On Being Alive

Before I wanted to be a mother. A traveller. An actor. A teacher. A healer. Before I wanted to be anything at all, I wanted to be a writer. This, I remember, was my first dream. But it was also more than a dream and less than a dream. It was more than a dream because it was also my reality—I was a writer. I could write, well. Year after year, teachers would jot in my report card: Keep writing, keep writing, keep writing. It was less than a dream because I never quite consider

Does it count? When she's eight years old, in the bath, and her older male cousin walks in and watches her bathe and she says, “please leave” and she says, “stop looking at me like that” and his mom—her aunt—walks in and the girl tells her, “I don’t like him being in here” and the aunt nervously laughs and shoos him out of the room and responds, “oh he was just being a boy.” Does it count? When she’s twelve years old, navigating that tender space between childhood and adultho