I see you,
with your dimpled smile,
your tubby legs,
your first stumbling steps,
a complete trust in the universe
that nothing will harm you,
even as your harried mother
calculates all potential risks.
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My mom picks me up early from school for my runway gig at the Boynton Beach Mall. I'm twelve. It’s 2001. I attend John Casablanca’s, a modeling school where groups of girls ages five to twenty-five meet once a week. We discuss make-up, runway walks, and other pressing issues in fashion. Today, I have been chosen to model for Wet Seal, a clothing store that markets to wannabe slutty teenagers.
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It took me ages to feel confident about saying I was “in love” with my first boyfriend. I didn’t understand what the threshold was, where affection crossed from love to LOVE; I figured this was because I’d never been in love before. When I finally did tell him, I laced the profession with caveats, afraid to be put on the stand and accused of lying at some theoretical future breakup.
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Everyone gets sick from time to time, it’s inevitable. From a minor cold to an infection that requires recovery in a hospital, the process in which the body repairs itself is all part of being human. Sometimes our skin tears, our bones break, and our organs don’t function properly. Some medical illnesses may take more time and energy to diagnose, like the kinds of illnesses that are usually portrayed in TV programs like Chicago Med, House, or Mystery Diagnosis. Finding a cure, regardless of how big or small the illness is, is what those who aren’t well and their loved ones wish for. In an ideal world everyone would get better, but this doesn’t always happen.
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