Fragments

Dear Hazel,

This is a letter I wrote from the POV of the character's (Hazel) deceased mother. Like many things I write, I wrote this at night when my mom was yelling at me to go to sleep. The whole storyline was that Hazel was left a bunch of journals when her mother died. Maybe I'll make it a story one day, but for now it's in Fragments.
----------------------------------------------

I love you.

I didn't want to write this letter. Put it off for weeks after you turned twelve. I just couldn't stand the idea that if you are reading this, Hazel, then I am dead. The universe has decided to chop off my lifeline a little early and now I'm gone.

God, I don't want to think about that. I want to think about the day you were born- the happiest day of my life- or the day you first uttered "Mama" or any day in the twelve-plus years I have had you in my life.

But nobody gets what they want. Not always. That's rule number 1 right there, Hazel:

1. YOU DON'T ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU WANT.

Oh, there are so many rules I should have taught you, so many life-changing stories I should have told you. So I'm using this as a limp excuse to avoid that part.

See, if you haven't figured it out already sweetie (of course you did, you obviously inherited your father's wit), this is my final letter to you. It should be like your grandmother's final letter to me or your father's final letter to you, but I've never had much of a writing gene.

So, instead of my last written words to you being so full of crap I have to tear it up (I can't currently- the shredder's broken), I'm leaving you something else.

Hazel, when I was your age, I began to write in a diary. But I refused to call it that. I called it my journal because diaries conjured up pink borders and glittery ink filling up the tiny lines. But really, it was my diary. I wrote everything there- my juvenile crushes, my misplaced anger, my hurt- I wrote it all there.

And at the beginning of every entry, as you'll notice, I named it after a song I really liked. Or a song that had caught my attention as it warbled out of my half-broken speakers or the wonky car radio.

But these entries, Hazel, they detail everything, twelve to sixteen. They hold stories from my misfit days at Clover Ameryst Junior High School, to the hormonal, rebellious time I had at Tempest Preparatory Academy.

They don't sound ridiculous. They sound like they should sound- in that way that makes me thank the universe that those years were the years I wrote about. Those years were the years recorded on paper by me, by my swirling emotions and thoughts.

This journal, separated into six different notebooks, has me in it. Me with my mistakes, me with my teenage recklessness, and me when I reached my low points. It contains my misery, my desire to be someone else, my severe self-doubt.

When I wrote on those pages, my world was changing. And some days, it seemed the universe just wasn't on my side. And a lot of those days, it seemed my world would never return to the sunshine-filled, rainbow-abundant, naive and innocent little world I had once lived in. It seemed my days were now gray, tiring, dark.

I lost a lot in those years. I got beaten down harder than I ever thought possible.

But damn it, if they weren't some of the most precious years of my life.

Because I'm grateful now, Hazel. I'm grateful that I got to experience it all and have it there for you to read. I want you to learn, Hazel. I want you to be a better person than I ever was. And the only way I know how is through this journal.

Hazel, I love you more than anything. And I have and will always want the best for you. And the best for you is to never run into the same mistakes as I have.

Oh, Hazel, you've already gone through so much.

But you can get through this.

Because I'll be there.

Page after page, after page.

I may not be present anymore to kiss you goodnight or ruffle your hair. But I am here, in writing.

Forever.