No. 19
YOUR baby bunny
A BABY BUNNY SITS IN A MEADOW…
It is very beautiful and I have never seen anything like it. Beautiful is not even the right word.
It’s perfect. Buttery brown fur, big black eyes, and bows wrapped around each ear. I watch from afar, admiring its serenity and thinking of the many lengths I’d go to protect it.
Compelled, I slowly move to approach the baby bunny. Just to see how close I can get. The baby bunny lets me. But when I get closer, I grow very sad because I notice the baby bunny is lost and hurt.
My heart breaks. The baby bunny must be cared for. Protected at all costs. What can I do?
And now, almost instinctually, I’m thinking of you.
My best friend, please forgive me for a lack of gentleness. You tender, sensitive, careful, deep feeling, aware, lovable, and worthy thing. When you needed the most of the very stuff you’re made of, all of the love and care and tenderness and sensitivity and effort and awareness, I made you sit in the dark. In coldness. In loneliness. In neglect. In rationality. In starvation and in survival mode. In more longing.
This baby bunny — I would never think of abusing or shaming it. I would never make it pretend that it wasn’t hurting or in danger. I would pick it up and admire how beautiful it was … despite everything that may have lead it to being lost, hurt, and in danger. Before trying to solve anything I would would just hold it. I would be there for it. I would do this for a baby bunny but I couldn’t for you, Ashley. I haven’t learned how. Please forgive me for that too. For not prioritizing learning and putting into practice what I learn. Specifically what I learn about you.
I promise to do this. And not only on your birthday. A day when you’re asked to be with yourself and look at yourself and somehow still celebrate yourself. On your birthday, when you’re aching but it’s the beautiful kind of ache. So painfully aware of who you are and everything that has ever happened. An ache similar to seeing a helpless baby bunny. It is something that scratches and pulls but leads to brightness. Something that begs until you say yes. It is a return home after being away for such a long time … even though you’re there everyday, you aren’t really there. It is the realization of your essence — how strong you are, how far you’ve walked in rain or sun, how much more you deserved, and how loved you are. Most of all, how you didn’t ask to be here but you are and in some unexplainable way, maybe it’s for a reason.
You are the mission. You are the pursuit. You are what must be nurtured and protected at all costs. You are the baby bunny.
