I’m Aging!

One of the weirdest parts of my life over the past year has been when people call me professor. Or when my therapy clients call me Dr. (insert my last name). I suspect some of this stems from general adjustment to something new; before, people in my professional life called me Thomas, now, sometimes they don’t. It’s different! At the same time, in reflecting upon my reluctance to embrace the “professor” or “Dr.” title, I sense the presence of underlying existential crises, too.

I think part of my slight existential dread comes from how up until this point in my life, I had always been in training.

Writers are Humans, Thomas, Duh

Sometimes I idealize people. Take for example, my most recent failed crush. When I read his writing, I thought, oh my goodness, this man is perfect, so this is the kinda guy Ariana Grande sung “Everyday” about. I later learned that this guy kinda sucked at in-depth interpersonal communication, or at least that type of communication to me. I had built him up in my head, my foolish, foolish head.

After this man and I stopped talking, I started to freak out about writing and my favorite authors. Wait a second, I thought to myself, if this man came across as such a talented, thoughtful writer yet actually treated me like a molded potato, how can I trust any writer to be a decent human being? As anyone who read this blog knows, I love books with all my heart, so the thought of my favorite authors treating people like dirt made me feel so hurt and gross.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

Cover via amazon.com.

Rating: 4/5 stars.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn revolves around Francie Nolan, a young girl growing up in a poor neighborhood in New York. The plot of this novel does not drift from event to event, at least not in a way that fits standard plot summary – rather, it flows like fine water, split into five sections that match the stages of Francie’s coming of age. With warm prose Betty Smith addresses themes such as poverty, loss of innocence, and gender roles in a book she claims to have written without any intended message for society.

I loved two aspects of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, one of which was experiencing Francie mature from a tiny girl to a mature woman.

Teaching Kids to Cry

At the age of eight, I knew more about math than I did about my mom. I could add numbers together, but I could never figure out why she would scream and shout for no apparent reason. Subtraction came easily, but knowing how to navigate the turbulent waters of my mother’s constant mood swings – and all of the emotional turmoil that it entailed? Definitely harder than taking apart a simple sentence or memorizing my multiplication tables.

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

Cover via Goodreads.

Rating: 4.5/5 stars.

I felt like I found the fountain of youth with Eleanor & Park, but at the same time, it made me feel so darn old. Here’s a monologue of my thoughts while reading pages 70-71 (which can be shifted around just a little bit to apply to the rest of the book):

18 and Flailing

One week ago I turned 18. Since then I’ve been dealing with bouts of depression by drugging myself on Queer as Folk. In a perfect world I would write “hey, guess what guys, I’m not a teenager anymore, so no more angst on this blog!” But this is not a perfect world, and I am not a perfect person. Adult angst exists. I just need to conquer it.

High Heels, Blond Highlights, and Eighteenth Birthdays

By the time I was ten, I wanted to dye my hair blond. At 12, I wrote in a journal that I was going to run away. Around the age of 14 I fought for people – but most importantly, myself – to accept me irrespective of my sexuality. 16 marks the period in which I discovered my purpose, to make a change. In one way or another I’ve done all of these things, through various proxies like bleach on a best friend’s toothbrush or a personal blog I’ve come to call home. Now the question remains: what is 18?

Here Comes the Rainbow

There once was a boy named Thomas, who had to run from the rain.

All his life, Thomas lived in a box. It was a nice box, full of food, clothes, and toys. When he was little, he wrote on the walls of the box. He slept in the box, he played games in the box, he read stories in the box. He had everything anyone could ever want in this little box, all of the things he needed to live.

But the box came with one bad part: it always rained.

In Defense of Young-Adult Books

Some of my favorite books, that so happen to be young-adult.

Usually, I’m scared of my mom reading my posts. But not this time. With this post, I’m scared of my AP Literature teacher stumbling upon it, my elitist literature-loving friends finding it, or, even worse – my future college professors in the English department reading it. Because this post is dedicated to one argument: young-adult books are just as valuable as what many people refer to as “literature,” and on some occasions more valuable than such classics.

The Fight Song of the Tiger Son

My handy dandy suitcase.

Floss, Latin textbook, ratty T-shirt, notebook. As I threw these things into my suitcase, I wondered whether I would survive that day.

I ran out of my house. Wearing shorts and a thin jacket, the cold cut at me even though the sun still shone. Shouldering my backpack and holding my suitcase in both arms, I felt like a fictional character, running away from home. Except this time everything was real.

I made it a few blocks down until I saw her car approach me. Contemplating whether or not to make a run for it, I knew I wouldn’t escape – no mile time was fast enough to outpace an angry mother. Her beige car pulled up alongside the road, and she lowered her window to yell at me.

“Get back in the house, now!” my mother screamed.

Minutes before, she had threatened to kill me. Inside my house, she had started one of her angry outbursts, but it felt more dangerous than all of the other ones. In that moment, standing on the sidewalk of the road, heart racing, I defied my mother for the first time.