On Being The Other (a draft)

Last night I dreamt of a girl,
not just any girl, she was eleven
and had long, black, pretty hair
and an innocent pale face with a little nose
and serious lips and a chin that had not seen
as many meals as she needed and her mother 
didn’t want her anymore and her father had disappeared. 
And I wanted to take her in and tell her
how much she is loved and worthy and good,
but someone else adopted her, and I knew
I’d never get to see her much, but I still told her
never let anyone tell her she is less than something
special and no matter who says what,
she belongs in this world. And it got me thinking

about something else I wrote before I went to bed,
something about being The Other and how being left out
to stand alone and exposed to the howling winds of winter
and a planet that does not value anyone who is alone,
anyone who has been abandoned, anyone less than 
the lucky ones with family behind them, friends, 
and people who understand or who has checked a box on identity,
is just a Darwinian sitting duck for everyone else out there 
who cannot put down their weapons. And when you are The Other 
(nod to Simone de Beauvoir and Carlos Fuentes) you inherit the heavy things 
in life, like poverty and sickness and anger and hurt and things
like stones that have been hurled against you that no one else could carry,

should carry, and I did not want her to strap more things to her frail back
and have her have to trudge everyday with that backpack full of horrible 
memories and the entire weight of the world. I did not want her on guard,
to look and see and hear everywhere reminders of how she was left alone
at such a tender age and be reminded again and again and again of abandonment 
and have her have to run to the nearest person for comfort even if that person
was obviously no good for her. I wanted to tell her about things like red flags
and how to spot a predator and how to keep safe in an unsafe world,
and how some people don’t have your best interests at heart
and would prefer to add to your pain because they are carrying their own illness
and they have never healed or even try to heal and so they inflict their brokenness 
on you. And of course you want to feel bad for them because you understand 
what it means to hurt, and so you hurt alongside them, but the difference is, you don’t
take your hurt out on others, and they will use every opportunity to do it to you.

But dumping this on a mere child isn’t exactly healthy – 
their little minds cannot process such horrors and children 
have already had to endure so very very very much,
and all the words in the dictionary will not help someone who has yet to form
their own words and probably cannot even speak because when you are
The Other no one will listen anyway and then they wonder why you set fires 
in the classroom and bring a knife to school and make yourself get thrown out 
because at least when you talk to the principal, someone is paying attention. 
And don’t you get it? This is how the world works, one hurt person hurting more, 

and they even more, and so it goes down the line until every last one of us 
operates in fight or flight, and I cannot tell which of those I am in right now, 
probably a lot of both. And I can tell you how horrible it is to have to walk outside 
the door and be faced with triggers everywhere, the way a color or face or sound
brings you back to those dark places you’ve tried to escape for decade but can’t.
And you see it’s not just me who is breaking down and feeling beyond repair.
It is everything, everywhere, the infrastructure will not hold, and I feel it in my 
aging bones that I cannot carry my own bigger backpack so how could I possibly adopt
that little girl who needs someone strong right now? And so in the dream, 

I give her some silly little gift, and I have to get home, so I get on an elevator,
but it’s crashing down, plummeting, because someone has cut the cables, 
and I think this is it, this is how I will meet my end, in an elevator, alone, 
and I do that thing they say to do when an elevator is falling – I jump 
because someone told me in middle school that if you jump or at least 
hoist yourself up with the railings, gravity will hold you, and you can hover 
and it will hurt less on impact, you may even survive the fall. 
but this might have been a myth, and this is just a dream,
and I am awakening to an understanding that I have been The Other for far
too long, too long, that there are more of us in the world than anyone 
wants to admit because it’s a whole lot easier to turn your head on someone 
alone than a crowd of angry protesters who have simply have had enough. 

And so I tell that little girl, at least I do in my mind, please, feel free to write me 
anytime. I might not always be there, but I will always be thinking of you 
and you are never alone. You are never alone. Say it like a mantra, 
post it in your locker, that you are not alone, and no one should have to be. 
Because yes it is so unfair to put that on a child and when it comes right 
down to it, we all are still our own children and not one of us has entirely 
healed, especially when you have been The Other and you cannot forget.

Copyright March 2, 2024, Katherine Mercurio Gotthardt, all rights reserved