“Someone Who Isn’t Like Us”

Sitting in the waiting lounge with my older cousin, kicking my feet and slamming colorful blocks together. I don’t know what’s happening, but I do know I will see my parents again. I get picked up and lay in her arms getting carried out of the door to see my mom in a hospital bed, rushing to somewhere I don’t know. I was confused, but I also wanted to return to my mother’s arms. I wailed and flailed my arms to reach towards her but my cousin stayed at foot, not moving her shoes. 

Time passed by and I was given a pack of M&M’s to munch and stop being so stuffy, but I didn’t like the smell so I pouted even more. Time passed and I finally saw my mom again, but there was something in her arms. It looked like a doll that I would always see in Walmart in the toys section with smurf clothing and wrapped like a burrito. At first, I didn’t know what this thing was but as I grew, I realized this was someone of the same blood as me. 

I wasn’t able to play a lot with my little sister due to her being so tiny, but once she was able to walk I did my arts and crafts rather than play Barbies with Disney dolls. My mom found this odd and told me to play with her. I tried but when I tried, she destroyed my stuff no matter how much I tried to stop her leading to hand-gripping, and pulling fights which my mom had to separate us. She wasn’t like me and she wasn’t like the friends I made along the way. She never asks me something in complete sentences nor understands why I would cry or yell at her. She’s always so aggressive and whines on every nit-pick which made me believe she’s just a terrible person, a bratty spoiled one. I would even persuade her whenever she gets into these misfits making my mom even more miserable.

My mom told me when my sister was around three or four that she was autistic. I didn’t know what she meant, all it sounded like to me was a responsibility I had to carry on my back no matter how old I got because my mom said so. Whenever she bothers me, I yell at her which she yells back and leads to pushes and shoves. Whenever my cousins always ask why she’s so pushy, I say she’s just like that. She could never read the room and only think for herself which made me dislike her even more. I don’t know what made me act so light of her recently, but when she got older she was finally able to understand some emotion and speak a little more nicely instead of breaking demands. That’s when I realized that she isn’t someone that you could change just by talking to her, you have to show her what it is meant to fit in like introducing a puppy to a litter of cats. She’s different no matter what but you can still her better than before.

What’s it like to be with her now? It still isn’t easy as I don’t talk to her, but this time I could tell she generally cares for our family and understands we care for her in some sense. We have little normal conversations from time to time that don’t always lead to fights, but we would still play handles in church when our mom said no. I never really had a true sibling experience, but I do consider one. Do I love her in a family sense? I would say somewhat, but would I love her as a person? I don’t know to be honest. “Love” to someone is a hard thing to know and different from caring or morality toward another human being. However, that doesn’t mean I want to bring her everywhere I go until I die. I want to enjoy what it’s like to live in my world rather than carry someone on my back.

“Same Oragans, But Different Everything”

Same chords, different tone

Different dialects, different pronunciation

What are you saying? This is not my mother’s tongue

I can’t understand why you like these, but you also don’t understand why I enjoy this

Your food tastes plain, but my food is too strong for your taste

Yummy in my tummy, but my yummy gets thrown out of your tummy

Seen as tools, seen as nuisances

You see me as violent, I see you as gluten

Why can’t we be different?

Without getting suppressed by our culture of differences

In an already diverse world

Since no one speaks the same mind

As you think everything else in the world does

Is it unfair to treat you,

How you treat us?

“Trusted Once, Never Twice”

We had this retreat in church where all the 8th and 7th graders gather up and get closer to “God”. My group only had one person who was my friend, 7th- 8th graders, and two leaders. The second leader talked to me the most and was super flexible to talk to. As we were having a fun conversation, he asked if I had discord which I said yes. He then asked if he can have my discord which I just thought was to keep contact for whenever I want to ask something or just a little “How’s it going?” Afterwards, he asked the rest of the group for theirs, but my friend didn’t accept it. The retreat ended and I came back home, opened my phone to see that he’s the first to say hello to.

The conversations are pretty normal, just learning what and who we were. I learned that he was in his second year of college in America from Vietnam and lived with his aunt. He likes to play piano and have expensive gaming settups, even though he doesn’t have a lot of money on him at the moment. He also helps out the church a lot and breaks in the halls just to play k-pop songs on the piano, which I thought was nice but wasn’t so interested in. He would ask if we can call and I would join to either listen to cut off piano noises or about what’s been happenign in life. However, this nice conversation didn’t really last for 

We talked about this one girl that I knew for a while and apparently he had her contact on Instagram before, but she blocked him 2 weeks afterwards. He talked about how rude she was after that, but something didn’t sit right. “He wouldn’t be that dangerous, is he?” I thought to myself. I didn’t want to jump to conclusions, so I kept talking to him. He started talking to me in this specific way, with extending my name every time he said hi and adds a “:)))” at the end of the greetings. This is how he talks to people, I told my self. He talked about how he couldn’t make a lot of close friends in his new college and how he enjoyed talking to me which creeped me out a little, but I didn’t want to make him “lonely”. 

He starts saying how much he appretiates talking to me and that he hadn’t had these talks for a long time. He asked at one point if I ever had a relationship, and then told about his love life. He asked me a lot of questions and at one point requested that I learn Vietnamese, in exchange to stay up longer with him. One time he asked if i got my puberal period yet, which I thought he didn’t know what puberty meant since he didn’t know a lot of English. I mentioned to my violin teacher of his actions, which she suggested to block him and call the police.

One day, he wanted to get a job related to computer science because he recently moved to America. I remember my dad studies in computer science, so I offered him a job from my dad’s work place and he applied. I still remember the lines- “I got accepted :D”

I took her suggestion and slowly ghosted him when bible classes ended since that means I wouldn’t have to go face to face with him anymore. I stayed patient for 2 weeks and then finally blocked him one day. I never saw him or heard from him again until around September where he asked how I was doing on Roblox. Of course, I never said anything.

“Who Am I? Really?”

What am I as a person? Everyone is different and unique. They have different hobbies, speech patterns, voices, bodies, nationalities, opinions, and interests. I am sure I have these, but am I acting as who I am because that’s “who I am”? Or, am I doing this because it’s the only way people can define who I am?

I’m aware that I am pretty good at drawing and people like it, but am I drawing because I enjoy it or because I’m good at it? The way I talk is how I was influenced by other people, but I can change it when I want to. Do I still talk the way I do because it’s for the people around me or is it because it’ll make me different from others? When my voice leaks out of my words sometimes it’ll be a lower pitch, but it would be a higher pitch when I’m with my family. Which one is my actual voice? My voice is something I should be comfortable with, but each tone is comfortable with a certain set of people. 

It’s also what I talk about to begin with. Some groups of people I want to know the “deranged” parts of me, but some other groups I don’t want them to know. Am I scared that they would leave me? Not really, but it does kind of hurt sometimes. But what is there to talk about if I can’t talk about the deranged thoughts I have? I’ve tried to have a “normal” conversation, but most of the time it would just sound irrelivant to the groups I talk to most of the time. I guess that’s why my choices of thought to say in words are something people would consider “crazy”.

“Taking My Shoes Out of the Tar”