We commit all manner of sins and crimes, but I can’t say we commit suicide, because to me, suicide is neither sinful nor criminal. It isn’t a deliberate choice of a wrong over right; it’s blindness to the very existence of choices.
“You don’t understand…it’s more than just a health thing. It’s the whole turning-into-a-white-guy thing. My whole life I’ve been black. And now it’s all changing, so that I don’t know what I am anymore…society, you know?”
A relieved sigh. Then: “You shouldn’t call it a mugging if you weren’t hurt!”
“You deserve so much better,” they said, “and he’s really not worth it.” To which my invariable response was, “But I still love him.”
Phones, these incredible devices that hold so much potential to create connections between humans through exchanges, too often create distance. I wonder what Alexander Graham Bell would have thought of that.
I wish I had thought to report what I had seen, or to confront the old woman, or to have immediately run and brought my mother (or even the closest adult shopper).
We talked a lot about our bodies. What we were experiencing in the moment, what our bodies felt. What we were putting them through.
Have you ever interrogated a Catholic priest? I have. It begins like this: “Father, hi, hello, my name’s Brenna. I wanted to talk to you about something that’s been bothering me, because I want to do something about it, because I want to write about it