When I was younger, my parents were big, bright stars that I suspended over myself. They were easily one of the most brilliant people I have ever met. And sometimes, before we went to bed, there were these rare pockets of time where they would regale me of stories from their youth: how they were on top of their classes; how people looked up to them and said they’d go places. Despite the fact that we lived in a rented townhouse they were struggling to pay for as they told me all of these things, I marveled at the way they passed down their light to me.
As a young girl, I read books and watched cartoons that made me seem smart. I would sometimes run up to my parents and tell them all of these random pieces of information I picked up. How to spell Czechoslovakia. The founding fathers of the United States. One bit of fact about anatomy I now can’t remember for the life of me.
And whenever they would smile a tired smile and tell me how painfully close I am to resembling them, the pride is nothing short of gratifying.
When I was younger, all I ever wanted was to be like my parents.
But as I grow older, I look at myself and see the jagged pieces of their being lodged in places that don’t fit. I am their shattered dreams, which is to say I am also their failures and disappointments. And because I am their daughter, I am also their redemption. I am what’s left of their brilliance - armed with nothing but random facts from a handful of documentaries and news articles to make me appear the least bit clever when in fact, I just think they’re interesting enough to know of.
I am sensible and have one foot in the real world for causes that matter to me, but I am so terrified of navigating my way through it without giving my fraudulence away. What if I meet someone and feel so dim in comparison? What if I venture further into the world and find out that all my life, I have never been the bright, promising young thing my parents made me believe I was?
When I was 16, I told my dad I wanted to be a lawyer. It wasn’t a medical career - as almost everyone from his side of the family has - but it was something big. It gave me an air of superiority to be called an attorney one day. But then, I realized that my politics didn’t need to be exercised in court for it to matter. I just have to keep my eyes open and never stop talking about it. But these are the kinds of things you overlook when you’re an impressionable teenager. Back then, I wanted to change the world and defend the marginalized. I wanted to burn the patriarchy to ashes and give people of all sexualities and genders the freedom to live in the world regardless of how they present themselves. I wanted to see women given a fair seat at the table. The world to me at that time was a workable chunk of clay I could mold into some semblance of a perfect figure.
It took me five more years to realize that the world will always be fucked up, because we’re a little fucked up; and the only thing we can do is try and be good to one another - because this is the only way we’ll survive.
I’m 21-years old now and I’m not in college. I don’t think I even want to go on with it anymore. I wanted to be so many things when I was younger, but now the only thing I’m certain I could see myself doing is writing. I’m convinced that if I really wanted to be at least one of those things, I’d have the aptitude to go after them despite the cards I’ve been dealt with. But lately I’ve just been letting life happen to me - stretching me in all directions, spreading me paper-thin. I never know where I am or what I’m doing half the time, but in figuring it out I am the kindest I have ever been to myself than all the years I thought I’d been sure.
I may never have a college degree and find myself at a dead end job with nothing but a silly little dream of writing my own book anchoring me, but maybe it’s not so bad. Maybe I was born to have a small, graceful struggle of a life. Maybe when I believed that I would grow up like my parents, what I was given was the same attributes - brilliant, but with not enough grit. And above everything else, a misfortune that runs deep through generations.
Sometimes, I’m convinced that most of my 20s is just me trying to run away from my parents’ bad luck; carving my own path so it wouldn’t follow me. But I don’t know. Maybe I have a misfortune that’s entirely my own and not theirs.
Photo credits to miaaaaa95 on Instagram.