Coordinates: on the gold loveseat next to Princess Yuki, my friend Dima’s white Persian cat
Today’s card: Ordinary
In the summer between junior and senior year, I became a high-school dropout. It wasn’t for stereotypical reasons. I wasn’t pregnant, dumb, or addicted. I would’ve been the valedictorian if I had stayed.
Instead, I walked into the empty rehearsal room of the marching band in July and wrote my goodbye on the chalkboard, hoping someone would see it. I had a sense of ugly superiority from going to college a year early and getting the hell out of that town.
Same as my mother and grandmother, it’s always been easier for me to move to a new city than stay. Now it’s clear my goodbye was probably only glimpsed by the cleaning staff who washed away my message.
I don’t know if anyone noticed my missing. No one called to check on me. No one invited me to the tenth or twentieth reunions either.
What a strange thing, high school. The highlight of my year was the awards ceremonies. For 2 blissful hours out of 365 days, those of us who bought into the myth of perfectionism were validated in our efforts with medals tied with polyester ribbons in the school colors, green and gold. I received these every year for having the highest grade in physics, chemistry, algebra, etc.
I don’t remember who it was, maybe Brandi, who received a medal for ten years of perfect attendance. I saw right through that nonsense. Why would you do that to yourself? She had to go to school sick to accomplish such a fear. It was an act of will, not bravery or fineness of character.
I didn’t see how I was trapped in the same box of a different shape. My act of will was allowing my time and curiosity to be exchanged for perfect marks in subjects I didn’t care about taught by teachers I wasn’t interested in. I had to go to school sick with boredom to accomplish such a feat.
I thought I had to be the overachiever.
My granny who raised me was always so pleased to go to parent-teacher conferences. She always came home with their glowing report and napkins filled with store-bought peanut butter and sugar cookies.
Somewhere along the line, I thought perfect grades were my ticket out of Paragould, Arkansas. A full tank of gas and a dull white Toyota Corolla missing a bumper was my ticket. I moved to Portland, Oregon at 26-years-old. Three months later I had a job making websites and designing textiles for an umbrella factory for $40k a year. My rent was $600, and I felt like a queen in my romantic 1920’s one-bedroom. It was my first real city girl job and apartment.
People would small talk me “how did you get to Portland,” and I would say “I drove.” I didn’t want anyone else to believe it was hard to leave or harder still to arrive. I wanted them to know how simple being brave was.
What do I wish that almost-validictorian knew?
Even though she could outcompete everyone in math and science, she’s an artist. She loves painting, digging in the dirt, writing, playing with rocks and crystals, and singing.
She will open the doors of her psyche with psychedelics. It will not be scary. It will be beautiful. The world reveals itself to be far more fascinating, intricate and bizarre than she could’ve imagined. She still will love the moments where everything snaps into place with clarity and order, but these will arise up from a deep place of knowing, not be whittled down to size by her busy brain.
I wish to tell her – you do not need to pretend to see beauty where you don’t, but also that there’s way more beauty in the ordinary than the overachieving part of you wants to see. You have to slow way down to find it. It’s worth slowing down even more to find the people who can see it with you.
Everyone has an ordinary hometown. In Cairo they think Arkansas is exotic and vice versa. Wherever you grew up is ordinary to you. You don’t have to spend your life running away from it. There’s nothing to be escaped from.
The box with those all medals will go missing somewhere in your succession of moves around the West Coast, probably the one from San Francisco to the East Bay. The baby book and blanket are in there too. You’ll feel grief and also a relief at not needing to carry it anymore. You didn’t want to keep them, but it was impossible to trash. Now they’re gone.
We can’t remember all that was lost, but we feel it still. What is missing? What can never be reclaimed? What would’ve been different if I had been allowed to explore my own curiosity instead of standardized test scores and syllabi?
These questions have no answer. The sadness reflects back as an echo off the wall, adding no clarity to the message. Instead, I ask better-er questions – What is now born out of all that losing. What was never lost? How can I find her again?
I’m in Cairo today eating leftover Indian curry and potato chips for breakfast. I filled up a passport and proved to myself that I could. In three days I return to Mexico. Now I put down roots in Oaxaca.
I wish to be a neighborhood girl again. I wish to get a reputation. I wish to be seen. I wish to be known by my community. I wish to stay even when every ounce of fear in my body tells me to run and start over in a new city, somewhere just a little bit better. I wish to call my landlady’s pets and children by their names. I wish for people to notice my absence and for me to notice theirs.
If that’s all there is, I’m ok with it.