At the corner Starbucks, they know my regular order. I've been asked whether or not I'd prefer my "usual," and what else I would be having that day. There's this restaurant in town that has the greatest falafel, but because I am of a different religious sect and a different belief system entirely, I feel that they scorn me sometimes. I have a mother who loves me so much that she feels the need to tell me what's wrong with me because she knows me more than I. I have a father who works to support his family of four, so that we can all go to college and have more opportunities than he did. I have two siblings: a sister who may or may not love me and a brother who is young but getting older.
And then there is me. The girl who cannot seem to find it in herself to see something worth seeing. The daughter who constantly feels oppressed and repressed, suffocated and drowned, pressured and stressed. The sister who is consistently absent or left out. And the child-grown-adult, forced to continue living a life that she wants for herself, but not the self that she is now--the happy self that she lost.
Then there is the girl who has an amazing family: a best friend in a sister, a best friend in a brother. Supportive and encouraging parents, an amazing extended family (who sometimes don't know how to mind their own business), good academic standing, a car that can take her from Point A to Point B, and everything else seems insignificant compared to the mass murders, genocide, starvation, pain and other such calamities that ravage the countrysides of the less fortunate.
So there is a way out of sadness and darkness and gloom, but I suppose one has to be willing to follow it. And the girl at the corner Starbucks thanks her barista, picks up her almost-perfect venti soy iced green tea latte and walks out the door with a smile because that'll give them something to think about.
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