You have been asking me why I am buried deep within the atlas and maps and globes in the library. You have asked me why I am squinting at the small red dotted names that decorate nations we've never heard of. You have been asking me why I have a collection of countries listed in my purple college-ruled notebook. You have been asking what I'm looking for. You have slid backhanded compliments between the pages of these maps. You have noted that I've dropped some weight.
Thank you. Yes, I've been working out. I ran a few--
You noted that my make up does a decent job of covering up my teenage battle scars.
Thank you. Yes, but I don't really like the foun--
You noted that I shouldn't wear that green sweater, that pink looks much nicer on me.
Thank you. Yes, I found this button up last time I traveled to Uta--
Then, to your ultimate horror and disgust, you have finally noticed that I cut my hair.
How could I? You demand.
Don't I know better? You want to know.
Why didn't I tell you? Don't I know you would have paid me money to keep my hair long? You cry.
You shake your head and clench your jaw and say that they didn't cut it even on one side, and I passively agree and explain that is the style. This is horrible news to you. If you were wearing mascara like me, black lines of minerals would be dripping down your cheek bones.
You, instead, move to complain about having to shave everyday to follow an honor code that you signed. You, instead, turn your hat backwards on your head and observe that the puke yellow shirt you're wearing matches the red stripped button up you have worn over it. I want to tell you that you look like a McDonald's warning sign, but my parents taught me to be kind, and besides, how could you know?
No one has ever told you how to dress.
No one has ever told you how to sit.
No one has ever told you how to talk.
No one has ever told you how
to
cut
your
hair.
So, instead of pointing out the fact that your eyebrows are in desperate need of a wax, like you might have mentioned to me if I had not taken tweezers to alter the arches of my expressions, I dive deeper into the pages of maps and places and oceans, and I am on the hunt of a lifetime.
What am I looking for? You demand. You pull me from my studies with the claim that my learning is distracting to you. What am I looking for? You want to know. You believe you deserve to know. I smile and hold the maps and globes out for you to see.
Because I'm looking for where I asked for your opinion. I can't seem to find it anywhere. At first, I thought it was going to be in 16th century Europe, but all I found there was white male supremacy. So, I checked the classrooms of the 18th century, but all I found there was Mary Jane Patterson, in cap and gown, holding the first woman’s higher education degree, and it took the world 18 centuries to decide that was okay, so your opinion couldn’t possibly be there. I dug around in the 19th century, but all I heard were the screams of the suffragettes who were force-fed during hunger strikes, a sensation that they would later compare to rape because they would say no and these people would shove foreign objects into them anyway.
I need your help, because I can't find when or where I ever asked for your opinion about my hair or my make up or my clothes or my weight, and for the life of me, I just can't find the exact moment I needed your approval of my character or my appearance. I'm still looking, even though you've left now, rolling your eyes and scoffing at a word I haven’t even said, “feminism”, like it's some dirty cuss, like I am a monster to be feared, but never once have I told you that you don't deserve equal pay or equal say or equal trial. I have not victimized myself, I have not bullied you; I have called you friend and confidant. I have made the decision to trust you, a terrible decision, really, but I have, and now you see me and you don't see the novels I've read or the time I've spent singing and dancing in the mirror or the laughter I have shared with strangers or the times I was too scared to try to backflip into a pit of foam, and I don't understand why you can't see these things, because so many others have. Brave men have been enthusiastic about my projects, they have cheered for me and encouraged me to be myself.
So, here I am, buried in maps and globes and a dusty old atlas, and I'm still looking.
