You have quickly arrived at your 16th year baby girl. You are so very beautiful and hilarious, as you always have been. Currently, you have mostly bleached hair with pastel pink and purple tips. Your skin is super pale and you usually only wear dark eyeliner that highlights your pretty eyes. You wear mostly dark clothes and all of your shirts are enormously big and long. You like you big black boots, too. You wear lace choker necklaces and chunky silver chains with large charms on them. You are thinking about re-piercing your ears now also.
Most of your time is spent online still. You love to scroll and read through all the days happenings in the internet world. Earbuds in, you laugh to yourself constantly. Friends in real life are still hard. You chat online with people and hang on with co-op people during class days. You do all of your assignments, even though you don’t really want to. You don’t like having things due, so you tend to rush through them and get them done as soon as you can. You do math with me and Spanish online with a Guatemalan tutor. You aren’t sure what you’re going to do in the future yet. You have mentioned that maybe legal assistant might not be so awful. I think you might like going into the legal field. If you were the academic sort, I know you would be a terrific lawyer. You love to argue and make people see your side of an issue. You can get so passionate about a topic that matters to you.
You got a new laptop for your birthday and you have gotten back into playing Minecraft. Your brothers like that. They love to watch you. Milo likes that you have something in common. He likes to give you building advice. You can’t stand when people watch you play though. Occasionally, you will get out a canvas and paints and do a little painting for your bedroom. I’m glad you do that. You don’t really sing or knit anymore. You do like to make up parodies of current songs and sometimes you make videos for them. We all love them so much. You think it’s no big deal, but I couldn’t come up with the things you do. You have a special musical ability, but you want it to be just for fun. I’m glad you do something with it at least. I hope you can save the songs/videos that you’ve created forever and watch them back when you’re older. They really are awesome and often hilarious.
You still want to be vegan, but we get you to eat a little dairy because you need protein sources in your diet. You do it very reluctantly. You are so upset by how animals are treated in the dairy and poultry industry. I understand. You think I don’t. You have recently become almost obsessed with you size and weight. It was never an issue for you, but now you think you must be stick thin and perfect looking. It makes me so sad. You did start exercising daily, which is a good thing for you-but the reason behind it isn’t. You cry and cover yourself up with clothing. I wish you didn’t feel the way you do. I wish you get see how beautiful you and your body are. It is hard growing up staring at “perfect” people online ad nauseam.
My Keely, I love you so much and I’m sorry life is often hard. I hope we can navigate the rest of your childhood safely together and that you reach adulthood prepared and excited for your future. You’re always my baby girl.