An Only Child

I wasn’t lonely as an only child. I had everything I wanted—and more. Books I didn’t have to share. A bed I could sprawl across. Toys I gave away because my parents thought I needed them for self-entertainment, when I clearly didn’t.

I preferred adults anyway. They didn’t pull my hair or shove me for a turn. Didn’t spit on me or break my things. Most of all, they let me be. So I could read.

Back to books, always.

Silence felt comfortable to me—still does.

Maybe because it was the one thing I craved most in an acrimonious household.

But I do wonder sometimes: would siblings have shaped my childhood differently? Not in the sense of stopping the fights between my parents. Not in preventing the men—my grandfather, uncles, cousins—from doing what they did to me.

But would a witness have softened the weight? Would it have felt any less unbearable if it wasn’t mine alone to carry?

I don’t know.

And yet, I chose to have just one child. To love, to protect, to give my all to.

She also loves books. But, unlike me, she has a complete childhood—not just the absence of loneliness.

Indulging in our favorite pastime on a spring afternoon in a downtown park