Things you’ll never know about me

Visual by Rebecca

Things you’ll never know about me

– because you didn’t stick around long enough to listen (and I’m not sure you ever really heard me in the first place)

Number one:

I have a medium-sized splotch of a birthmark on my left kneecap. Most people don’t think it looks like much of anything, but I’ve always thought it looks just like a star. ★

Number two:

When I was in the fourth grade, I handwrote a letter to Oprah Winfrey with an “innovative” pitch to solve homelessness (a few short years later, I’d be surprised to find out I was not the first person to think up the idea for homeless shelters). I signed my name at the bottom of my proposal and crossed it out just lightly enough that Oprah could track me down and praise me for my “revolutionary” idea if she needed to. I never did send the letter, though. I think it’s still sandwiched in the middle of a book about MoMA I misplaced years ago.

Number three:

I’m struggling to think of things you don’t already know about me because I tried to tell you everything in the short time we had together. Part of me still questions if I could really be myself around you though.

Number four:

I think going to sleep with wet hair might very well be the best feeling in the world. I haven’t been able to do it in a while since I’ve been dyeing my hair red, and the dye will stain my pillowcase if I don’t let it dry after I shower. I guess it’s funny I’ve decided dyeing my hair is worth this sacrifice – worth sacrificing, quite possibly, the “best feeling in the world.” Maybe I assumed there’d be better things in my life by now. Better things than wet pillows.

Number five:

I was upfront and honest about everything from the beginning, and yet you let me in knowing all the while we couldn’t last. I don’t know whether to blame you or to blame myself. I guess that’s why I’ve tried to blame the whole damn world instead.

Number six:

My best friend in elementary school once laughed so hard at my house that she peed her pants. She begged me not to tell my parents, so we snuck a call to her mother for a fresh change of clothes. When my mom and dad found out, I took the heat – refusing, under any circumstances, to reveal her embarrassing secret. I’m pretty sure I told my parents sometime between now and then. I mean, I don’t feel as bad telling them anymore; I haven’t spoken to that girl in almost 13 years. I’m sure she doesn’t even remember.

Number seven:

I read in a book once that if you’re scared to do something, you should count to three really quickly and do it before you can think too much. Lately, when I’ve went to answer the phone, I’ve forced myself to try it. I’m not sure I’m able to pinpoint exactly why phone calls makes me so anxious – perhaps it’s the possibility of tripping over my words or saying something I can’t retract? I do hate messing up.

Number eight:

I’m sitting at the station, waiting for my train. I’ve been here a lot recently – and not the last time, but the time before, I cried quietly in the waiting area. That was the day I left you. And in eight days, it’ll have been three months. But I’m not crying today (at least, not yet). 

Number nine:

When I listen to my favourite song, it feels like my chest is on fire. I see myself in a memory, dancing in the kitchen of my old family home. I can’t remember if my parents are divorced yet. The music is loud, and white light is streaming through the windows. I’ve grown somewhat tired of the song since, but it’ll always be my favourite because of what it’s gotten me through. If I ever do decide to get married, I think I’d like for it to be my wedding song. I told one of my best friends, half-joking, that she can sing it when I walk down the aisle. If I do, that is.

Number ten:

I’d pretty much gotten over sleeping with stuffed animals by middle school, but a series of nightly panic attacks made me go back to it in high school. I lost my favourite stuffed seal a few years ago in Quebec, but when we called the hotel, they no longer had it. Although I’m a little sad it’s gone, I never really had a stuffed animal which meant enough to cry over. I still try to sleep with something whenever I can. Lately I’ve just been pressing a pillow up against my back to feel a little less alone.

Number eleven:

Yesterday, I went on a date, and it made me feel like I’ll never find someone as good for me as you. It’s stupid, I know, because I’m still not sure you were good enough for me in the first place. At least, my friends keep telling me you weren’t. But maybe I just wasn’t good enough for you. I know I ended things, but let’s be honest: I ended them for you.

Number twelve:

Cows are my favourite animal. Their large, inflated bodies and absurd, bumpy shapes make me believe in some sort of magic. They’re majestic – an outright miracle – so different from me, yet somehow, here we both are: living and breathing the same air on this enormous spinning globe, hurtling through space together. (If you think about it, life in itself is also a little bit magical. Even if it doesn’t always feel like it).

Number thirteen:

I’m sitting on the train now, headed for Montreal, and I want this job so damn bad because I know you’d be proud of me for getting it. I want to pick up my life and start over somewhere new, leaving my memories of you behind because they are far too heavy for my suitcase. I want this job so that leaving you will all have been worth it. Because Montreal is far – far away from you. Who would have thought that’d end up being a good thing?

Number fourteen:

As a child, I used to sneak a pair of safety scissors into the bathroom and cut the long, thin hairs on my arm. I was the oldest granddaughter and embarrassed to be called “hairy like my nonno and zios.” I did a much better job on the left arm (I’m right-handed, so I guess it only makes sense), but regardless, hair grows back. Honestly, it doesn’t bother me as much as it used to. I guess that’s because I have much bigger insecurities to deal with now.

Number fifteen:

I say I don’t like to travel, but that’s only because it makes me anxious. I’m not afraid of crashing in an airplane – although, I guess that’d be a much more reasonable fear – I’m just afraid to take my feet off the ground. The motion of cars and trains means I’m never truly grounded, and the distance to the top floor of buildings makes me feel like I’ll choke. I’m not sure why this all sounds like a metaphor for something greater; when it comes down to it, I just don’t let myself travel very far. I guess I kind of buy the bullshit I spew about “caring more about the people I’m with than the place where I am.” I would really love to see India though.

Number sixteen:

I wonder if maybe I was wrong – if maybe, you do know all these things about me. I’m trying to make myself hate you so I can move on, but maybe you aren’t as bad as I’m trying to tell myself you are. Then again, just because you’re a good person doesn’t mean you’re a good person for me.

Number seventeen:

The first week orientation of my second year undergrad was the happiest I’ve ever been. The concept of becoming a family with people other than my own blood relatives had always felt forced to me. But when I think back, I found home that week in the arms of strangers. I found people – incredibly interesting, passionate, brilliant people; people who understood me. Who danced on hilltops in the rain with me. Who woke with me before the sunrise and dressed up in elaborate costumes to cheer all the way through the night with me. I found a home where my fragmented interests and passions not only made sense, but were encouraged, fostered, and celebrated. I’m still not sure if that week was as glorious as I chalk it up to be in my memory, but I really hope it was. Because from what I remember, that week meant absolutely everything.

Number eighteen:

I chose to play the trumpet in middle school because it only had three keys, and I figured that would mean it was the easiest to play. As it turns out, this actually meant immense amounts of lip pursing and mouth twisting went into changing notes. Despite playing my own rendition of (what I believed to be) an extremely accurate Justin Bieber cover, I was never very good at the trumpet. And, as with every other hobby where I did not achieve immediate success, I no longer play the trumpet – or any instrument – for that matter.

Number nineteen:

I’m not sure how many more poems I can write before you start to think I’ve lost my mind. I tell myself you and your friends ridicule me – roll your eyes because I’ve dared to think the short time we had together could be enough to completely destroy me. How could I be naïve enough to think you waste time thinking about me? Here I am, trying to write the things that make me who I am, and still I can’t seem to leave you out. Here I am, trying to write the things that make me who I am, and still I’m ignorant enough to think that everything hurting me has been because of you.

Number twenty:

Two years ago, I wrote an essay on Cloud Atlas to argue clones should have the same rights as humans. At the same time, I was writing a very convincing article on why Americans should become vegetarian – so convincing, in fact, that (along with my recent inner turmoil surrounding morality and cloning) the piece convinced me to quit eating meat cold turkey (no pun intended). I had never liked the taste of meat nor the idea of eating animals, but the diet switch was so abrupt that I never really got to enjoy a “last supper.” I keep joking that I’m going to have a big, carnivorous feast on my birthday with breakfast sausages and tuna melts, but I think I might just very well go the rest of my life without eating meat. It’s weird to think that something will last the rest of my life. It’s weird to think you’ve found something that will never change.

Number twenty-one:

Whenever I speak in front of a group of people – no matter how small – I feel like I somewhat blackout. I can still see, but everything’s blurred. I don’t register individual faces or people, and I don’t seek any out. I just pre-rehearse words and hope like hell that they flow out exactly as scripted. My eyes glaze over, and I mimic the anchor’s voice from that news channel my mom always watches in the basement late at night. The last words feel like waking up from some sort of dream.

Number twenty-two:

I just want to do what makes me happy, but I’m not sure I know what that is anymore.