[completed] Nova Carter knows exactly what the next few years of her life will look like: she will work harder than anyone else (as she didn't get into New York University to slack off); she'll be keeping her head down and prioritizing getting her a...
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Chapter Zero | I'll Try To Love You
I've spent my entire life wishing to be someone else.
Not in the body positive sense. You know, the kind where you strive to be healthier, to be this version of yourself who drinks green smoothies every morning and doesn't mind wearing T-shirts. I've quite literally waited for a fairy godmother to slip through an open window on a warm night, to wave her wand, to tell me that in order to upkeep my new identity I'd had to be a good, kind, heroic girl. I've read about reincarnation and as a result lived this life waiting— and sort of hoping— to end up in a terrible accident, to catch a fatal disease and to die young so I can awake as someone who has high-functioning legs that run faster than a dolphin can swim, and fingers that move graciously and elegantly and gently instead of harsh and jerky and spastic.
The funny thing is how normal it's always been. As a middle school student, I had these expectations of who I'd be and what I'd look like in my senior year of high school. I imagined someone who wore my face and owned my name, but in no way resembled me at the same time. From my cerebral palsy legs that would move as normal legs did, to the slightest details like my frizzy hair that'd be sleek and straight. My smile would be gentler, less wobbly, less nervous, less teeth. My freckles could stay, but I'd want full eyebrows like the models on Instagram. I'd stand taller. I'd be calmer in general.
And yet. I'd suddenly find myself as the high school senior and I'd still feel like my fourteen-year-old self. Still short, hunched shoulders, frizzy hair and a disability. Nothing had changed except for my age that seemed to mock me. Eighteen. A fourteen-year-old in an eighteen-year-old's awkward body.
In hindsight, maybe becoming the person in my mind should've been a process instead of a wish. But I never knew where to start, and I was never able to surrender to the idea that a mindset is as powerful as everyone says, that you could just say so what or whatever and that'd be the end of it.
My old therapist always used to say, in response to this, 'Nova, the key to acceptance is understanding'. It made me think: do I even understand what is wrong with me? In fourth grade a friend of a classmate said I walked weird, and my classmate Jessica said, "You can't say that. She has a muscular disease." I remember thinking, that's not true. I don't have a muscular disease. But I couldn't think of another word or definition, because I didn't yet have the vocabulary to explain. I could barely even wrap my head around the words 'muscular disease', but I did know at ten-years-old that it sounded disgusting and I didn't want to affiliate with it.
So, yes, I've spent my entire life wishing to be someone else. And I know living a life waiting for the next is a waste. I know it. But here's what I know, too: I know that I am not an enthralling piece of skin that's been warped to fit into this world. My entire reality has been my hands clutched between fists and pulled and pushed, and directions and help and aid. I know that my limbs have been pulled from the soil but intoxicated and ruined. I was born dead. I was murdered and resurrected and I am lucky. Sometimes I feel like I bear such a heavy weight that it's molding my shoulders, like how asphalt shapes after the curve of truck wheels during hot summers. It's the only process I've really been through and it wasn't even up to me.
I am here, though. Nova Carter. Alive, despite it all. I guess college is where it starts for me, I guess I have to stop waiting. I guess dying young, as selfish of a wish it may be, isn't in the cards for me. I guess this is it.
This must be where my progress begins. I hope I can tell you how successful and good it was in a few years. I hope the thought of becoming anyone else will have slipped from my mind and no longer be relevant. We'll have to wait and see.
