America 2024
I scarcely recall a time when I felt comfortable in my body. There’s pictures, before I turned eight, where I was skinny. But by the time I hit the third grade things changed. It felt like overnight I went from wearing anything I wanted and not caring nothing about the way I looked, to having to wear velcro pants for breathing room. Despite my attempts to pull that velcro strap tighter and tighter, thinking that it might somehow shrink my waistline, but it did nothing more but leave deep groves in my skin by the end of the day. Sore by the time I got home, I rub my fingers over that textured skin. Hating myself and wondering why this had to happen to me.
The next of life’s punchlines came in the form of gynecomstia, better known as man boobs—or I guess technically, boy boobs, but who says that? By the time I’d made it to fifth grade, I wanted nothing more than to disappear. I tried hiding my shame with baggy clothes and big coats, hoping that by layering up, I could create an illusion that there was nothing there. That I was not there. Being the truthful assholes that kids can be, they never let me forget. The boys pantomiming grabbing their non-existing cleavage to mock me, my brother referring to me as Uncle Titty Bags, and strangers asking me if I were a boy or a girl sliced gaping holes in my self-pride. I don’t know that I ever healed those wounds fully, the scars across my heart could tell so many stories of pain.
I will hand it to myself. Somehow I got me through. Mostly, it was looking to the future. It’s always what has gotten me through. This belief that life would someday get better. Isn’t that what history taught us? The civilized world that I was born into had graduated from the atrocities of history, or so I led to believe. It’s 2024 and there’s never been a time where I’ve been more disappointed in the world we live in. The KKK have removed their hoods and they and their devisees have taken seats in the highest courts of the land, they pervert the truth to subvert simple minds, they and their quieted wives have stepped out of the shadows to proudly raise flags of hate, and they are systematically sickening the land by weakening the minds of Americans.
Oh, how I envy the blissful fool, who is simply along for the ride, not noticing the brimstone choking the sky.