CXXXII. For I Am The Daughter, Hear Me Roar -

I used to think I was like those Christmas trees that are atop moving cars at the start of December.

Tightly bound in a net-like contraption, I too was held to a degree of constraint or, one could say, refinement.

I thought I was like those automobile bound trees; harbingers of good tidings that invoke happiness and unite families.

I don’t quite feel like those trees that will bring smiles to all who bear witness any longer. Instead, I feel burdened by the onus of worries, stress, and hypocrisy that is synonymous to the mesh-like netting used to wind up the tree.

Possessing the knowledge of where the birth certificates and old photos are stashed, as well as the stories behind said photos, I am positioned to be in the line of inheritance of a history that is rapidly becoming darker in parallel to the fall-approaching-winter days that darken seconds earlier with each passing day.

Paper towels are finished, the dental floss is behind the shampoo in the closet, and we have enough milk for coffee for the next week. I know this. I don’t have to exert any energy or take away from my time filling out graduate school applications to become privy of the list of doodads that are nonetheless necessary for daily functioning in the house.

Bearing the brunt of mudslinging from the bipartisan divide within the macrocosm of myself has caused stress-inducing problematic skin. You’d think a face full of mud would be akin to a facial and cleanse the pores that result in smooth and unblemished skin.

I am re-evaluating past scenarios. Not one for regrets or, of late, referencing the past, the situation in question mandates the excavation of memories.

Time mends everything I keep telling myself, but I cannot forget what continues to transpire. Still, time passing creates memories which are abstract figments of the past - that will have to be good enough.

College was a dark, seemingly never-ending trajectory of bumps and bruises from venal tenured professors and the freshman minus 15, plus another negative five.
While time passing by has caused me to reminisce on the growth of my intellect and the precious ivy winding corridors of a Philadelphia campus, there is no denying certain changes that are here to stay: the less curly hair and the ever-shortening list enumerating my likes.

I am almost appreciative of the timing of this burdensome drudgery coinciding with the year’s end - almost.
The days are clouded over and darkness mirrors the interring of our minds and jovial spirit for things to come all due to lies and hate disguised as family honor.
This hatred makes its presence felt during a time that should smell only of joy and pine trees.

How dare these people, supposedly my own, treat my closest compatriot in this manner? How dare they? Open your minds already; patriotism is nasty when it wreaks of ethnocentric dogma.
Live and let live.
Money isn’t everything - my God, read a book! Learn something and then try and argue that you’re correct.
Whatever you have propagated to others about us, well, that will come back to haunt you and I hope it does - I hope it does.

I want to shed any negative energy and yet some of it is inevitably carried around.

“I want to find someone. I want to marry a man without any… baggage,” I said yesterday.

“Everyone has baggage,” she responded.

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Mother to her daughter (Film Dialogue):

“Then at every step, sometimes as a daughter, sometimes as a sister, sometimes as a wife, I went on sacrificing my own happiness. But when you were born, I promised myself that I’d never let what happen to me happen to my daughter. What if she’s a girl? She’d live her life as she wants. But I was wrong. I had even forgotten that a woman doesn’t even have the right to make promises.”