Jan 2025
At the time of writing this, I was in ENG99, then moved up to 101 (we were in an experimental program). Word requirement was 1.5k words, and I accidentally wrote exactly 1,499, saw it wasn’t enough, then prepared to sleep until I realized I could change “your tears” to “my own tears” in the ending and improve it, accidentally raising it to 1,500. A few words have since been edited out to be more concise.
Today in ENGL-99, they talked and talked about power and its compounding nature, handing out a detailed oppression wheel, but all I saw was the linear truth none of these adults were talking about: Adults and children. Children and adults.
I had only gotten to the class after meeting with the dean for permission to enroll, after countless other papers and submissions. All these were underage procedures, in a college with “we don’t discriminate on base of age, etc.” written on a billboard.
My life started behind the bars of my crib. I spent the first year of my life handed from cage to cage, strapped into each one. All I had was the window and sky, my crib playing a cheery song to trick me into not thinking about my captivity.
When I was old enough, my mom finally took me outside for the first time in my life, strapped into a stroller. It was the first time I’d seen the light of the sun for myself. I now knew the window wasn’t a painted illusion.
My handlers were always taking away anything I picked up before I could put it into my mouth. I must’ve been starving back then, to think these things were a good idea.
Years later, I was allowed to go to preschool, where I met many others like me. Together, we learned to push through. There was a girl obsessed with Ninja Turtles that inspired me to fight like a ninja to survive. I wouldn’t be here today if not for her.
One of my earliest memories was the frigid winter of New Jersey I was subjected to, cooking potatoes made of snow in a snow furnace we dug out with my dad, because the snow level was that deep. My frozen fingers held up the snow potato to my chattering teeth to bite down on my first meal in a while.
Speaking of New Jersey, when I grew up to be a toddler, a gate was installed at the top of the stairs to keep me from them. My room was an enclosed pen behind it. From cage to pen, I started to live slightly better, like regular livestock. There was some covering over the gate knob, keeping me from opening it like a normal human. Because as far as my handlers were concerned, I wasn’t human.
I wouldn’t have survived the east coast weather if not for the air conditioner, the hum of which was the only constant in my life as I was uprooted from cage to cage.
Because of my handlers’ unwillingness to learn my language of babble, which I had mastered the first time I opened my mouth, I had to learn their language. There was no ESL class for me, to patiently teach me “blue pen”. I couldn’t even ask for the water I needed, instead breaking down into tears to try to tell them, losing the same water.
Like all babies, I was bundled up into a cocoon in which I couldn’t move. Now I am a chrysalis. I wonder how much trauma a chrysalis can take before its development is harmed. Will I be able to fly free as a butterfly?
We are at the mercy of our handlers. I was more fortunate than most of my friends. I haven’t seen them in ages because their handlers terminated our communications, but I hope they’re still hanging on. I have to believe in them.
I grew up. I grew up some more. But I still haven’t broken free of my chrysalis. How long can this last? I’m fourteen and only just turned the age where the judges even start asking me my opinion in court (that doesn’t mean valuing it, just asking).
I am writing this in blue pen, for the sympathetic (at best) adult reading this to not dissolve the ink with their tears. I still need my story to be heard after all.
On a more serious note, I am adding this two days later, but adults are the ones putting ideas in our head, and they do a very poor job at this. All my class wanted to do was play together, but our parents and teachers pitted us against each other and made us compete as their vessels just because they wanted some drama and conflict in their lives.
Somewhere near the start of 3rd grade, I brought my backpack to school with a Cookie Monster keychain. His cookie was firmly attached to his hands, reminiscent of how I held on to scraps of snow potatoes in my earliest days. My friends and classmates quickly took a liking to him (and the soon-added Frosty the cupcake), perhaps thinking the same thing. We played with him on the bus.
The earliest Cookie Stories were primitive but contained a deeper truth about the world: Cookie falling victim to unforeseen accidents. As they evolved, the stories developed settings like school and dungeons, the former being our workplace and the latter being another place with no light reminding us of times before we could go outside.
More characters were added to the backpack. One day I came home to find Emily the bunny had been eliminated from the crew. Must have been some pickpocket on the bus. One moment of decision for them, years of recovering from loss for me, yet this was nothing compared to the events to come.
In September of 3rd grade, I folded an ordinary paper airplane at school, the one my handlers taught me. Perhaps I was dreaming of the skies beyond the school window again and being allowed out to recess. Anyhow, my classmates were surprised at my airplane, treating it like something special and cool. “What is that?” they would all ask. I later found out it was because mine was a Russian variant, and they were used to the American one (that I had never seen).
My planes were such a hit that I got customers, regulars even, and quickly founded the Airplane Company. Two of my friends joined and we took the covered basketball court as our testing ground. We watched our planes fly free, mesmerized, until they hit the wall. Their momentary freedom was an illusion, just like ours.
I was happy, like never before and never again.
In 4th grade, things began to deteriorate. Walls built between me and my existing friends, and new comrades arrived to the class. These poor souls were oblivious to the structure of our class hierarchy, but one of them told me her handler had already planted it in her to follow the popular kids. She said this while physically following me.
That girl later called me “Her Meowjesty” when I roleplayed as sister of my black cat Squishmallow, Autumn (I realized the connection when I started wearing a black cat hoodie of similar soft material to Autumn’s fur). Around that time, another friend made a Microsoft Sway full of jests about a ‘mysterious girl’ (another of our classmates). I was inspired to make my own, but about myself, in 3rd person. Perhaps I was detaching from my nonhuman, cat, previously livestock self. One of my slides made a jab at my occasional use of cat language with a meme: “What part of ‘meow’ do you not understand?” An onlooker could suggest it was about me being bilingual with Russian, but I believe it was the echoes of having to switch to human language from my babble as a baby. Did I still feel misunderstood?
Though it may look like paradise in hindsight, 4th grade was such that despite the fun times and how much I loved my friends, I left by choice. Yes, my handlers had already discussed the move to Sammamish without me, but eventually I myself wanted to change schools. The move happened soon after COVID lockdown, and I was doing online assignments for my old school to finish 4th grade, but they never got Teams to work properly and I didn’t get to see my class again. In 5th grade, the new class was nothing like my old one, and even the teachers seemed like watered-down variants of our Big 3 back at hom– no, it wasn’t home anymore. But I was still so jaded about my old class that I was glad I left. I also left the new school for homeschooling after two weeks.
Not that I would have survived the grueling grind of middle school. Homework, crazy classmates, and worst of all, no recess. Kids live for recess. Locking us up was one thing, but then giving us a breath of the outside air in elementary, before locking us up again, was even worse.
I am writing this in blue pen, like a classic issue of Snail News, another part of my 3rd grade repertoire. Even though this time it is virtual, and I cannot dissolve the ink with my own tears, I finally learned how to pen my blues.
Munlandia 