- jumping on the couch (i think this was soon after i became sentient lol) and realized w my mom's help that i was growing up (i was 4 and a half)
- my grandmother taught me to read and write tamil (my first language, my mother tongue) and i still haven't forgotten, i don't think i ever will. every time i write something or read something or even think something in tamil i'm reminded of her.
- i woke up and i was missing a tooth and it was under my pillow, how was it under my pillow? i hadn't known you could lose your teeth, that you could lose body parts. it was a part of me until it wasn't
- why were you so obsessed with strawberry milk? you were always sitting by yourself drinking strawberry milk. little did you know you grew up to be lactose intolerant. maybe that's why you turned out this way.
- near the time i moved to the us and when i just started preschool i think, i was playing with some doll house with this other girl and i got frustrated bec she didn't know how to do something and told her to 'just give it to me'. she looked at me with the weirdest look on her face, and it took me a while to register that i spoke the wrong language to her. it's weird that the emotion i felt was shame, because now that i think about it i'd spent an overwhelming majority of my life speaking that language. how could i just forget it and learn a different one within months? how could i just shed my skin like that, and be ashamed of the colors that showed through?
- biting into an overly chewy grape gummy (my least favorite) and losing another tooth, do you think if i avoided grape i would still have all my baby teeth, would i still be a child?
- i tried tetherball for the first time and you said i had spaghetti noodle arms, it's great to know that i haven't changed
- innocently eating an energy bar or something when this kid looked at the wrapper and was like oh my goodness that has ONE HUNDRED and FIFTY CALORIES???? that's a lot. it's really weird how our perceptions of things we've been doing all our lives can change just like that. because the food that i'd been eating forever suddenly turned into some liability, something (again) to be ashamed of. i told my mom not to give me those bars anymore and i never bought them again even though they tasted so good and made me so happy
- my handwriting was pretty terrible in second grade, no one will believe me if i tell them now but it genuinely looked like scribbles. and i was ashamed of that too, i erased it just for my teacher to tell me that it'd look worse if i wrote over the erased marks. she hung up that assignment for open house, and my parents came, they saw everyone's neatest handwriting and my messy handwriting over faded marks of even messier handwriting. it was a day before or after my birthday, i don't remember, but my dad lectured me all the way home. 'is this what we came here for? is this what i taught you to do?' i get his sentiment now. i was so smart, but being smart means nothing if people can't understand your ideas. but i was like seven, and those remarks still hurt to this day. that's probably why i put so much effort into my writing today:)
- another new school and i didn't know anyone, but you took me under your wing, thanks!! i guess you felt bad for me but little did you know that you shaped the next 8 years (at least) of our lives. (i still won't tell u ily)
- i thought harry potter was a boys' book ???
- cup noodles are so salty and my mom won't let me have them and now whenever i smell the aroma of artificial sodium and MSG i can picture the fake dehydrated carrots and the times we used to spend together doing nothing yet so much at the same time. (i think we wrote a parody of harry potter, but hey i didn't say it was time well used)
- how did i have the energy to sprint with you to my house every monday? as if our parents would catch up with us if we went any slower, as if we needed the extra two minutes and fourteen seconds to marvel in the possibility of being independent together
- at your house and we read the email you got from your penpal together and he spelled jiji wrong and i laughed for 50 minutes, i'm smiling thinking about it god that was the peak of humor
- living in a huge farmhouse with like 5 different families on winter break and i had matching pajamas with you, they were pink and we jumped on the bed just because we could, and i was so surprised to find presents at the fireplace, who put them there? and how come i got one too? (i also played poker, i was like 7)
- we named the dog jimmy :)
- another trip with yall and we went to this other house (no dog this time) but we played laser tag at this random place and i was happy because my sister was too young to join :)
- playing warrior cats at recess, i was the medicine cat (kind of want to repress xdxd)
- leaving for science camp at like 7am ,, waving goodbye to my parents bc i was gonna have SO much fun for a week without them! (we came back 2 days later bc some virus spread - foreshadowing?)
- every time i think about it i wonder why i sobbed so hard but then i remember the anticipation that led up to it -- i knew i'd never have that experience again and it was literally snatched from under my nose.
- at least i didn't get sick i guess
- at 5th grade graduation (why is that a thing LMAO) the teachers read that one dr seuss book with our names as the characters ,,,, that was the only moment i ever thought it might be scary to move on
- my teacher cried, she was not the type to cry
- my mom asked me 'why did you choose viola?' it sounds cheesy but the truth is that it literally called to me, i knew i had to pick it as my first choice whether i got it or not
- got all the viola books and stuff and the teacher asked me if i chose violin, i said ".. no? i thought i chose viola" and you should have seen the joy on her face
- for a long time i wondered if i was good enough, i was never first chair like a or c constantly were, but i knew that something inside me connected with the instrument?? god this is so cheesy but i swear it's true
nov 19 2021 ∞
jun 11 2022 +