May 2021

No amount of bargaining or denial will change that simple bead of truth.

It wasn’t taking my fifth “Am I Gay?” quiz. It wasn’t being disappointed when I would get “You Are Straight!” as a result.

*This piece talks about mental health, and some aspects of this piece may be triggering for someone recovering. If you are in need of mental health help and are a current UVA student, please contact CAPS (Counseling and Psychological Services) at (434) 243-5150 during the day. If you are in crisis and need help after hours, please call 434-243-5150 or 911 if you need immediate help. 

When my mom was a kid, a white boy had a crush on her. So, the KKK set a cross on fire in her aunt’s front yard. A white boy couldn’t like a brown girl. And although this piece is more about me and my experiences, my mom sets everything up. I am her carbon copy. And I have spent my whole life walking right next to her, step-in-step, hearing, seeing, being right there when the racist questions are asked, when those looks are shot in her direction. And then, when I started going out on my own, or in school, the overt racism started to be hurtled at me.

Act One

You love riding 

with the windows down.

I hated it.

But then I rode 

with them down 

without you,

and I understood.

Coming back from a place you once had said 

was the “scenic route.”

Now it’s really more my route than yours: 

does that make you mad?

I drove an extra twenty miles

just to take that exit you took me on

when there was a crash on the highway

to see if I would cry when my wheels came to a stop 

at the stop sign.

I hate having to stop.

I have a confession to make: lately, I’ve been struggling to keep myself together. I miss deadlines, forget to text people back. Turn things in exactly at 11:59pm. Call it the mid-semester reckoning, or midterm season, or simply being burnt out, but I (and I’m sure many of you) do not know how to manage it lately. Work is boring, I wake up more tired than when I went to sleep. I can’t find inspiration for anything.

This is the origin of June and how she became a villain no one could stop.