Off the Record

by Camryn Garrett

No matter how I rearrange the words, they don’t sound good enough to be published.

Clearly, Black films only receive critical acclaim when they heavily feature Black suffering. Where are our happy movies? They exist, but you don’t see them winning Oscars.

My Word document stares back at me, cursor blinking as if daring me to rewrite the sentence for a sixth time.

There’s so much world I haven’t seen yet—movies I haven’t watched, brains I haven’t picked, countries I haven’t been to, people I haven’t met. The real world isn’t so small.

I don’t mind my belly when it’s just me.

Bellies are cute, and they hold important internal organs.

It’s easy enough to tell myself that being fat isn’t wrong when I’m alone or on Twitter. Being fat in the real world, around everyone else, even family, is completely different. But what’s the alternative? Never leaving the house?

I don’t want anyone who sees my body as something to overcome.

“Your perfect summer body is whatever your body looks like in the summer.”

OBVIOUSLY #notallmen are horrible but if we are discussing all the ways women suffer at the hands of misogyny maybe now is not the time to remind me of that

“You don’t have to be assaulted by a creepy man for something to count,” Alice says. “I hope you know that.”

“Well,” he says eventually, voice soft, “it’s not a crime to take up space.”

brusque,

The hard thing about being attracted to girls is that I’m never sure if I want to be them or be with them.

I never know how to separate the shitty things a person has done from their work. I wish we could have real heroes, perfect people who never hurt others. Einstein was a jerk to his wife. Charles Dickens cheated on his. Martin Luther King Jr. cheated on Coretta when he was on the road, and Frederick Douglass left his wife for a younger white woman. Maybe I find it all disappointing because I put too much faith in people I don’t know.

Survivors are all around, and their pain is real, so vivid that I can’t pretend it isn’t there.

“Le jardin dans mon coeur fleurit pour toi,” he says. “The garden in my heart blooms for you.”

“He stole something from you,” I say. “So we’re gonna take something from him. Okay?”

sometimes it’s hard to remember that your voice is important until the world reminds you