‘Pricey Diary’: LIMBS

This column combines the intimacy of a diary-like narrative with the author’s personal experiences of issues little in life and issues large: politics and tradition. 

Pricey Diary,

I’m grateful for my limbs. I actually am. However generally — and I’m sorry, I do know I ought to be proud and grateful and introspective on issues like this, although I’m positive you’d succumb to the buzzing and sinking and pounding too — when everybody else appears to soften on the sight of delicate paleness that may often exhibit a barely brown, sun-kissed varnish, I fall.

I fall. My legs are torn from their hinges and tossed into the Bin of Uselessness whereas my arms float in some river that carries a ship down, down, down, which is identical manner I’m going as a result of I’ve no legs, and I’ve no arms, and that’s superb — there’s no use for brown limbs on this world, anyway. 

(No less than that’s what they informed me.)

I don’t bear in mind who mentioned it. It’d’ve been God — within the picture within the textbook in my fifth-grade classroom — and his almighty Plan/Manufacturing Line that promised we had been all loveably made in his picture, besides his picture was all the time white, so I felt higher residing with the Instances New Roman phrases round it. 

It additionally may’ve been the Manufacturing Line’s different creations — those that turned out proper and bought effectively in the true world, like Annabeth Chase or The Tanned Blonde or A Lighter Model of Me — and their hushed voices that each one echoed the identical factor: you want you had been me. 

And I did, for some time, as a result of it was tough to beat the sinking abdomen and buzzing warmth of embarrassment that might smother my face at any time when I attempted to be like them and failed. I stayed out of the solar though I liked its heat, pretended to narrate to the ladies in my books that discovered True Love in American suburbia though little white boys at Catholic center college snickered on the Others like zoo animals, and kneeled on the altar of the Fairly Girls Of Delicate Paleness (like several well-known Filipina actress ever, my American Woman Doll and Rory Gilmore) though not one of the Girls appeared like me as a result of their pal (that exists just for plot growth) or “helper” or nemesis already did. I by no means paid consideration to them, although. 

Isn’t that simply so silly? It was actually silly silly silly silly silly silly silly silly silly silly silly silly silly silly silly silly silly silly silly silly silly silly silly silly and I can’t imagine I tore my very own limbs out. I did it to myself. Positive, I heard them whisper about ugly tans and good tans, and I noticed them dangle a bar of papaya cleaning soap in entrance of my salivating mouth, and I felt them wanting to tug off my layer of brown paint so they might, like true artists that bought effectively on this world, slather it onto themselves since their undertone would lighten it out. However I nonetheless did it. I nonetheless hated my legs and arms and the slew of Issues From A World Far Away That We Gained’t Study About As a result of It Doesn’t Profit Whiteness that marred my pores and skin. 

So I’m falling now, as a result of you may’t precisely stroll with out legs. Down, down, down I’m going, limbless however not lifeless, leaving my candy, sickly shade of brown on the grime that lies above. That’s the place flowers develop. 

Yours,

Amanda