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Stepping off the front porch of the children I tutor felt like being released from handcuffs. Now, I don’t want to liken tutoring to incarceration - one is objectively much worse. But I can't deny the incredible, freeing feeling of being by myself on an empty street. Just me, and the morning.
There’s someone in my living room right now. She’s not my sister, and she’s definitely not my mother. I can distinguish her white, adult, American accent from behind the closed door of my bedroom. I know who she is (sort of). My parents are in the process of adopting a dog to replace me when I move out in a few short months. The shelter has to conduct a brief tour of our house to ensure that we are not animal abusers - or so I thought. This tour hasn’t been quick at all. She’s been here for several hours. It is now the late afternoon, and I really would like to eat some lunch. But I can’t. She doesn’t know I live here; I carefully instructed my parents to avoid my room and not mention me to work unbothered. And now, I am sneaking out the back door to walk over two miles to my nearest grocery store to buy lunch - all because I do not want to have to face the stranger in my living room.
the wind, short-tempered, howling,
more fickle than her mother between her gasps and shrieks has crafted an accidental hurricane haven. The wifi in my house is named “cheetah.” The other wifi’s that he set up in relatives’ homes are similarly named after wild cats, including but not limited to the puma, lynx, and panther. I did not choose that name; my dad did. Why? Because big cats are fast, and wifi is supposed to be fast, and names are a manifestation. Nevermind that every time I open a Google Doc, I have to wait at least sixty seconds for the text to load. As long as my dad likes it and has one less thing to complain about, I could care less. He learned this strategy from a former co-worker named different computer software types after animals native to the African savannah: antelope, elephant, giraffe, and zebra. On top of being straight-up cool, these names serve a practical purpose: they allow the users to distinguish between flavors of technology without having to memorize various phrases like “A7EHB381309DSF” or “TC8715D75-5G.” (These are not keyboard smashes. It’s my neighbor’s wifi.)
My mirror is my worst enemy. For as long as I can remember, I have struggled severely with all the strange flavors of body dysmorphia. From my physique to my gender expression to my cystic acne, no being or object holds power over me in the same way that mirrors always have. Some would say I have made an idol out of my own image. Not in a self-obsessed way (if anything, I feel uncomfortable even posting photos of myself on Instagram), but in a way that only a queer brown teenage girl can think of in the twenty-first century. I am at my happiest when I am far away from my image - on camping trips, or, as has been more common during this season of lockdown when my parents get sick of dealing with my panic attacks and remove my mirror from my bedroom. You can reasonably assume there have been situations that can also worsen my mirror-phobia. I hate being on FaceTime or Zoom calls because I can’t stand to see myself in the little corner on the screen. And there’s nothing worse than seeing my face plastered on a five-foot-wide banner advertising my school’s open house on a street corner. Of course, I have made significant progress in nurturing my relationship with my body image, but this progress has not been linear. And my most significant setback will always be seeing people that look like me.
it is easy
to lose the little bits of your body to its prehistoric remains, to forget the way that your cheeks flush red in the cold and to instead only feel the way that your muscle calcifies I had the pleasure of meeting Jacqueline Smith over my winter break. My parents took us to see the Lorraine Motel, which is where MLK was assassinated. I had already felt strange taking pictures in front of the place someone was murdered at, so I waited in the car. Across the street from the motel, I saw Smith sitting in the rain, and I learned about her work. She had been forcibly removed from the motel in 1988. Since then (almost 33 years later), she has been boycotting the museum and protesting the massive investment that converted the motel into a museum for MLK. She is homeless, and her protest site relies entirely upon the support of others. She receives no welfare or financial assistance. She sits across from the museum every day through terrible weather in a part of town, which is considered unsafe and dangerous.
To the Future,
You captivate so much of my attention. I spend so much time thinking about you; some would say I’m obsessed. Others would say I am in love. I don’t think either of those descriptions fit how I feel about you, exactly. I believe that the air of mystery you maintain intrigues me, and so I contemplate you with childlike wonder. I don’t particularly like you or hate you, but your mystery captivates my imagination. |
About MeHi! I'm Andrea. I really like words. Categories
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