I’d rather stand at the shore, toeing the cold water as the sun warms my back. 

 

The sun is comfortable, a perfect temperature with its perfect distance. I’m also safe from the water. The waves can’t drown me. 

 

Here, I’m controlling the situation, allowing myself to be in both. Never fully one or the other, but in that safe spot where the land and sea do not mix. It’s a hidden fold in the earth’s blanket that’s missing its stitches. A secret spot with no structure. You can stay hidden, unnoticed– yet secure. You can become anything here. 

 

Home. A transversal word, tricky in meaning. A place to grow and blossom. Also a place to ache, perish. Fundamental to one’s identity, however completely vicious in its attack. 

 

I’m back in middle school, sitting through the Korean history lesson with red hot cheeks. I’m waiting, terrified for the next joke to be made by a classmate. My classmates with different eyes than mine– the big to my small. I remember sitting in front of a mirror, training my eyes to look bigger. Like theirs. They have to sit on my face correctly or else it’ll be wrong. I also have to talk like them, dress like them, eat their food, completely forget who I am. It’ll work because it’s what needs to be done. The perfect facades for the perfect people for the perfect life. 

 

Because I was them, I never became me. The pieces that were supposed to blend and form a beautiful, iridescent person, holistic and captivatingly knowing, never did. Instead I’m half-baked, irrefutably undeveloped. A blanket missing its stitches. 

 

It’s always half. Half of what I want, half of what I am. Half of what I want to be.

 

I can’t help but to surrender. Completely melt myself– become fluid so that I can fit anywhere. Features meld into the indistinguishable. A creature unknowing of its shape, incapable of self-perception. I become who I am in the presence of others.

 

It’s my defense to humiliation and exclusion– the feeling of being the other. Vulnerability isn’t a strength, but a weakness. The brain numbs what the heart feels. Over time, the heart slows down. It starts limping, quivering, until it eventually becomes unresponsive. It is now weak and useless, shuddering in the cavity of the soul. Feelings vanish and now all that is left is this dull, hollow body.

 

I can’t make eye contact with people. I become relieved when they look away, because I know when they do look at me, they can see past it all. Everything I built for years. The skins I grew out of survival. They will all disappear under their examination– that’s why they need to go away. 

 

I retreat to that fold in the blanket. The one without stitches. Free from them, from that pressure. Back to the vacant and familiar, I curl up and lie down, at ease.