I didn’t want to die.  Honestly.  I didn’t want to.  Life, while complicated, is all we have.  At least in the moment.  And someone once said that life is made up of moments.  But if life is made up of moments, then why do people get so upset about what we do in one moment?  I mean, it is just one moment.  There are so many other moments they could focus on.  But that’s not the point, I suppose.  You aren’t here to listen to me complain, but to explain.  So I shall.  (Sounds intelligent, right?  I learned that in English.  Sounds dumb to me, but others – grownups mostly – say it sounds “mature.”)

I love my mother.  I mean I hate her, but I love her.  I hate her in the way all teenagers hate their mothers while growing up.  The hate that comes when we are told “No” and go into our rooms and cry on beds thinking – and truly believing – that our mother is the only one who can be so cruel.  And I blamed her for so much.  For everything.  For all the pain. I have spent so much of my life trying to find out who I am and what makes up my identity that I haven’t been able to build up much self-esteem.  I tell people I’m shy, but my therapist (who my mother made me go see because I broke curfew), says I’m “projecting”.  Whatever the hell that means.  Anyways…growing up with just my mom, who is white, meant that we were learning what it meant to be mixed “together.”  Again, what my therapist told me, but it is my mother who is paying her, so I’m not sure I completely buy it.  I don’t feel very “together” at the moment.  When, in 5^th grade, my hair started to “change” she didn’t know what to do about it anymore than I did.  But she’s the adult!  It’s her “duty” (her favorite word).  Her “responsibility” (her second favorite word), as my mother!  Then, in middle school, having grown up completely separate from others (all my mom’s fault, by the way), and wanting me to be independent and not just follow others, my mother would, as other young girls were beginning to dress more and more “feminine”, and yet I continued to wear jeans, a t-shirt and tennis shoes, say nothing.

And still, today, I’m not “white” enough to be considered white, but don’t speak Spanish and so am not considered Latina, and even though most of my friends (all three of them) are black, I, obviously, am not, my mother encourages, but does not force me to “search for my racial identity” (whatever that means).  There have been times when I wish she would force me.  I could stop wondering, asking, being so…mad all the time!  So fucking confused!  Whenever I see others who were different, the kids with “nice” hair, the pretty, feminine “young ladies”, the confident white, Latino/a, and black students, I believe, no I KNOW, that I am not as good as them.  I don’t have enough strength to try to be like them.  I am less.  I am not as “whole” as they are.  I spend my days, and nights, feeling alone. They know who they are in ways I do not.  I look around my high school campus, every day, and watch other students live in this comfort.  I wonder what it feels like to walk in a group and feel as if I belong.  To not have to question if others around me are secretly thinking that I would just go away.  To look around and see others that look like me.  To look at the person next to me and believe they know; they know what my life is like.  Of course there are others “like” me, who don’t belong to a racial or economic group.  But they still belong to a group!  They are comfortable, and even enjoy their difference, and share this difference, this “outcast” identity with others, and so belong.  I think I am the only one.

In class we read about the “struggles of others” and I know my life is good.  While my family isn’t rich (my mom didn’t buy me the CD player I wanted, or the clothes I wanted, or the pager that shows everyone I’m a drug dealer…in fact she didn’t buy me anything I wanted!), my family isn’t on welfare like other Latinos.  I haven’t been asked to join a gang.  I don’t have relatives in prison or that have been deported.  But…I wish I did.  I want to suffer, to feel pain; to experience tragedy.  If I can know that pain, then maybe I would fit in.  I look at my knife and wonder if it will bring me that pain that so many others know.  I mean my mother sends me to a therapist for God’s sake!  Sometimes…in my room, by myself, I wonder what it would take to bridge that gap.  What must I experience, must I know to feel a connection with others?  I know I can’t change my race, or how much my parents make or where we live.  But I can feel pain.  I can do something where I would experience the hospital, the jail…or even the cemetery.

That knife.  My knife.  Does it hold all the answers?  Can it bring me comfort?  I don’t know, but can I stand to not find out?  Can I live with myself if I don’t at least try?  So many questions…But that’s all I’ve been doing.  Asking questions.  Like my mom!  Answers!  I don’t want to be like my mom.  Or my dad!  I want to do something!  I don’t want to always do what my mother tells me to do.  I want to control my own life.  She tells me to go to school, to go to practice, to go to the therapist.  But she can’t tell me what to do with this knife.  Only I decide that!  Only I decide how far.  How deep.  My knife.  My life.  I don’t want to die.  Honestly.  I just want…a different life.