Intuition

I didn't think I would drag writing about my daughters into this place, but my worry seems to lean into this sort of darkness, rather then the happy go lucky aspects of Motherhood I've wrote about elsewhere.

Two daughters, two worlds of individuality. My eldest is someone I would consider most Mothers picture of the ideal. She's physically gorgeous, straight A smart, a delight to be around, popular, confident, kind, compassionate and a high school cheerleader to really add a pretty pewter frame around her persona. She seems to have inherited every trait I like about myself and enhanced it times double. For her, a path in life seems firmly established. I can see her movements, her progression, the direction or course she's skipping lightly down. That predictability is easy to flow with, foresee and accept. It's all bright with strobe lights and a cheering section..........

And then my darling younger daughter............
A brilliant soul. Smart beyond her years, too smart to ever fit in with her peers, though she tries. A 13 year old doing high school courses. Next year, it's college time. A child I've fought hard to give a childhood, as well as letting her mind expand beyond the scope of most humans. I'm sick of them testing her, wanting to send her away. She already knows she's different, painfully so. "My Mom seems to be the only one that sees me in this erroneous world" says the little piece of paper absently left on her floor. I read her words and see she can look through the dark veil I've often peered at my world through........this frightens me.

She's yet to grasp the fine art of hiding her written words and she writes tenaciously these days. She's started a novel. She writes in the journals I give her. She writes on scrap pieces of paper and scribbles in the margins of her school papers. Just as I did at her age. It's like looking into a mirror of my own history.

She's writes with words beyond her years. She crafts metaphors that stab into the core of my understanding and I dare I admit, I see some of the darkest parts of my mentality seeping through her interior. I don't want that for her, I wouldn't wish my sort of mind on anyone, yet, she's right, I do see her and unfortunately, I understand. But I don't know how to protect her, explain it to her, teach her how to handle it.........

All the tests say she's a Math and Science genius first and foremost, but the part that perplexes all the people poking her is that she is accomplished in every level they throw at her. I am not even close to the intelligence level she resides in. I don't know what it's like to wake up from a sleep and feel a pressing need to measure the entire house so that ones knows the true square footage of the walls, the floor, and the ceiling. She does.

But I do share her insomnia. I don't even try to make her go back to bed anymore. The doctor sealed that deal when he told me to let her do what her mind needed. The two of us, 3:00 a.m, reading, or writing for me, and her, the same, or building something, or painting. Two fucked up minds trying to find peace in the middle of the night together.

The worry is cresting inside me. She's becoming more and more quiet. I can see it in my mind, her hurling down a black hole that I cannot follow, or yank her back from. I'm accomplished in the fine art of retrieval of ones mind.....but it took practice and conscious awareness. Things she couldn't possibly understand yet........

In her written words I see premonition of things to come. I hadn't thought all these years of what the repercussions of a bursting mind like hers would do when the normal onslaught of puberty came on. I envision it like a clash of the Titans. Can my young daughter handle it? Can her mind emerge on the other side unscathed and whole?

I sit here and remember with great clarity how hard it was for me to emerge, bloody, but whole on the other side of puberty, my teens. I still smile at the mere fact I lived. I didn't want to, I was always one emotion away from becoming a statistic in those days. One does not forget those emotions and thoughts. I could, can, barely keep a hold of the mind I've been sentenced with........and she has so much more going on inside of her brain then I ever had to deal with.

I know in my history and intuition, my worry is warranted. Unlike my older daughter, Kates future is hazy to me, masked by unknowns and variables I can't define. I just hope, that she allows me to continue to see her, that the trust remains. Because I know, although she may not fully understand it yet, that she holds all the power to detach from everyone around her and go wandering off into a place in her mind she may not feel like leaving...............that truth has always been the constant of my life.