I never believed "I knew everything" as a teenager, or child or young adult. I always felt solid in what I knew I knew. And knew that I didn't know so much.
What I went though and analyzed and regurgitated and processed and touched and painted and had feedback from sane trusted others; that sorta thing I could feel pretty secure with, saying that I "knew about it".
I knew what I did not want to be like, long before I knew what kind of person I wanted to become.
People who are older and much older then me will know I am young.
Children who look at me will know that I am colorful, pink fun like Bratz Doll and older, a lot older then them. They will think about when they are "grown up" and if they will know anyone like me, be like me, wonder how they might be.
I think about children and homes and owning cars and having health insurance and payment plans and taking vacations, having a storage space or garage with outdoorsy equipment and holiday decoration boxes labeled and writing books and having big family friend annual get-togethers.
I think about belonging to a thing that is bigger than me.
I've always wanted that.
To be apart of something. I have felt the most satisfied in that department when I was in colleges.
One summer I spent at Cal Arts on the hot, eucalyptus smelling Valencia campus. It was the first time I had ever felt what that belonging feels like. I was surrounded by fantastic artists, queer kids, seen by them, loved in a way I could feel. I reeled in the company of the brilliant minds all around me. We were the 15 year old out casts of our public schools, but here, all together we could dance, make art, play music, write, act, do stuff we just know how to do more than we knew about anything else.
We were all going to grow up and make stuff.
I spent a different summer in another Pre-Collage art program at UCSB College of Creative Studies. A campus that felt generally dull, but the College students who were our dorm leaders or whatever, I loved. I was the "Diversity Leader" for the Student Activities thingy for the summer, at the time I was an "Ally". I was a teenage girl who kept falling for gay boys. I had never seen a "butch" or "gender queer" type female person, I didn't know about it. I was attracted to the "queer quality" the boys had, delicate features, boy smelling, eyeliner, chipped nail polish, messy hair, I adored it.
At MICA, we worked, we all just worked so hard.
Roller derby in Baltimore brought about the most intense feelings. I became apart of this huge, crazy intense family, with a mission- skating. We trained, worked, played together. It was the most intense time.
All my perceptions of sports changed after that. I understood about what it means to sweat, that the body is a machine. What it means to want to cry and vomit and shit you are trying so hard.
I would ride my bike around, see a roller girl I felt exponentially safer knowing they were sprinkled throughout the sketchy streets of Baltimore. It was a secret all girl gang and everything in my life felt buoyant, easier, lifted by being 1 of the 60 women in the league.
Life is different when you move in a flock around and around in a circle, with your hair flying and music blasting.
Life is peaceful with wheels humming around the rink.
I am a pack animal. I fare better with the whole.
For never wanting a normal job, I am such a team player. The idea of accomplishing a thing together is so much more exciting to me than to create just my vision. I always talk about this. Things are so much more interesting to me when I am terrified to do a thing that the others all wanna do, and I do it and the shape I thought I lived in changes again, and again I don't know who I am, I un-do what I thought I knew, and I am younger.
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