"We accept the love we think we deserve." -Stephen Chbosky

To my aunt, my lovely aunt,

You were the first person that I learned to love after my parents.

But don’t let those first sentences fool you about the kind of woman I’m talking about. My aunt has wild red hair and is the loudest person I know.

I remember the time I first met you. My family and I had gone to a concert, and I had fallen asleep around 11 p.m. My parents held me in their arms and carried me — I must have been six or seven.

When you saw us, you woke me up to tell me how excited you were. You shouted “Melodi!” and you woke me up with loud, wet kisses on both of my cheeks. Because of your friendly and jovial nature, I was surprised to find out later that you had few friends, just the small group of women you got together with to drink coffee. Most people didn't appreciate you enough.

I heard stories about what things were like when my mom was a child, stories of what it was like in a small town, stories of milking cows, stories of what my mom’s school life was like. Now, my mom and her other sisters were model students —except for you. Instead, you found ways to make money selling water bottles and Coca-Cola at soccer matches. But you never did your homework.

As a child, I was compared to you. Whenever I couldn’t finish an assignment in high school, my mother would tell me, “You’re being like your aunt.” My classmates called me "lazy", which hurt more than the other words I was called, and they looked down on me. Especially since I was in a prestigious academic program, I felt alienated and abandoned by my friends when I was overwhelmed by the demands of school.

A few months ago, I was diagnosed with attention-deficit disorder inattentive type. When I shared this information with my family, you revealed to me that you had trouble with reading. You told me that because you couldn't read, you would get frustrated and not understand what the homework was. You were called “bad” and had privileges taken away for it.

The one thing you did right was to marry your high-school sweetheart. But when he lost interest you descended into a depression. Similarly, I took love too hard; When I was young and immature. In high school, I used to write love poems to boys who never noticed me. I wrote them in my diary, and I never showed them to anybody. I thought I was Shakespeare. In reality my poems were more like Morrissey.

So, to my aunt. Here’s to 2017, to us. To those of us who have learning disabilities and are called “bad” because of it. To dyslexia and dyspraxia and ADHD. Here is to thinking and being outside the box, to being innovative. Heck, even if it means your job is selling Deer Park outside of a match. Here is to talking to people who don’t listen to us or value us. Here is to loving too fast and falling in love too hard.

I hope your 2017 sucks slightly less than 2016 did.