A letter from January 28th, 2021

I spent all my teenage years looking for ways to make myself the main character. Now I look back on pictures and I realise that I was a pretty cute kid at around 12 or 13. I was, however, black, I found myself pretty chubby (I wasn't) And, most disadvantageously, my natural afro hair was fried into a crisp by excessive straightening and kept short and shapeless by the strain of being brushed through almost daily. Although I never said it, I knew I didn't look very feminine. So being pretty wasn't an option. So, by extension, neither was being popular. Plus, I was a girl, so being 'the funny one' had been out of the question since God decided to give me XX chromosomes and the patriarchy decided that meant you weren't funny. That, and I also actually wasn't funny. So I came to the conclusion that I could be the 'smart quiet' one, the one who was witty and cunning brutally honest when you got to know her. I wasn't particularly confident in talking to people (thank God, think how much I would've embarrassed myself had I given myself the chance to speak more) I was, however, incredibly full of myself. YA fiction and Amerian high-school movies had sold me the idea that my introversion was born of intellectual superiority. I read books and didn't talk much, I had good grades and an extensive vocabulary, I was pretentious and not a lot of people really took notice of me; I fit the profile perfectly for the girl who was 'not like other girls'