Chapter 8 - MY JOURNALS
I didn't open the journals for six months.
Then one winter night, I did.
Age eight.
Purple notebook.
Page one:
Mom says I'm dramatic but this is private so I can be dramatic here.
I laughed.
Then cried.
Age nine:
I hate videos when I don't know they're videos.
Age ten:
If I make Mom famous maybe she won't be sad about money anymore.
That one broke me.
I had believed I was helping.
Children make meaning with the tools they have.
Age eleven:
Today I hid crackers behind the dresser. I hope ants don't find them.
I closed the journal.
Went downstairs.
Rachel was watching television.
“Did you know?”
“What?”
“I hid food.”
She muted the TV.
“Yes.”
“When?”
“When you first moved here.”
“Why didn't you say anything?”
“Your therapist told me not to turn it into a battle.”
“Where?”
“Pillowcase. Closet. Bathroom drawer.”
I covered my face.
“Bathroom?”
“You were creative.”
I laughed through tears.
Rachel continued:
“I put sealed snacks in predictable places instead.”
I remembered.
Basket near the fridge.
Granola bars.
Crackers.
Fruit cups.
Always replenished.
Never announced.
“I thought that was normal.”
“It became normal.”
That was the point.
Safety works best when it becomes boring enough not to notice.
I finished reading the journals over months.
Then I decided something.
I would write.
Not a memoir.
Not yet.
Fiction.
A girl whose mother was a magician who could make reality disappear whenever she pointed a mirror at it.
Terrible first draft.
I loved it.
I studied writing in college.
People expected psychology.
Social work.
Law.
No.
Writing.
For years other people had edited my life.
I wanted sentences nobody could cut without permission.
I also minored in digital media ethics.
Apparently trauma has hobbies.
At twenty-one, I published an essay.
My name.
My choice.
Title:
THE CHILD IN THE FRAME
No dog-bowl photograph.
No childhood images.
Only words.
I wrote about consent.
About family influencers.
About viewers.
That part mattered.
People liked pretending my mother created the entire machine alone.
She didn't.
Hundreds of thousands watched.
Some sent money.
Some sent cruelty.
Some recognized the harm and reported it.
Platforms profited too.
Brands paid.
Audiences rewarded escalation.
My mother made the choices.
But incentives surrounded them.
My essay said:
A camera does not create abuse. It can, however, turn abuse into a product and an audience into customers.
It spread.
Not virally.
Thank God.
Enough.
Then an email arrived.
From a woman named Kayla.
She had followed Mom years earlier.
She wrote:
I commented that you needed stricter discipline. I was nineteen and stupid. I am sorry.
Another:
Your mother inspired me to post my children constantly. I stopped after reading your essay.
Another:
I reported one of the food videos and nothing happened. I always wondered whether you were okay.
I answered none individually.
I wasn't running a confession booth.
But I kept the third.
Some stranger had noticed.
Before Mrs. Rodriguez.
Before teachers understood.
Someone had tried.
Maybe systems failed.
But the attempt mattered.
At twenty-two, I testified publicly for the first time before a state committee reviewing updates to child-content law.
My name.
My face.
My camera.
My rules.
A legislator asked:
“Do you believe parents should be prohibited from posting children online?”
“No.”
That surprised him.
“What do you believe?”
“That children should have rights inside family media.”
“What rights?”
“Money.”
“Privacy.”
“Deletion mechanisms when possible.”
“Limits on intimate or humiliating content.”
“Work-hour protections when content becomes labor.”
Then:
“And a legal system that doesn't require children to hate their parents before anybody will protect them.”
The room became quiet.
Because I didn't hate Mom.
That had confused people for years.
I loved her.
From a distance.
With rules.
Eventually with occasional phone calls.
Love didn't erase the bowl.
The bowl didn't erase every bedtime story she'd ever read.
Both existed.
May you like
Adult life is rude that way.
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