What if I had never had to experience being denied entry into school? What if I’d never had all this self-doubt planted in my brain? From some buried place inside me, tiny tendrils of confusion, hurt, and shame loosened, rising to the surface—the feelings that lingered from my childhood, that came from never being able to understand why. Why couldn’t I go to school with my brother and my friends? It had never made sense to me. This was the why. This discrimination, that people always insisted didn’t exist, that people tried to wash away by saying they didn’t mean it, they didn’t understand,
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