Some People

“You are different” that’s what Margot said when she sat down next to me as a complete stranger on an airplane. “Tell me if I’m wrong, but you seem to me and I don’t know you at all, but you seem to me like the kind of woman who just goes out there and gets what she wants.” 

There are people in this world who are a revolution in themselves. People unwilling to remain unmoved—people who create change. My sister always said I would end up being the kind of hippie who protested on the street with signs that plead Sea World to free Willie the Whale or would stop showering just protect the planet, because I was the child who would talk to the trees and keep ants as pets. 

            When I first started writing my blog, my grandfather mentioned how dangerous it was to give me a voice capable of connecting with those who thought like me, not because he disagreed with what I had to say, but because he knew that once the can was open there was no way to lock the worms back inside. I’ve always been a storm, that is what my grandma says, “the premature baby who wasn’t supposed to survived has grown up to become an ill-tempered adult determined to love everything and everyone she comes across.” My lungs hadn’t developed when I decided to come out of my mother so fast, she didn’t even have time to call the doctor. 

“I woke up that morning and I knew you were going to be born that day” that’s how she tells the story on my birthday every year, “the nurses didn’t believe you would come almost a whole month early so they didn’t call the doctor, but there you were just a couple of hours later.” 

            “You have always been stubborn” that’s what grandfather says, “when you were two years old and the doctor told us you wouldn’t be able to walk, you decided to prove him wrong and even when your legs were too weak to support your body, you learned to walk.” 

My parents have always tried to keep me on a short leash, afraid that if they didn’t teach me the limits, I would try to jump off the roof in an attempt to catch the moon. So I wasn’t allowed at the adults’ table when they talked about “serious matters” because there’s nothing worst than the voice of child to ignite guilt in a heart that has become too much like the rest of world. I learned to keep quiet as I listened to the adults talk about politics. So much so that it became a joke amongst my aunts and uncles to say that I was secretly judging them as I listened to everything they were getting wrong.  My parents quickly learned that whenever I kept quiet it meant that something was seriously wrong, it meant I wanted something to change. 

I became a writer because I have always had things to say, things I wasn’t allowed to say, things I was too young to say. I began to write, and people read. And when they read, they agreed but when I talked–when I tried to talk–I was too naive or so they said. At the age of twelve, when I barely knew how to use the internet, I created a secret blog where I wrote about the coldness of a world—everyone told me—I was too young to understand. I barely had access to a computer so I started keeping journals and treasure boxes hidden on my underwear drawer.  

There is a tree that is mine in our back yard. It is mine because I begged my parents to plant it for me when I finished kindergarten, and it is mine because I have cried every winter when the rain challenges its strength. Once, I sat by that tree early in the morning before anyone woke up and remained there until my parents promised they wouldn’t cut it down after a storm almost made it fall over our house. My mom never lets me go to flower shops because I always come back with all sorts of plants and dreams of gardens. It was my grandmother who taught me how to sing to the flowers because they grow better when they feel loved. 

 “The world is so damaged” she continued “It is nice to know there’s sweet hearts, young people like you, eager to make a change. Eager to put all of us old people in our place, good for you!”

I found out her name was Margot after listening to her life story and how she was trying to beat cancer, at the end of the flight she told me that just talking to me had helped free her soul of the fears of an impending doom. 

I am a lighthouse, that is how someone once described me. “You are light for people too tired to fight, you bring change wherever you go. It comes natural to you, people know that your heart will always have space to shelter one more lost soul.” 

We are all energy, I am nothing but energy, and I am connected to everything that surrounds me, like Pandora’s box, trying to hold inside all of the demons that haunt this world. 

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