My name is not Sarah, it is Sarah. Sarah. Seen-alif-ra'-hé. Sarah. It's a beautiful name, and it's all you need to know to understand me. It's a deep sounding name. Comes from the gut, the abdomen, and the deepest part of the respiratory system, right down at the bottom of the lungs. It's a deep sounding name, and it takes strength and some skill to say it. Also, determination. Ask me one day. Maybe I will sound it out for you. Sarah.
You can't understand a thing until you stop trying to interpret it. Interpretation entails assigning meaning. Making something - an idea, an occurrence, an object, or an emotion - digestible. Interpretation is an exercise in relating something to yourself. To your life, your experience, your universe. This will not help you understand things. To start understanding the world, you have to come to terms with the fact that you are not the world, and the world is not yours.
I live in the space between. In the grey zones. On the Fault Lines.
I find my hair lovely for two reasons: first, for being so black that it absorbs sunlight and gives me a feeling of permanence in life and possibilities of things being O.K.; second, for being thick, almost wiry. I like that my hair is tangible.
You can't expect to find the meaning in everything. You can't expect that you will understand everything, either. I do not understand measures of electricity. Amps, volts, hertz, they mean nothing to me. I don't know what they represent, either. Something about Coke bottles, and lemon meringue. Thanks for trying, Mr. Trudeau, thanks for trying, Karen.
My name is Sarah. You will never know me, because you do not understand that.
I forget, sometimes, most times, that we are not the same person. Or maybe I forget only on the odd occasion that we are. Either way, there are moments when we are not one hundred cents together, and those are the moments right before I realize how much you love me, and then I am dollars again.
There's a stranger in those photographs. I don't know who those women are.
Please don't compare her to me. Or her. We are very little alike. Or her, for that matter. There is very little that makes us similar, and yes, this is all about individualism, as that is what I am, in this context. An individual. You cannot divide me up into four women, expecting us to all be the same. We are not. We are different. I am different. I am not her. I am not the same. Can't you understand? Of course not. You don't even know my name.
Saturday Affirmation: I am not a GPA. I am not an ethnicity. I am not a last name or a religion. I am none of these things. I am Sarah. Say it.
