My Life With My True Feelings

When will you change?

Age of six I knew not to walk alone, especially at night.
I never understood why my parents wouldn't let me go out with friends, there are dangers outside.
I never understood why we, girls, had to cover our bodies: Because of those disgusting and manipulative men who think we're fragile as glass and can't let our voices be heard.
I never understood why it hurt more putting up a mask of happiness and bravery; because the expectations of society to find happiness were never realistic.
I never understood why anxiety would arrive every time I saw the blue and white flashing lights and why people would insult us just because we're immigrants: Because we're different.
I never understood why people will throw shame, hatred, and even go as far as using their bullets to shatter strangers all because we don't believe in the same god: Because we're different.

All because we're different from them; they want to treat us as if we're the enemy.
Even now in this pandemic where millions of people are dying...hatred and cruelty still happens.
'When will society change?' -that's the main question I think about as a teenager whose heart shatters thinking about these things that shouldn't have happened in the first place.
Late at night when these thoughts won't let me rest I talk to god through my prayers and tell him,

"Oh dear God, you are all-powerful and wise, can you answer my questions?
If you exist, why can't you intervene when this earth is slowly burning in flames?
Does it amuse you so much how the innocent get hurt by the claws of hatred, mistreatment, and sorrowful despair? "

But he never answers my prayers.

Age of seven people's words will pierce through me and will leave scars, my insecurities,
Those insecurities developed into bigger monsters that I couldn't handle and so, I started to cover up my body, my face, my everything, and wear a mask at school.

School is something that will become a fearful place to be in because all of the students will compete into getting into that ladder of popularity.
And that's where society's beauty standards started to apply even more.

Boys will only like girls who are popular, long straight hair, skinny, with blue ocean eyes; basically wanting girls who look like models.
Girls will do the same at times there would be girls fighting for the same guy who turns out to be a player.

At school, if you don't talk, you're no fun.
If you talk too much, you're a fake person who's always in drama.
It's the same place where there are multiple puzzle pieces to form your true persona.

When will you show yourself? : The day that all of the snakes appear before me and tell me why they had to pretend to be my friends with their fake smiles.
The day that we aren't expected to be okay.

And it's the same place where young teenagers are always expected to be adults to understand that their future is on their hands: But is it really in our hands?

The expectations for us to fix what the other generations had destroyed as if our world was a broken toy.
The expectations of being doctors, lawyers, and other high-paying jobs, but when we speak about being an artist, a poet, or overall trying to be able to live our dreams that's when the adults will crush them.

Age of fifteen that's the time when I started to see more of how cruel the world is.
War and destruction is the most common thing that occurs every day but we choose to turn a blind eye.
When I hear about soldiers hurting the innocent as if they were the enemy it disgusts me.
And I ask myself, "Do they have no sympathy when they see them beg for mercy? Or does the power that they have fuel them up with ignorance and cold-blooded thirst to see fear in their eyes?"
Not only war but broken promises made in this country.

Why promise that all men are created equal?: Even though discrimination appears in every corner of this nation?
Why promise freedom for all?: When ICE and organizations who treat immigrants like animals.
Putting children into cages, performing surgeries where you know well enough that there's a language barrier between the victims and the surgeons, and go as far as giving these young children constant trauma which not even therapy will help heal these wounds.
Having the thought that your whole family can be broken by these organizations as a small and fragile child is daunting.
Watching those officers pinning down your parents just because of them being an immigrant: An immigrant who came to America with the promise for freedom and a better future.

An immigrant who had to live through the hell of discrimination and constant insults to go back to their country.
An immigrant who formed a family with a promise to be a better parent than their own parents who made them work as a child because of how poor they were.
An immigrant who tries to keep their children safe from the living hell that's outside in the real world.
An immigrant who keeps on working hard every day to keep their children from suffering as they did.
Immigrants who constantly repeat the same thing of having plans of how things will happen if they were taken away from their families.

This society makes me want to hide in my utopia where everybody is happy and there's no more hell.
Where children can be playing outside: Not thinking about possible kidnappers who will take them away nor being bullied by the other kids.
In a place where everybody can love who they want to love: With no judgment and fear of being harassed in the streets for holding the opposite gender's hand.
In a place where everybody can embrace their beauty: That's the day I will unhide myself and finally see that the girl staring back at me in the mirror is myself.
In a place where your race, your gender, your sexuality, religion, and the color of your skin won't matter anymore: Everybody lives in peace and harmony.
In a place where families aren't broken up by police and people in power will be unblinded by the only thing separating them from civilians.
But I know that's wishful thinking that one day that can happen: But I wish it did.

So society when will you change?