‘Pricey Diary’: LIMBS

This column combines the intimacy of a diary-like narrative with the author’s personal experiences of issues little in life and issues huge: politics and tradition. 

Pricey Diary,

I’m grateful for my limbs. I actually am. However generally — and I’m sorry, I do know I ought to be proud and grateful and introspective on issues like this, although I’m certain you’d succumb to the buzzing and sinking and pounding too — when everybody else appears to soften on the sight of delicate paleness that may sometimes exhibit a barely brown, sun-kissed varnish, I fall.

I fall. My legs are torn from their hinges and tossed into the Bin of Uselessness whereas my arms float in some river that carries a ship down, down, down, which is identical method I’m going as a result of I’ve no legs, and I’ve no arms, and that’s high-quality — there’s no use for brown limbs on this world, anyway. 

(No less than that’s what they advised me.)

I don’t keep in mind who stated it. It’d’ve been God — within the picture within the textbook in my fifth-grade classroom — and his almighty Plan/Manufacturing Line that promised we had been all loveably made in his picture, besides his picture was all the time white, so I felt higher residing with the Occasions New Roman phrases round it. 

It additionally may’ve been the Manufacturing Line’s different creations — those that turned out proper and bought effectively in the true world, like Annabeth Chase or The Tanned Blonde or A Lighter Model of Me — and their hushed voices that every one echoed the identical factor: you would like you had been me. 

And I did, for some time, as a result of it was troublesome to beat the sinking abdomen and buzzing warmth of embarrassment that might smother my face each time I attempted to be like them and failed. I stayed out of the solar although I cherished its heat, pretended to narrate to the ladies in my books that discovered True Love in American suburbia although little white boys at Catholic center faculty snickered on the Others like zoo animals, and kneeled on the altar of the Fairly Women Of Delicate Paleness (like every well-known Filipina actress ever, my American Woman Doll and Rory Gilmore) although not one of the Women regarded like me as a result of their good friend (that exists just for plot growth) or “helper” or nemesis already did. I by no means paid consideration to them, although. 

Isn’t that simply so silly? It was actually silly silly silly silly silly silly silly silly silly silly silly silly silly silly silly silly silly silly silly silly silly silly silly silly and I can’t consider I tore my very own limbs out. I did it to myself. Certain, I heard them whisper about ugly tans and good tans, and I noticed them dangle a bar of papaya cleaning soap in entrance of my salivating mouth, and I felt them wanting to drag off my layer of brown paint so they may, like true artists that bought effectively on this world, slather it onto themselves since their undertone would lighten it out. However I nonetheless did it. I nonetheless hated my legs and arms and the slew of Issues From A World Far Away That We Received’t Be taught About As a result of It Doesn’t Profit Whiteness that marred my pores and skin. 

So I’m falling now, as a result of you possibly can’t precisely stroll with out legs. Down, down, down I am going, limbless however not lifeless, leaving my candy, sickly shade of brown on the dust that lies above. That’s the place flowers develop. 

Yours,

Amanda