Dear December,
I hung out with my best friend and her mom all day today: buying gifts (wrestler figurines and books about bi warlocks), dining in the backseat (cheeseburgers and Neapolitan milkshakes), arm-knitting scarves upstairs to high-pitched Vocaloid songs. It's in the long, easy lulls that I can say I'm happy. Maybe the cheesiest moments are silent--or near to it, with computer-made Japanese music playing in the background.
Coming home: a hangnail, secret literature, stale water, a reminder. I'm not tired anymore. Foreign fluids in their gaseous state are bubbling in my throat and when I breathe out I feel the fog in my mouth. Jenifer said her parents wanted her to transfer schools over the summer, three towns over to the school where I had my honor band. Maybe I wouldn't have known it then, but I would be friendless if she moved schools. They were talking about the competition for classes and the higher expectations and I realized they were talking with a frightened tone what I daydreamed about. I want challenging classes and amazing musicians my age and competition, I yearn for it so badly, and maybe that's where Jen and I differ: she is content with a small town life and I need something more. Throw me into a North Carolina dorm room with twenty-five dollars in my pocket and I will kiss you goodbye with French horn in hand. Maybe if I had started in a school with more than 300 kids, I could struggle without falling apart and accept competition free of the crippling fear of not living up to other people's impossible expectations. I have no room for experimentation, flaws, mistakes in the eyes of my peers. I'm so fucking scared of failure, of incomprehension that I can't even try to ask. That's what "smart", that's what "genius" is. Don't call me smart. Call me creative, intuitive, frightening, clever, a fast learner, woman, but don't you dare slap something as general as 'smart' on me as your description, because I will tear you and myself to pieces and describe you as 'ribbons' when my tongue is swollen and that's the easiest word to call you by.
Let me struggle. That is the only way in this world that we can learn to lean on ourselves when we need to.
YOU ARE READING
dear december
Non-FictionContinued from last month's Dear November letters. A little less angsty, a little more poetic. Originally done on Polyvore, by @writingtips' and @smileylina 's suggestion, who got the idea from Youtuber Carrie Fletcher's series 'Letters to Autumn'.
