STARDUST ✑ twilight

chapter i ; a little more than kin,

[ STARDUST, VOLUME I ]
Chapter I ; A little more than kin,

❝A little more than kin,
and less than kind.❞
Hamlet | Act I, Scene II
William Shakespeare

❀

WHEN I WAS A LITTLE KID, I used to believe in wishing on stars. And if I had to estimate, I'd say I spent at least three nights a week looking out my window and wishing. Wishing on shooting stars was the true practice, the one that astronomers and star enthusiasts swore up and down worked, but I was never told it. We didn't have access to any books or browsers. I came up with one of my own in the dark hours of night when I was a hopeful, contemplative little girl. I took the brightest star I saw, named it Daisy, and then I closed my eyes and made a wish. I wouldn't say what I wanted aloud, but the wish would repeat in my head, even when I was asleep and meant to be thoughtless, dressed as a dream. Thoughtlessness. That blanket canvas of black when my mind floated through space, not a single idea in orbit. Vacant dreams, I used to call them.

I grew up in foster care. I wasn't a child Cinderella beaten, called names, and emotionally abused, but every pair of guardians I encountered were neglectful. They did the same to their own children. Every need, it was up to us to not starve or go weeks without washing off. We had to make our own food. We didn't have anyone to help us bathe. We had to dress ourselves. We rode the bus to school and back. We only had each other for company. As young as I was, it was a struggle to make ends meet. It was a pain to get myself up, help the younger kids get ready, and go to school and ignore other kids when they asked me why my hair was uncombed and my mix-matched outfits were shabby. I couldn't just outright say I didn't have a traditional household to kids that grew up happy and unaware of life's horrors. I couldn't admit why I was so mature for my age. We were kids. No one knew the difference unless they lived the difference. Almost everybody my age thought all kids had a mommy and daddy. The only ones who understood were the silent ones, the ones who stewed in their traumas but never said a word.

I didn't have any friends, aside from other kids stuck in negligent households right along with me. And I always had to leave them at one point. Foster parents were temporary, so it was bittersweet whenever the goodbyes came. I knew it was coming, but I couldn't help but want to stay—even with parents who only liked the money that came from powers that couldn't care less. I was irrelevant to their lights, but it felt like I meant something with those kids who latched on the first older face that gave them the time of day. They cried when seeing me go, clinging to my legs as I stood silently and dejectedly at the door with my threadbare knapsack in tow. Every house was the same, but every goodbye was hard.

As young and as simple-minded as I was, I was always in a headspace beyond my years. You had to grow up fast in a broken system, just as you would a broken home; neither were too dissimilar from each other. Staying oblivious wasn't an option. You learned in a dog-eat-dog world, you were the only person who had your best interest in mind—the only person who would stay to save you from drowning in fight-or-flight. Depending on others was an unaffordable hazard. And though it scared me, I had to be the one there to catch my own fall. Trust and love were difficult to give willingly after years spent disappointed at every turn. I didn't even know how to reciprocate them. I never had a chance to reciprocate them.

Then one day, things changed. Not in a way I'd expected. In a way, it was the very thing I'd wished for that night Daisy was a blazing glory in the sky.

They changed for the better. For my better.

After spending my first eight years alive jumping boats, sinking or swimming wherever I went, it came as a shock when I was adopted. The months that followed were foreign territory. Having someone who actually wanted to dress me, who took me out to celebrate when I got a good report card, who learned to braid hair just for me, who showed me off to his friends, who got me presents every Christmas—it felt surreal. And I couldn't believe he'd fought for the right to be my guardian after they'd told him a single father wasn't a good homelife situation for a little girl. He fought for me, some quiet little girl with bruised knees and frizzy hair. I'd given up on being happy.