On Eleven

In the short story, Eleven, by Sandra Cisneros, the protagonist describes how you don't quite feel eleven years old when you turn eleven:

"Like some days you might say something stupid, and that's the part of you that's still ten. Or maybe some days you might need to sit on your mama's lap because you're scared, and that's the part of you that's five. And maybe one day when you're all grown up maybe you will need to cry like if you're three, and that's okay. That's what I tell Mama when she's sad and needs to cry. Maybe she's feeling three."

As I near my 26th birthday, I think back to my blog post titled, "What I've Learned by 25," with a feeling of slight amusement. During my 25th year of life, I was evicted for the first time. I spent my first Thanksgiving and Christmas away from my parents. I scheduled and took a licensing exam the day before a 10-hour drive into a new apartment. I gained weight in the double digits for the first time. With the rise of hate crimes against Asians, I developed this persistent, intrusive fear that someone in a pickup truck would suddenly veer towards me and attempt to run me over as I walked down the sidewalk. I hadn't realized that my 25th birthday celebration at a restaurant indoors would be the last of many such cheerful and fully safe group gatherings in a very long time.

There have been many times I have said something stupid and felt ten -- felt reminded of having my house egged on Halloween because I excitedly pointed out my house to my classmates when we walked by it on a local field trip. Some nights, I do get scared. I'm scared of how long this pandemic will continue. I'm scared that my education will not adequately prepare me for the workforce. I'm scared that I'll forget phone numbers, birthdays, or what to do when someone has a heart attack. A deep sense of shame and insecurity that I manage to keep hidden away for most of the week comes creeping out on a Friday night when I'm in my room, under the covers. Even though I'm the one tucking myself in, I still feel five. And more often than not these days, I get sad and I need to cry because I'm feeling three, but really, whatever age I'm at doesn't matter. That 25-year-old self ceases to exist, and as it melts away, I'm suddenly in elementary school choir with tears streaming down my face, absolutely freaking out that people are watching me cry in public, while being told by my classmate that I look pretty when I cry.

Between sweeping the floor, buying new underwear, booking routine dental appointments, and filing the taxes, there is a part of myself that is deeply terrified and feels like she has no idea what she's doing. As I get older, I try to accept that everyone else probably doesn't feel like a full-fledged adult either. However, it's still very difficult to take an objective inventory of my own strengths and weaknesses. I know I will never be perfect, and I will probably spend the rest of my life advocating for myself because I know that others won't. That's just adult life.

More importantly though, becoming an adult doesn't just mean realizing that other people have no idea what they're doing. It also means recognizing how terribly flawed the world is, and how okay people are just leaving it that way. Is it "okay" for a surgeon with a huge ego to intimidate his staff from speaking up, leading to him amputating the wrong leg on a patient? Is it "okay" for lead poisoning to still be an issue in Flint, Michigan? Is it "okay" for private equity companies to destroy Toys R' Us, leading to the layoffs of hundreds of employees without severance pay? Is it "okay" for beverage companies like Coca Cola or Pepsi to continue producing single-use disposable plastics that are not recyclable and kill wildlife on the regular? Is it okay for loan sharks to make a market out of the impoverished and generate more income by taking advantage of them? No, but... most people just accept the tenuous terms and let them be, particularly if the situations at hand don't affect them personally. There is no moral guiding hand of God that comes down to enforce that what is right and true is followed. There aren't really any rules that people follow universally, except perhaps the laws of physics. People are generally fumbling throughout life. Whatever teachings of happy endings and justice we believed in as children did not necessarily hold true all the time. Real people in real life are much more complicated and ambiguous, operating in systems that uphold oppression and suffering in many ways.

It's sobering, but unfortunately, it's true. The pandemic is just one of those many things that we as humankind are fumbling through, day by day, as politicians talk big and use war metaphors to scare the coronavirus away, while adults everywhere refuse to wear masks and social distance. Nobody knows what we're doing.

It is in the midst of that confusion and lack of clarity that I try to remember the birthdays, and the phone numbers, and the little things that make a difference. I asked someone without a surgical mask if he would like one. He said yes, and thanked me when I handed him one. I tipped my Uber driver.

I try to imagine what I would do if I were three, and envision little me with a quarter in my hand, tottering towards someone and placing it in their hand. I consider what I would do at age eleven.

And it would be to care for others as I care for myself.