The Alien Observes

My mum once started to write a book about her life, and in it she introduced her three children in different ways. My brother, first born. Conceived within the false promise of the baby boomer’s last attempts to believe in the nuclear family. Naturally attracting all the glory in the world, he’s always the life of the party, the gentle giant with the gift of enthusiasm, he can talk to anyone and is incredibly friendly. He wears his heart on his sleeve so his sensitive nature is bared for all to see and while his body is strong and his will is brave, his heart is precious. My little sister, the miracle child. Born out of hopeless love into violent delights. She is the light in the darkness, the warm ray of hope that gleams through the morning window, through the looming grey clouds. Smart and thoughtful, she is the reminder that there is hope in times of hopelessness. A beautiful embodiment of potential.

Then my mother described me, the middle child. I remember she described me as her warrior woman. The moral strength that points due north in the fiercest of blizzards. The one that would follow my head and not my heart. The Athena to her Olympian gods. I remember feeling stronger when she described me this way. I was proud to be a logical protector. A voice of reason to a family that hung heavily from their heart strings.

The truth is, I was always quiet as a kid. I still am sometimes. It’s well known that at family functions, my brother is the one that does the talking, I’m happy to stand stylishly among the crowd and observe. Despite this, I have always been full of imagination. It’s one of my most important traits, creating my own internal universes and drawing, writing, painting them across pages and pages of paper is what makes me feel free. I’ve always been secretive, when you’ve been keeping a secret from the world your whole life, it's difficult to shake the habit of operating in the shadows even after you’ve revealed your true self. But revealing myself was a defining moment. Breaking away from the mask forced me to be braver than the discrimination I faced. I had to be angrier than the angry mobs chasing me down. I had to burn hotter than the torches they carried and cut sharper than the pitchforks they threw. My war cries had to strike fear under the skins of those that didn’t understand me. It became incredibly useful.

“Freak”, the world called.

You think I’m a freak? I’ll show you monstrous.

Do not presume to speak to me of fear. I have waded through bloody waters much farther than you could imagine. I have been brutalised by the law of your world and it has made me brutal in return. Stand and deliver, cowards.

I’ve been that way for the longest time. I was born and changed in a time when the world didn’t understand someone like me. And what they don’t understand, they seek to destroy. I had to be the warrior woman, and I’m proud to be.

But then something happened. I got everything I ever wanted. I’ve longed secretly so much to be normal. I have agonised alone for years for a normal life with a normal man and a normal sense of stability. And now I have it, I’m bewildered every day at my luck. I never thought this kind of life was possible for someone like me. After about a year of this new normality, I find myself losing sense of that very definition my mother coined. I haven’t been fearsome, I’ve been gentle. I haven’t been sure, I’ve been worrisome. I haven’t been a monster, I’ve been a bird of paradise. These changes are difficult to adapt to. I remember knowing exactly who to be and why. For all the horrors that it was, it wasn’t complicated like it is now. Is this what it is to be human? I miss my sword and shield. I miss the victorious taste of the enemy’s blood on my teeth. I miss the sound of the enemy choking between my clenched fists, my claws sinking into the necks of the foolish. The feeling in the air of the enemy’s fear, like electricity, forcing the hairs on your arm to stand on end. More than anything though, I miss knowing that I will be ok forever. Knowing that I can be greater than any problem. Than any discrimination. Than any heartbreak.

“It is a dangerous thing

to forget the climate of your birthplace, to disdain the plaster saints before which your mother kneels.

Jesus, Maria, y Jose, she says,

el olvido is a dangerous thing.”