Claire Kohda

"When you were a baby," she said, "I stayed up all night every night to watch you just in case I missed something about you changing." When I was around nine, she told me that she wished she could make my childhood last forever, so she could watch me grow up- becoming taller, becoming stronger, becoming womanlier, becoming more assertive and independent- for her whole life. When I stopped changing, when I stopped becoming and was just a stagnant thing that had become everything it could become, my mum drifted away from me. She stopped caring, it seemed, stopped showing me that she loved me, and, in fact, made me feel the opposite, as if, now my body was as unchanging as hers, I could no longer represent goodness to her. "I guess I do miss my mum," I say.… (mehr)