Breakfast on the Orient

"Chinese, Japanese, dirty knees, look at these!" girls used to sing in loud chorus on the playground.  I wonder if they still do. The thought makes me shudder. This and countless other jokes, gestures and rhymes filled my childhood, as they may have yours.  It's strange to think that some of the most horrendous or offensive things we may ever say we utter long before we know better.  I sang this song, and I had classmates of Asian descent that I considered friends.  I never imagined that I was being party to racism.  If I had, I would have been mortified.  The very thought of all my cultural faux pas' of my youth make me cringe, but they have no lingering evidence, aside from my memories and those who remembered my words.  This makes me wonder about artists, whose work reflects the implicit racism of their time, long after times have changed.  For instance, I've always admired Audrey Hepburn, and loved "Breakfast at Tiffany's", until I tried to watch it recently.  I couldn't take it.  I was shocked, as if I was seeing for the first time the racist attempts at humor.  Did people really ever think that was okay?  They must have.  Heck, I must have, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to stomach the movie, let alone love it.  And that was in the 90's.  The 1990's.  Shame on me.  Shame on us.

The Essentials

Flour, sugar, rice. That's what they needed, so that's what they bought. Every time. No matter how much Michael pleaded or begged. He's lucky I'm getting the sugar. Last month,  he begged so hard for basil seeds that Steven threw them in for free.  That was infuriating.  How dare he presume to parent for me, to run my farm? No matter,  he can grow it, but I won't eat it. The boy has more food than he knows what to do with.  It's bad enough that Pat will be home next month,  buying whatever he wants,  playing the hero, turning our world upside down.  It's best he stay away and leave us to it. We'd be better off without him. The boy needs to learn the difference between needs and wants.  He needs to learn the value of a dollar.  He still owes me for the broken lamp. He owes me.
"Is this all for today?" Steven asked as he rang up the items. The question was directed at the boy, who was twirling the seed rack with great interest.
She followed the grocer's gaze, tightened her lips and replied, "Yes, Steven, it's all we need."

The Protagonist

"Write my life," the Protagonist said.
The writer took a long drag on the cigarette. There were no less than fifteen stories already in the works when they met. A week later and the Protagonist had filled the writer's mind with enough narratives to fill a library. 
The writer tugged on the horse blanket and thought.
Where to begin?
If only the writer didn't love the Protagonist so much. How to honor someone with such unimaginable memories?  And when to write?  Their conversation runs hours into days.
Five minutes after the request was made,  and the writer had heard two more stories and was being handed a plate of grilled snook and vegetables.
"...I dragged my mom into the police station and begged them to do something a year before the murder," the Protagonist said as he swirled his glass of Pinot Noir.
The writer,  now carrying the weight of the mantle placed on her shoulders tried to think like a writer.

Prodigal Son

She turned away from the cold, and caught a glimpse in the shadows.
"What's wrong? "
She did all She could do. She pointed to the swingset. The swingset. 
Pat looked, and dropped Sasha's leash. There he was. TJ.  In the same clothes he was last seen wearing,  7 years ago.  The striped tank top pulled awkwardly across his broad chest.

Picture

Please bear with me as I continue to excavate my anger. Each level of acceptance and forgiveness unearths a new level of pain, and with it, more opportunity for healing. 

For the past week or so, I have been noticing old pictures of me in my memories on Facebook.  As they pop up,  I am struck with two thoughts. First, the memory of the photograph, which is always how self-conscious I felt in that moment.  How ugly, fat, and awkward I felt.

Then, my eyes see the picture. I was, in all of those pictures,  beautiful.  Far more than I ever saw or felt. Not hot, or supermodel perfect,  but certainly worthy of being comfortable in my own skin. Which I wasn't. 

Damn him, for squandering my youth and beauty.  Damn me, too.

This is a valuable,  painful,  and all too common lesson. 

I hope I don't forget.  I hope I never again  let someone else get in the way of me seeing myself. There simply isn't any room for anyone else in the mirror.

Dirty Little Secrets

Netflix just released the new season of Orange is the New Black,  and my Facebook feed has been filled with it. That and spoilers of Game of Thrones, and The Walking Dead. All shows I watched in another life. In this one, though, my TV addiction is Pretty Little Liars.  I binge watched the first five seasons this winter and missed the addition of season six until today. Five episodes in, and I finally realized the draw for me with this show. 

If you haven't seen it,  it centers around a group of teenaged girls who live in a state of constant terror and silence at the hands of an unseen enemy.  They are living in a state of fear and paranoia where whenever they relax, another threat arises. The emotions they are dealing with are all too familiar for me.

I can relate to their need to put on a false smile and pretend everything is okay, in order to save their loved ones.  They are suffering from PTSD while they remain in a war zone. This is the dramatization of what it's like to live in an emotionally abusive relationship. 

They have been beaten down and fight to remind themselves that they are worthy of love,  life, and peace.  It is by rooting for them  that I am learning to root for myself. 

I sometimes fear that I was too fragile, too battle weary to enter the new relationship that I am in. That may be true,  but it is also true that I am deserving of the love,  laughter, and peace that my current relationship provides.

Maybe it's possible to heal while moving forward.  Short of institutionalization,  we don't get to press pause and heal. Most of us bandage our wounds while we are still on the field. Life has no timeouts.

Radioactive

Sera stretches her legs as the alarm sounds.  She has no idea how long she's been out.  She waits for the bed to release its hold on her.  She finally rolls over and heads straight to the shower.  She waits in line, of course.  The entire dorm just came to.  Like the other drones ahead of her, she hangs her towel, stretches her arms wide, and waits for the spray.  Warm liquid sprays the gray stone.  She turns, to make sure not to miss a spot.  She steps into the towel waiting for her, and follows her tribe down the dormer hall for her check-up.

"We have to make sure you're in fighting shape," chuckles the doctor.  The oldest human on the ship, she makes jokes out of everything.  "Today's the big day.  Let's get you into make up," she giggles as she leads Sera to the war room.  The room is meant to evoke any primative ghosts in the machines, Doc explains.  This is what you've been made for.  Dozens of worlds depend on your ability to defend this side of the galaxy.  Prentice takes her time, shading in reds, coppers, blacks, into images of serpents, bears, tigers, hawks, and other creatures of legend onto her limbs, her torso.

Sera has heard that ancient humans once had a similar procedure, back when humans were flesh and bone.  The repetitive whir of the machine is torture enough on her titanium core.  How brave her ancestors were.