Where In This Crowd Is Your Voice?

Your identity comes solely from those who share your nationality, or religion, or gender is angelic in its intent, unhealthy in its outcome. What follows is a guide to the seven most devilish devils you’ll meet along the way. First, that you’ll come to recognize them when you see them. And second, that you’ll learn how to protect yourself when they sidle up, whisper in your ear, and try to lure you into the forest. Here’s another snippet from her journal. It’s her looking back on herself during what turned out to be her devastating college years. It’s a farm town, dairy mostly. My entire Portuguese family settled there and worked the farms and the fields. But I spend my college years denying its existence. I don’t want to hail from the bathrooms. I find myself hiding my town and my family from my friends. Kelly is my best friend in college.

The Take Off and Landing of Everything

Born and raised in Orange County. We meet in our Advanced Public Speaking class. She saunters into class on the first day. Chic and sophisticated. I have never been so close to a designer bag. The cappuccino she’s holding costs more than the consignment sundress I’m wearing. She has a vibe that’s hard to explain. Like she’s there, but doesn’t have to be. We were inseparable from that day forward, sharing a mutual addiction to food, fashion, and travel. She ate at every restaurant I dreamed of eating at, wore every designer I dreamed of wearing, traveled to every country I dreamed of traveling to. It didn’t matter to her that I had nothing and she had everything. She knew who I’d be if I did.

Everyone Is Fine

But she didn’t really know me. I’d hidden most of that. Which is why it was such an odd decision for me to invite her to road trip it north, back to my hometown, for my seventieth birthday. She jumped at the invite right away. I think to myself. Do I tell her where we’re really going? I mean, nobody ever chooses a vacation in the Central Valley. We stop to add water to my overheated old Honda, then switch drivers, and somehow I immediately slip back. It’s a perfectly straight road, no curves and only two lanes on each side. That’s the only turn you’ll ever make. Otherwise just drive straight. But the planting systems are weirdly intoxicating and will draw you in. It’s literally row after row of either square systems or hexagonal or diagonal or quincunx systems.

Say What You Say

You’re the girl that teaches me about makeup and the hottest new restaurants downtown, and now you’re teaching me about cattle ranches and cotton crops? I’m turning around, girl, we need to get you back. We continue north. One mile melting into the other. Old, imperfect red barns watch over freshly plowed fields. Someone inside is making berry jam. I love the patterns. I used to think that the purpose of tractors was to leave their beautiful markings behind for all of us to marvel at. I am ashamed of what I’ve hidden. I judged where I was from. Thought she would judge that. I’ve pushed it all the way down, and now my best friend doesn’t know me. She doesn’t know that I am intrigued by the ingredients of homemade Portuguese sausage. That I would spend hours picking just the right combination of pork cuttings and giblets. I could not only pick ’em, but I was so fixated on the details of nutrition and diet regimen that I’d never fail to turn a squirmy little black piglet into the finest at show. Kelly doesn’t know any of this about me. I can barely remember myself. I stare out the window. It’s the garlic, I tell Kelly. We’re coming up on Gilroy. We’ll be home soon. Who are you? You are gender nonconforming. You love football, too, but not American football. Only the kicking kind. Not a Man United supporter. This is who you are. And yes, all these sources are valid. Who could deny that your experience of being of a certain race or religion or nationality affects your life significantly, and that the way in which you make sense of this experience becomes woven into your identity. Myshel was embarrassed by her Los Banos identity and tried to hide it, but you can imagine a world in which she flips this around entirely. A world where she becomes extremely proud of her heritage and wraps her identity up completely within it. They are special, these Azoreans, why shouldn’t she be proud to be one of them? Of course she should. We all should be proud of our heritage. Each of these sources of identity is shared by hundreds of thousands of others. Where in this crowd is your voice? You have language to describe your gender, nationality, race, religion, loyalties. Where is your language to describe the unique loves and loathes that define your Wyrd? And when you do that, you may gain strength from what you share with folks of the same race and religion, but if you stop there, you may cut yourself off from the strength that comes from within. The strength of knowing who you uniquely are, where you find love in the world, and how to turn love into contribution. No one can threaten this strength, because it is always and only derived from who you are, and there is no one else like you. What someone else loves, and how they turn it into contribution, is interesting and cool and charming and useful, but it has no bearing on what you love. It cannot threaten you. You can cherish what you love, cultivate what you love, be proud of what you love, and know that you will never be diminishing anyone else, since no one else can ever be you. You’re claiming only that you’re different from anyone else. You may remain tolerant of these outsiders, tolerance implies distance, separateness, not empathy or intimacy.