from when i was 15

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my name is deena. i’m unique. you can’t stereotype me.

i was raised as a girl by my mom and a boy by my dad. i’m un-girly but
i love being a girl. i hate makeup but i wear loads of eyeliner. i love
shopping but i hate spending my own money. i hate wearing skirts but
maybe that’s because i hate my knees. i own one dress. although i do
wear saluwar kameses, and love wearing them. i’m most comfortable in
jeans. i got ready to go out today and i realised i took just under
five minutes to get ready. i pluck my eyebrows, and sometimes i gossip,
and i like face masks. but it would take me a month to notice you dyed
your hair, unless maybe you went pink. i’d never wear pink. i’m
bloody random. i can’t stand lipstick and any of that, how can you move
your face? i hate crying and weakness, crying is weakness, i hate pain
but it makes you stronger, i hate screaming but i do it all the time.
i’m always cold. cuddling, makes me warm.

i’m not a vapid airhead. i read everything from sloppy firsts to stephen king to charles dickens;
there are two people in my grade who know and are in love with sylvia
plath. i am one of them. i’m extremely anal when it comes to grammar,
however, i’m not a loser. i’m extremely sarcastic and pessimistic
regarding myself- i always laugh at scary movies. yet i’m a sucker for
anything romantic. (in the closet.) i normally never fear anything,
except for that little stress problem i have…which makes me scared of
everything relating to my life. i don’t know how to use mascara or how
to do anything with my hair. don’t particularly care enough to. yet i’m
self-concious. but not enough. i don’t care what you think, but i’m
insecure. does that make sense? (she cares what she thinks, not your
thoughts.) constantly questioning, analyzing. everything. she’s so opinionated.

when she was four, she was best friends with a boy named gregory.
he was blonde. he peed in her mommy’s vegetable garden. she suddenly
starts speaking the third person, like this, for no reason. she’s a bit
of an oddball. unnormal. she hears, ‘you’re not like other girls,’
quite often. she knows. her first and only boyfriend was in
kindergarden, craig p. but this was because she had to have him. why?
because marnie liked him, and she hated marnie. anything marnie
had, she had to have. he was the first boy to tell her he loved her.
they were five. she gets asked out, but she always says no. why, she
doesn’t know. no, that’s a lie. she fell in love and before that she
waiting for the right one. even if he did make her cry. but that was
before, and not now. not now at all. sometimes she gets angry and
breaks things. she packs a mean fight for a tiny girl. vicious, sassy,
mouthy, honest, caring, bitchy, angry. “i’m wearing my bummy clothes
today, i’m sorry,” she said to me. like i’d care, like i always follow
fashion magazines, as if i even follow them. idiot. “like ohmygod he
asked me to prom aren’t you so excited dee?” um, no. not particularly.
i used to rollerblade, bike, still bike. soccer i loved. but i loved
barbies, too. which is weird, if you know me. anti-girl, anti-everyone.
she’s a bit of a hater. she’s so misunderstood. what’s wrong
with her, why is she like that? and why does she hate her parents, so
much, they ask. if only you knew. few do.

i can’t take a
compliment. i stuck my junk mail email on faceparty as a joke, to see
if people would actually add me. they…did. blonde austrailian boy,
lesbian from ontario, 26 year old man, lord, trying to impress me.
interesting. that’s not supposed to happen. i don’t think i’m pretty. i
need a nosejob.i’m agnostic and straight-edge til’ i die. but i hate
the label. i hate labels. i have trouble respecting those who don’t
share my values.

“you guys have no lives,” i once said to the
skater kids by the nintendo in the caf today, and josh laughs and says,
“you have no life. all you wanna do is help people. help the poor, help
the…” perhaps, perhaps.

i used to lie awake at four, questioning god, while staring at stars. i also quoted the little mermaid to the boy next door, michael,
who always tried to capture my heart. i told him something like, ‘you
can never have me, lover boy!’ i’m into the scene but not scene. i
listen to the music, i don’t dress it. yesterday my first crush from
when i was six, sam*, dropped me off home, he’s all grown up. i
love watching him and his girlfriend together, they look so sweet. i
want to put them in my pocket. i love how his arm is always around her,
and he rubs her back. i hate too much pda. i hate rap, but i’m brown. i
want to a be a doctor. i want to save the freaking world. before i turn
18. i love intelligent conversations, i hate physics but love biology.
i love writing, and speaking. but i don’t talk about myself, not
beneath the surface. yet i’m social. yet not. i’m a paradox. i love and
i hate, i hate and i love. i dream, and i don’t.

so go ahead. stereotype me. i’m unique. my name is deena.