Feel And Heal

     I have been in one single fist fight. It was the end of 5 th grade, and shit got real bloody. Little skirmishes with my siblings and cousins don’t count...no this fight was brutal, I was filled with rage and I broke the other girl’s nose and she had to go to the ER.      The rage was stemming from the fact that I became a bullied social outcast within a couple weeks or so of being in America and at Sandy Springs Elementary School in Atlanta, Georgia. I arrived in the US of A in April, 2002 a hopeful and happy girl, grateful to be reunited with my family. We had all been on a refuge journey for months before this and for about 6-8 months my mother, father and two baby siblings had been living in Atlanta while working on finding a way for me to fly here and join them. In that time I was passed around between family members and trusted friends in Europe, moving every couple of weeks.      But I arrived, I made it. I was excited t...

     I love talking. It’s so great.   I love having a captive audience, whether it’s a toddler or a best friend who’s already got tears of laughter in her eyes. And if there’s no one there to listen but me the story is still amazing, the laughs still so real.      It’s really strange to remember that there was a time when I stuttered horribly. One of the possible factors could be the fact that by time I was six years old I had lived in three different countries and spoke all their respective languages. Remembering who in my life spoke which language was fucking exhausting.      What I do know is that when someone asked me a question, or made a comment and expected one in return, sometimes it took longer for me to make the words come out. I realized there was something wrong with that when I connected people’s mocking laughter, smirks, and awkward glances with the pause that preceded my responses.        ...