Manic March - “That Which I May Own”
CW: Mention of suicidality
Things I own that are not mine:
- My neon orange East 6th St. sign, placed in the back of a car.
- My “road work ahead” sign that doesn’t fit anywhere in my room, now screwed into my wall as a whiteboard substitute.
- My orange-and-white jacket that Charlotte gave to me right before she left Dallas for Yale
- My color-blocked jacket that Trini left in Austin before going back to Johns Hopkins that occasionally still smells like them
- My denim jacket that Trini’s mom gave to me to wear while I took the bus home – this was before I had my car, but after Trini and I started dating – that she found in her school’s lost-and-found, which, three year later, I ironed on a “pagan crew” Mountain Goats patch to certify that this is indeed mine.
- My car that I bought from my uncle’s neighbor for $5000, a 2006 Subaru Forester that has more memories from his family imbued in the leather seats than I will ever put in it, though I’ve tried my best, driving it through New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Arkansas, Texas, Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, in the Smoky Mountains, the Mississippi Delta, Zion National Park, and so many more, hitting a deer in the process and smashing in my front headlight.
- My apartment that I rent from a landlord who does not seem to exist – we have important mail of his that he refuses to respond to and he has never inspected the place in our two years here – with its unfinished wooden floors that give us splinters and tear holes in our socks, the moldy-black air vent in the kitchen and the outlets that turn on and off randomly, that carries memories of early quarantines, of looking out of our plastic(??) windows at the street below, taking Zoom classes on the couch, walking from my shoebox-shaped bedroom to the kitchen and back and forth again, the late nights and rare moments of visitors, and the final freedom of vaccination.
- My body which I am not sure can ever belong to me, for who can own each individual codon of DNA handed down from their ancestors and those before them, though there would be things that I could change if I could, tenderly separating the SRY gene from each cell, promoting my lactase-encoding genes, and so on, but I must act as if it is mine, for if it isn’t, what can I do?
Things that I own which are mine:
- My life, as that is the only thing that I have full control over – I think a lot about the existentialists’ “should I kill myself or have a cup of coffee” as freedom of action, but for me, it has been much more, “should I kill myself or wake up at six in the morning to go for a run, drink a cup of coffee, shower, go to class and come home again, take a phone call, think about killing myself, go for a walk, a long walk, down to the South Congress bridge, thinking about this question, realize that I’m in no mind to go home, walk some more, go to Juliette’s house so I don’t have to go home, and finally hit the wall of exhaustion at three in the morning, too tired to ponder this question again,” and I always end up choosing the latter option, for the instinct of wanting full ownership of this life outweighs anything else.
What is Manic March?
On February 27, 2022, I thought it would be a great idea to create some sort of content - writing, art, coding, etc. - every day of the next month. Luckily, the alliteration worked out. This should be the second post in the series.