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For anyone who’s ever wished they could be someone else
I’ve always had this theory that if I want something badly enough, the universe will make sure to keep it just out of my reach—either out of boredom or cruelty, like an invisible hand dangling stars on a string.
But I still can’t stop myself from hoping it’ll be different this time around. Maybe a miracle will happen. Maybe the universe will be kind for once, and when I reach up, the stars will fall into my palms. Maybe . .
4:59 p.m. One minute until the email from Harvard arrives. Until I can know for certain if I was accepted or not. If I’m good enough or not. One minute until my life changes for better or worse, every passing second stirring up the wasps in my belly.
I’m simply not that good. Not in academics. Not in extracurriculars. Not as a student, or a daughter, or a human. It doesn’t matter if I crammed my brain to the point of breaking with formulas and dates, threw myself into my classes, painted until the skin on my hands blistered and split open. Here is incontrovertible proof. Something in me is missing. Lacking.
How am I supposed to confess to my parents that everything they’ve done for me—leaving behind their old lives, moving across the world, spending what should’ve been vacation money on overpriced textbooks, waking up at dawn to drive me to tutoring centers, all so I could have a better education—was for nothing?
She’s just that good. That unreasonably, unfathomably perfect. And I can never be her.
It’s such a suffocating thought—that everything I will ever feel and know and accomplish must begin and end with my own mind.
My parents? All they have is me.
She was born the best, while I’ve spent my entire life trying to just be good, and I’ve failed at even that.
When you’re so widely known and loved, so soaked in glory you’re swimming in it, all you have to worry about is maintenance, not metamorphosis.
From then on, every time he had to leave for a competition or debating camp or a school excursion, he would come back with a new pen just for me.
I should be happy for her. Or I want to be happy for her.
It’s cruel, really, how the world tends to present its most beautiful parts to you when you’re so profoundly sad. Like a crush who comes up to you in the moonlight and smiles at you each time you insist on moving on—just enough to keep you lingering, to make you wonder how good things could be. If only, if only.
The universe has never listened to me before. Then again, I have nothing to lose; everything that could go wrong already has.
We can’t change the past; what’s important is for us to look ahead at our options.
“Do you think the world is a fair place? If you’re too weak, you’ll be eliminated.
They’ve bet everything on me—their time and energy and savings—and this is what I have to show for it. Sunk costs. A failed investment.
Just because the world is vivid enough to seem real doesn’t mean it actually is.
Ad Altiora Tendo. I strive toward higher things.
It’s so easy to be generous when you lack nothing. To be nice when you’re not in pain. It doesn’t matter if people are cheering for someone else, because they’re already cheering for me.
No matter what happens, I’m completely on my own.
It’s something I never thought I would experience: being looked at by my own mother like an outsider.
I hope that broken, embarrassing version of me never resurfaces again. I hope she remains buried. I hope she’s disappeared permanently.
the moment would pass, and the light would shift, and I would be left with nothing once again.
Grades aren’t even an accurate marker of intelligence—there have been, like, numerous studies to prove it.”
“And we all know grades alone aren’t going to help us get the best jobs,”
“Even if you get perfect grades, that doesn’t guarantee a good future.
“Meritocracy is a myth, academia is corrupt, and grades are irrelevant.”
even though it feels small in the same way a bone fissure is small, in the beginning, or a crack in a vase: apply the right pressure, and everything breaks.
I’ve always wanted that: to be looked up at, to be known by people I’ve never even spoken to before, to be special, distinct, standing up on the tallest, brightest platform. But only now do I realize that when you’re out in the open, alone under the lights, and everyone else is in the darkness, you make for such a terribly easy target.
You have to prove yourself over and over, and when the glory for your most recent achievement expires, as it must, as it always will, you have to start again, but with more eyes trained on you, more people waiting for the day when your talent withers, and your discipline weakens, and your charm wears away.
Success is only meant to be rented out, borrowed in small doses at a time, never to be owned completely, no matter what price you’re willing to pay for it.
Sometimes I forget that in the bigger scheme of things, it’s okay to not be the best at everything.
It turns out that I don’t detest swimming at all—I just detest being bad at things.
The best part about winning the first race—other than the winning itself, of course—is that I can simply stand by myself and watch everyone else for the rest of the carnival.
He still has so much power over me. He always has.
hard work isn’t going to get you very far, either.
Clearly, they all thought I was worse than them. So I had to be better. I had to be so good they couldn’t ignore me anymore. If I wanted to be loved, I had to best them all.
I heard your name. All it took was your name, and I forgot myself.
“Why, though?” he demands, his voice strained, like it hurts him just to say it. “Why would you . . . why would you even make that wish in the first place?”
Every time I walked into an examination hall, handed in a paper, signed up for a club, participated in a contest . . . the mad rush of hope in my blood, only for my optimism to sour into disappointment.
Every failure that felt like the apocalypse and has stayed with me since.
Every move I made premeditated, but still always miscalculating, offering up the wrong c...
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Days when I was too exhausted to sleep while someone else lived t...
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Witnessing everything I’d ever wanted happen for Jessica, knowing it woul...
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The report card statements, always the same sentiment rephrased: “Not quite there yet, but has potential,” which was what people said as consolation in the absence of true competence. And me learning over time that potential was in itself such an abstract term, tossed around recklessly, that more often t...
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But somehow trying anyway, believing even when there was nothing left to believe in. Dragging around the terrible knowledge that anything I did could change my life in an instant, but everything I did was futile.
“If you give me bullshit along the lines of, ‘Oh, everyone is on their own journey, we can all be the best,’ I will actually throw a fit. That’s nice for a card, but completely untrue in real life.”
I’m weak, I’m injured, I’m so desperate for him it makes me sick.
