Chapter 1
My earliest memory is from Kindergarten.
The class was coloring drawings to give to their parents.
And the teacher was helping me make mine,
Since everyone else had figured it out,
But my fingers couldn’t hold the crayons correctly,
And I kept dropping them.
“It’s okay,” she kept saying. “You’ll get it eventually.”
But the longer I struggled,
The more aware I became that I was behind.
The rest of the class had drawn their princesses and superheroes
And had put the pictures with their backpacks
And had moved on.
I picked the crayon back up and pushed down hard into the paper,
Like stuffing a stick into dirt,
Hoping it would stay.
A line appeared on the page
Then the crayon veered off course
And the paper ripped in half.
And I began to cry.
When I was fourteen, I signed up for track
In the hopes that I could make myself stronger.
I was the slowest girl on the team.
As I completed my lap,
All the other girls had finished theirs,
And were sitting around socializing.
I sat alone and drank my water.
I wasn’t worried about missing out on socialization.
I knew I would have other chances.
I simply drank my water
And did what I could.
By my junior year, I had improved
I was .47 seconds better.
It wasn’t much,
But it was progress.
And it was that year
A certain girl joined the team.
Her name was Amelia,
And we became friends
Because she was slow, too
And we ran alongside each other.
As the year passed,
Amelia improved,
And the next year, too,
So by the timed trials,
She could keep up with the other members.
They moved her up
From the slowest group to the average.
And sometimes she’d still run with me
To keep me company.
For her, nothing changed,
But I still felt bitter.
All these years I’d spent,
Trying to improve,
And she did it in moments,
Effortlessly.
I wanted to hate her.
I mistook her for myself,
When she was her own person.
She did nothing wrong.
But I couldn’t bring myself to congratulate her.
I still run now,
Though I can’t join my college team,
I can use the track when no one’s practicing.
I time myself,
Keep track of my progress,
I’ve improved by 1.03 seconds.
I’m losing faith that I’ll ever be as good as her,
Although she’s average,
Anybody can match her score,
Except for me,
I fall behind.
But I’ve improved before,
And I keep a hold of that thought,
Though it seems impossible,
It will keep me going.
