How Are You?

“That must have been scary,” I reflected to the young girl after she explained all that she had witnessed and endured as a child. 

“Well,” she quietly thought about her experience, “my family was sad, and I didn’t understand why. I just wanted to love them by not being a problem.” 

We sat on the ground next to each other, both picking at the grass beneath our feet. She aged from a young child to a teenager before my eyes.

“I just didn’t want to be a problem. There were already other problems that needed to be solved, other family matters, other stresses. I just wanted to stay off the radar.” She contemplated her feelings. “But I also know that I craved attention. I was content with being myself, but there was a sadness that is hard to explain. It seems selfish to even talk about it. No one had to worry about me. I was doing all the things I was supposed to be doing, achieving all the things that I was supposed to be achieving. No one really checked in on me,” she said, pointing to her heart. 

We sat silently for several minutes as she aged with every word to a teenager. 

“No one ever asked me how I was doing with all of the things we went through as a family, either. I was just a kid. I didn’t understand the,” she paused and her mind raced through memories of hospital visits, the worry on her mom’s face, the tubes, the beeping, the medicines connected to her family members, “severity of the issues. Looking back, I can see when, and why, I started to get quiet. I can see that I took a step into the shadows. I wonder now if it has something to do with my fear of being seen.” She paused and let out a loud sigh. “It's probably more complex than that.” 

“Maybe it is more complex. Maybe it is just a place to start.” I handed her a pencil. “You pointed at your heart,” I said, pausing as the pencil began to glow. “I would like you to write as your younger self, the little girl. Answer this question: how are you?” 

“I'm okay,” she wrote. 
“Ask her again: how are you?”

“Mom and I had dinner in the hospital cafeteria. Mom seems tired and stressed. She let me get chocolate pudding and frozen yogurt. I don't know why we're here or what we're waiting for. We've had to stay in this waiting room all day. Sometimes the phone rings and Mom has a very serious conversation. She's reading a book, and sometimes she cries.” 

A small tear was fighting its way out of her eye as she looked up at me. 

“Ask her again,” I whispered. 
“Grandpa died today,” she wrote so softly on the page. 
“Every time you ask her, you are giving her a voice. Maybe she just needs to talk.” 

She nodded and began writing again. 

“Maybe she just needs someone to listen,” I whispered to her heart. 

She looked up at me as the young child, her face glowing with a smile and twinkle in her eye. Sitting in front of a blank piece of paper with a giant pencil in her hand, she scribbled in her best penmanship: “How are you?” 

“So proud of you!” I whispered, pointing at her heart.