Sparkly Pink Bike

When I was five years old, my dad got me a bike. A sparkly pink bike, with purple ribbons and a little basket in front of it. The only issue was that I didn’t know how to ride a bike. I spent hour after hour in my driveway riding that bike over and over again, rain or shine, until one day, I finally got on, and I didn’t fall off. I pedaled down the road, my hands firmly gripping the handles. I had finally ridden my bike after days of effort. I rode up and down the street, day after day, showing off my new skill to all my neighbors. Showing them how good I was at riding my new shiny bike. What I remember the most, however, is what my parents said when I ran inside excitedly to tell them the news: I could finally ride my bike. 

“I’m so proud of you,” My parents both exclaimed, and those words stuck to me like glue. Not only the words but the pride I felt when I heard those words come out of their mouths. They were proud of me. They were happy for me. I had come to the realization that when they were proud of me, I was proud of myself, and not only that but I was happy for myself. From then on, I worked as hard as I possibly could to hear those words again. 

The summer that I turned eleven, I started competitive swimming. I wasn’t good by any means at all, but I worked hard. And whenever it became difficult to push through and keep going, I thought of those words. The words that were spoken to me the day that I learned to ride a bike. “I’m proud of you”. I worked hard and swam all summer long, slowly getting better with every practice I went to. One day, at a meet, I qualified to go to A finals, which was the swim meet that only the fastest kids on the team attended. I was one of the fastest swimmers on my team! I was so excited to go, but no one was prouder than my parents. Again the words trickled out of their mouths, the sound like church bells, or soft, delicate music to my ears.

"I’m proud of you."

I am almost completely unaware of anything else that occurred that summer. Maybe I made some new friends, and I think I fell in love, but what mattered was that my parents were proud of me, even if I wasn’t as fast as the other kids on the team. That allowed me to be proud of myself, and happy for myself, and I finally truly appreciated all the effort that went into qualifying for Finals.

Just a short year later, I learned an extremely harsh lesson. Words are simply lies. They trick you, and even when they disappear, when they aren’t spoken anymore, you still have to carry their weight with you, because you can’t ever let go of the words. Not ever in your life. When I was twelve, I got into a fight with my mother. I don’t remember why, or what happened during that fight. I just remember my mother calling me a failure. A disappointment. She was not proud of me anymore. She had forgotten that she was supposed to be proud of me, no matter what. Now, I was carrying the weight of my mother's disappointment as well as the lies she had spoken when I was younger. The words were too much to bear. I was not someone to be proud of. I was a disappointment, a failure. Even so, it didn’t matter what I thought of myself as much as my mother’s opinions mattered. If I was a failure to them, then I was a failure to all, and that was that.

A few months into my first year of middle school, I got my first-ever B+ on a test. I was typically a straight-A student, and I was extremely upset with my grade. I already felt as if I would die just looking at that stupid letter marked in bright red pen. I brought home my test and asked my mother to sign it so I could return it to the teacher. I knew she wouldn't be happy, but I didn’t know that she would be furious. She yelled at me, so loud that I had to cover my ears. That made her even more cross.

“You’re better than this,” She had yelled, “Why should I send you to a nice school if you can’t respect it and get good grades?” 

That night I cried more than ever before. I had known that my mother would be mad about my grade, but now I knew that there was nothing I could possibly do to make my parents proud anymore. No matter what I did, it was never enough for them. My parents were both exceptionally respected for their work, and I felt as though I would never live up to their standards and expectations. My mother didn’t say I was a disappointment, but I felt like one, and I knew she thought I was one. I didn’t know what to do anymore. There was nothing left in me after all that. The pain had built up over the years and had created a blockage between the real me, who is still a little five-year-old girl dressed as a fairy princess, and the me who listened to the lies that were fed to me on a silver platter. 

I’m thirteen now, and even though it’s only been quite a bit of time, I still can feel the pain of those words. I haven’t heard those words in a long time now. “I’m proud of you.” Now I’m closer to my mother, and we made it through that rough patch in our relationship, however, sometimes I still disappoint her. And that hurts a lot. But I often think about that day with the bike. If I had done something different, would there have been a different outcome? Perhaps I shouldn’t be greedy and ask for more, but sometimes I wish something had gone differently that day, and maybe I would be a different person. 

Now I wonder, whatever happened to that little old sparkly pink bike? Perhaps it’s sitting in a junkyard, all rusted and faded away. The ribbons, now merely a memory, and the pink paint peeled and chipped away. Perhaps another little girl is learning to ride that same bike, only maybe it has been repainted to an electric blue with purple polka dots. I only hope nobody ever hurts that little girl, the one who plays with her sister, feeds her puppy, and plays with her dolls. I hope they teach her that she is worth every single centimeter of space she takes up because there was a time when I didn’t want to take up any space at all.