And that is where the now comes in.
There are not as many fairy tales anymore.
At least not the ones we thought there would be.
We struggle.
With sickness.
With friendships.
With all the things we never realised about adulthood.
Sometimes it hurts.
But still we strive.
To have a relationship like our parents.
To capture each day.
To seize it.
To live as if this is the only day we get.
To learn.
To create.
We love,
in a way others don’t know how to love.
And in the brokenness we find ourselves, we find something complete.
Something whole.
Something exquisite.
Made out of rubble and dirt and tears and all the frustrations of life.
Our family,
somehow making the pain bearable.
Making it beautiful.
Writing this wasn’t easy. I had to reach into the deepest part of myself and admit things I did not want to.
I had to reminisce.
I had to grow.
I hate growing
It is painful.
These childhood years are over and adulthood descends like a hurricane, ready to uproot everything and scare us away.
That is why this book is so important to me.
In these pages I have immortalised, for all time,
Family.
And healing.
And trapped a little pain between the pages.
When I became ill, the only thing that kept me going was my family. I am lucky, many don’t have this. I’ve always been told that nothing is all good, but my parents make me believe that something can be all good. And that is why I wanted to write this book. This coming of age. This memoir. This protection of my fairy tale of a childhood.
Mum,
Fireflies and stars will always remind me of you.
They brighten the night and you brighten my life x (Written on the back of the book 😍)
Note from Claire
Charlotte wrote this whilst she was in the throes of being ill, without any proper diagnosis or potential of healing. Writing has always been a form of therapy for my youngest twin, and homeschool has allowed her to follow her dreams, at her own pace and in her own time.
I believe the darkest days are over now. Through her own sheer will and pig-headedness and one or two excellent doctors, her multiple chronic illnesses are, at last, under some kind of control. She is leading a somewhat normal life. Charlotte still has to guard against relapses, but is now so versed in the symptoms of one coming on, she is able to put the brakes on her life until she feels well enough to pick up where she left off.
This book was written in modern free verse style of poetry, and probably translates better properly formatted within the structure of a book. I have done my best to format it similarly but WordPress doesn’t allow a lot of the creativity with spaces, blank lines and the like. The actual book is far more creatively set out and illustrates better the slightly unusual punctuation to be found in this type of modern verse.