The world and my mind

Today is 08-July-2020...this is how we have to write dates in the research world. Starting over - work-mode off - Today is July 8th, 2020 and my day started off with a discussion that reminded us that everything happens for a reason. Pause - please do not escalate to a horrific scenario - I mean that certain events, such as this terrible COVID-19 pandemic, has allowed our Black Lives Matter movement come to light. If you were not sitting at home, either scrolling social media, watching TV, watching the news or doing any other activity to just feel like you are part of the world while trapped in your smaller world at home, you and everyone else may not have seen what has been going on in the world for far too long. Do you think that a protest with such dedication would have been possible if people were not at home wondering what to do next? We, the people, decided that we wanted to make a change! We were able to go out there and stand up for our fellow humans' humane rights. This is a humane crisis - not a political one.

I would rather begin my writing with an address to Americans who have never had their rights than anything else. I do understand that there will be many opinions and hate mail that I may acquire but having your voice heard is more important now than ever.

Now, I will go into my story.

I finally figured out where to begin - when I was about 15 years old, I think I experienced my first existentialist crisis. I grew up in a religious household where my parents raised my sister me to be perfect angels, perfect ladies, always polite, in other words - perfect "wife" material (and add religious to that too). I used to think that if I followed the trajectory that my parents may have had me on, I would have been like a Bree Van de Kampf like from Desperate Housewives (I rewatched the whole series during COVID). Every summer, I would go to religious camp for 2 weeks. Around the age of 15, I had a (secret) boyfriend who I decided to kiss at the camp. Unfortunately, someone tattled and then it went back to my parents and my father asked me if I had sex - considering how I was raised, I was so naive and I broke into tears shocked that my father could ask me such a thing. I did not eat for days and then began wondering why I did anything in life. Why did I strive to be the perfect little girl with perfect grade? Why did I always dress like a doll? Why did I always tidy up the house for my parents? It all seemed ridiculous. And that is when it hit me.