Today I am taking this dress off for both of us.
So appropriate - I begin this journey at the exact same age that your journey on this earth ended.
Rest in peace sweet mother, your daughter lives!
