“You have old eyes.”

My mother works with grandmothers who keep candies in desks and filing cabinets.
They seem older than they are because I am a child who holds simple truths like wisdom is shown in wrinkles and age is shown by what kind of candies you give out.
When the lady tells me this I say thanks, for in my hand rests a golden pebble in an orange wrapper.
I ask what “old eyes” means in the car while I suck on the butterscotch gem and decide it’s my favorite.

In fourth grade, I tear holes in the knees of all my jeans.

My mother tries to patch them and my father scolds me for being so careless. I spend recesses running around with the girl with an intense passion for horses. When I receive an encyclopedia about her favorite animal, I regift it to her knowing she’ll love it more.
Years later we meet in the lunch line and she tells me how that book helped her disabled sister learn to read and thanks me profusely.
This newfound joy of being able to help someone else hits me like a wave and I know, deep in my heart, it is the first time I’ve felt like this.

An aunt of mine, my mother’s youngest sibling, likes to tell me about her dreams.

In her dreams there is a person with dark hair and dark eyes and they are swaddled in a loving purple aura. This person gives my aunt advice and makes her feel better. These dreams are the most vivid in her memory, the most helpful.
On the day I was born, the dreams ceased. Yet, here I was, with a clump of black hair and curious eyes that are so rich my pupils get lost in them.
My aunt calls me her guardian angel and tells me I am much older than I look.

In 7th grade I fall into friendships with people who spat venom.

I convinced myself I could help them be better.
When the realization hit that these relationships were not healthy, that these people would not change and how this was not my fault,that there was nothing I could do, I stopped interacting with them. I crawled back to old friends, the ones who loved me and treasured me as much as I treasured them, but they were wary. They didn’t know to handle me after I had been poked and prodded until I, too, spat venom.
The loss I feel encompasses me until nothing else occupies my thoughts, the thought crosses my mind that if I had lived before, what needed to be done would be easy to see.

My loved ones always come to me for advice.

I almost always have it for them. Sitting on a silver platter ready for them to take, ready for them to pay back later. I give them what I can. I think hard, inserting myself into their minds, trying to assess them, to see what they see.
There is too much empathy inside of me, but they say I have a soul that has seen the world many times over. They say I have a soul as old as the universe itself. This is something that I find harder to believe on some days than on others.

My mother tells me that when I was younger, many people approached her just to tell her,
“She has old eyes.”