Find Me in The Gold
the same place you found me as a child.
So, I wrote this story for a contest, and was selected as a Runner-Up, which is pretty freaking cool to be in the top twenty of ALL submissions. First place would have been rad, but I have a friend that has a book deal, a published book that made the NYT Bestseller list and had an essay go viral and told me she’s never won any contests, so do with that what you will. Confirmation that you’re doing a good job doing the thing you love comes in many forms (although lets be real, I won’t be truly satisfied until I hit that NYT Bestseller list myself. Soon.) Anyway, the contest involved a writing prompt: For this challenge, we invited you to write about someone who vanished, someone imagined, or someone who never existed at all, and you answered with stories that linger. Stories that whispered, haunted, or unraveled into something unforgettable.
This is my entry, shared here for the first time. If it moves you, please share it with someone you think might also enjoy it.
She can still see me. It’s rare, but on occasion, she can still see me. When she does, it comes in glimmers of light and shadows, the way water reflects off the bottom of a pool, but every so often, she can still see me. My friend. My real, living, breathing, atoms and molecules shaped into the body of a real girl, friend. When she does, when she sees me, the electricity courses through my entire being. The joy of being seen literally electrifies me, and sometimes it makes the lights flicker, and I know she shrugs it off as a power surge or something else as equally rational of an explanation. This is what always happens, as they grow up, but I was hoping this time it wouldn’t. She was the girl I loved the most.
When she sees me now, she thinks it is just her imagination playing tricks on her- a play of light, a prism reflected off a watch face. Her world has told her that I am not real, that I never was. She didn’t believe them in the beginning, but now? Now she tells herself that I was just her imagination, a character built from survival and loneliness, but I was real. I am real. At least, in the way space particles exist, and supernatural occurrences that can’t be explained exist. Somewhere inside her heart, I know she feels me near her, and I know she knows what she saw, even if she won’t let her adult self believe it anymore. I know this, because I know everything about her. I watched over her the day she was brought home, swaddled in the blanket with the bears on it, a soft patch of blonde hair swirling over her forehead. I couldn’t stop looking at her, wishing I could graze a finger along her little pink cheek but knowing I can’t touch the real world. I sat patiently next to her, listening to her coo and sigh and make that little baby gurgling sound that sounds like a bubble popping. I gazed at her in awe and wonder, amused as she tried to open her eyes to see the world she was now a part of. I waited so long for her, and her being here made me sparkle. You know when you see dust passing through a beam of light, and it looks ethereal? That isn’t really dust, you know. That’s your keeper as well, you just can’t see them anymore either. Not the way you used to. Like I said, it’s what always happens.
I remember the first time she saw me, the first time that I came into focus for those brand new, blue eyes, and she smiled and giggled. I could see myself reflected in her eyes, in the form that she would see me in, surrounded by gold. In all the years before, I had never been surrounded by gold. It was that day I promised to protect her forever, as long as I possibly could. To be her keeper, her guardian, her confidant, her confessional booth, her best friend, even when she couldn’t see me anymore. Even when my gold didn’t reflect in her eyes anymore, or warm her cold feet, or when she spent more time with her living friends, or her gymnastics, or her homework, or when she got older and started spending more time on her devices and stopped playing with me, or when she became interested in boys, and then bands, and then college. I could never be sad towards her for growing up, or angry at her for forgetting me. There was nothing that would make me leave her, even when she failed to remember that I existed and only saw me in her peripheral vision.
We had more years together than most. As she grew from infant to toddler to small child, we grew closer. I kept her company before she could walk, and when she started to point to things and grunt in frustration, I knew exactly what it was that she wanted, even when her parents didn’t, and I never let her see my frustration that I couldn’t get it for her. When she took her first steps, I wrapped my hand around hers and put my other hand on her lower back for support and stability, even if she couldn’t feel my touch. My presence helped her. I whispered, you can do it, Peanut! But, when she started to talk, that was the best. Because while she could not feel me, she could see me, and she could hear me. We spent hours in her room, laughing. Giggling at her silly toys made of plastic and noisemakers. As she got older, she put on plays for me, as well as puppet shows and dance recitals. She’d practice putting makeup on me and I watched as she learned how to do her own. I never told her that it didn’t look very good when she was first learning, because I wanted her to believe in herself and her abilities. In fact, I never told her anything that wasn’t full of love. Our time together was spent making her believe that anything was possible, and that she was kind and smart and funny and imaginative and compassionate and creative and capable. Her parents just thought she was in her room playing alone, but what we were doing was building a foundation for her future to be the happiest, most well-adjusted girl she could be, so that she would grow into the happiest, most well-adjusted woman she could be. We were building dreams, so she knew which ones to follow when she became a grown-up, and didn’t have me around anymore.
I loved when she started school. I missed her while she was away, but she would come home so full of excitement and stories from her day, and she would burst into her room, where she knew I’d be waiting, to tell me all of them. I could have gone to school with her, but then I wouldn’t have those glorious afternoons of getting caught up. In the early years, she told me about her teachers and what games she played and what new things she was learning. She brought home art projects and hung them on the wall in her bedroom for me. One time, she wrote a story about me, her golden friend that no one else could see, and she got an A+. When she got her first role in the school play, we recited lines together. As she grew older, I steered her away from gossip, and we focused on the things that made her laugh or feel joy. We looked at challenges as growth opportunities for her. And when someone from school made her feel bad, we talked about that too. I helped her foster forgiveness for those that hurt her, feelings or otherwise. And in that forgiveness, she found strength. I helped her learn ways to set boundaries and stand up for herself, and to not take things personally. And on the days that she felt shame, when maybe she didn’t act like the person she knew she was, she confided in me. There were no secrets. She trusted me completely, and I trusted her. We were best friends.
Like I said, they all grow up, and see you less and less. It’s like every time the world says we aren’t real, just imaginary, we become a little less visible to our kids. Activities and friends start to take up the space that we once existed in. Disbelief starts to dim our light, and… maybe this is a good time to try and explain. To the world, we are imaginary, invisible. Beings of light and shape and sound that only our chosen kids can see. Every so often, a very special adult as well. And to our chosen kids, and chosen adults, we are as real as anything. We aren’t ghosts or a figment of their imagination. We take up space, we have shape and form that is determined by our kids. To them, we appear as solid as a living, breathing person. And for some, we look like them too. I know my girl sees me as a young girl - I can see my reflection in her eyes and she has drawn pictures of me to show her friends. I know that to her, I am petite, with brown hair and green eyes but that I glow in golden glitter. Her words. But every day, or year, we get a little more transparent. And every time someone says we aren’t real, that also chips away at us. Their belief in the unbelievable waivers. It’s just part of the process. We become less and less, and then one day, they forget that we existed. Maybe someone will mention imaginary friends, and one of our kids may say, I think I had one of those, but they don’t remember for sure. For most of us, we get all the way through elementary school together, if we are lucky. For me and my girl, we had each other all the way through middle school. That’s a long time to still be seen.
Of course, it wasn’t the way it was when she was young. We stopped playing make believe and writing our own songs, but she still said hi to me when she came home from school or a friend’s house or whatever thing she was doing out in the world. Sometimes she would talk to me while she was getting ready for bed, or first thing in the morning. But I could still see my reflection in her eyes, and know that my warmth touched her skin, even if I wasn’t much more than an outline with gentle flickers of glitter anymore. But I knew she still remembered me and could see me, because she would smile, or say my name, or hum a song we sang when we both looked like children.
And then one day, I was gone.
I wasn’t really, l promised to protect her and care for her and to guard her for as long as possible, and I meant that. I was her keeper. But to her, I was gone. The memory of me, gone. Our stories and our laughter and our daydreams. She couldn’t see my glitter anymore, or my gold, or my brown hair or my petite shape. She couldn’t hear my voice anymore. I watched as she finished middle school and went off to high school. I watched as she studied her different school subjects, I watched as she navigated the world as an almost-adult. I watched proudly, because I knew that I was still with her in everything that she did, even if she didn’t remember the work we did together. I knew that I was still with her, because I watched her traverse the obstacle course of adolescence with grace and poise. I watched with love as she double checked her makeup before leaving for prom, and as she wiped away a stray eyelash from her cheek. I watched with pride when she tried on her cap and gown for the first time, still wrinkled from the packaging. I watched her turn side to side, checking out her reflection in her full-length mirror, not quite sure if she liked the way it fit. And I watched in awe when she put that cap and gown on, now pressed and ready for graduation, and walked out her door.
That was the first time she saw me again- she turned back to look at herself one last time before leaving, and she saw me standing behind her, just over her shoulder. It was brief, and I saw the confusion on her face, and I saw her shake it off like her mind was playing tricks on her. But I knew. It took everything I had to help her see me, even if it was only this one last time, and I felt like the whole sun filled my body when her eyes found me. That one second, a flicker or recognition or remembrance, was worth all the stars in the sky to me. I never knew if I would ever get another.
And then I did.
Like I said, I was the lucky one. I chose this girl, and she chose me, and she was the one I loved the most since the beginning of time. Maybe that is why we had such a long time together. Maybe that’s why she thinks she hears a lullaby softly whispered into her ear as she’s falling asleep but thinks she must already be dreaming. And maybe that is why, when she is tired, or extra joyful, she sees the shimmer of light out of the corner of her eye, or the speck of dust that reflects the dusk on a quiet summer evening, and she doesn’t know why it feels comforting, but it does. Because it’s me, and she can still see me when her heart is the most open, and I promised to be there for her forever: her friend, not imaginary in the slightest.