juniper liu. seven. cbd.

juniper liu;

When I am four, I am walking alongside my mother, her hands digging around in her purse, and suddenly they begin to snicker. Quickly I realize that they are laughing at my mother. For what, I am uncertain, but my response lives in both our memories so clearly.

"Mama, they're just jealous," I'd said.

She tells the story later anecdotally at parties, something amusing. Her daughter, her savior, her little girl who always had her back. I still wonder to this day if my mother realizes the real magnitude of her story, the ways in which competition had already been bred into me at the age of four.

Me soothing my mother by reminding her that other women are jealous of her beauty is nothing short a horror. I have spent my entire life with her in my ear, hands held in tightly hidden fists at my side while she breeds between my sister and I that same horrible jealousy. That competition. That blood.

And I have never forgiven myself for wanting to win.

Whatever it is. I want to win.