People Just. Like. Me.

I may have failed in Math and sucked at Chemistry. But I have always been good in People!

Art by

Noirtanki

, a writer, editor and artist with a special interest in pop culture through the lens of neurodiversity and the female gaze. Her work focuses on curating human interest stories, micro memoir and social commentary. 

A little girl sits in the middle of the universe. Her curls are falling over her eyes. She has crossed her arms in front of her and she is sulking - she is sulking BIG time! Her morning meal is late, and her mother is nowhere to be seen. The little girl is livid - how DARE she! When her mother comes home, she puts a cup of milky tea and a fresh roti on the table. But the little girl is so upset that she has her meal squatting on the floor, dipping pieces of roti in the hot, milky tea before wolfing them down.

The little girl sees that everyone in the house demands meals of her mother all the time. They are displeased if the meals are late or not tasty enough. So, the little girl thinks her mother is there to serve her too. Her mother does many other things with her and her brother. She reads them stories. She plays. She sings. She makes dolls with matchsticks and rags and then gives them eyes and a nose and a mouth with needle and thread – she is a magician! Her father serves them too – he buys them things, he drives them around, he covers their schoolbooks with brown paper and writes their names on the labels in his beautiful handwriting.

Growing up, the little girl loves looking around her – all day long, she rambles in the garden barefoot, smelling leaves and flowers and letting the sunshine and the rain wash over her. She listens to the birds, and she stares at the sky. Inside the house, she watches people. She absorbs them like a sponge. She is quick to feel for herself. She is also quick to feel for others. She understands things without being told. Not things that are written in books, but things that people say to each other, do to each other. The older she grows, the quieter she becomes. Because she spends all her time watching, listening, thinking, feeling.  And she learns many new things about the world of people. And every time she learns something new, she swims a little away from the centre of the universe that is herself. She swims a little way away to the edge, and she looks back to where she has come from, and all the people that she has met along the way. And she thinks of everything she has felt and everything all the people have felt, and she thinks that they are one and the same – she herself and all the people that she has met. They are born of the same earth. The same things make them laugh. The same things make them cry. They speak different languages, but they tell the same stories. They wear different clothes, but they see the same dreams. They live under the same sun and sleep under one moon. They climb the same mountains and cross the same seas.

Many people tell her that she is foolish. That there are people who are like her. And there are OTHER people who are NOT like her. She has been called naïve so many times in her life that she has begun to hate the word. Sometimes, she fights back. She tells the people who laugh at her that people really are all the same - that it really is that simple. It is them - it is they who do not understand. It is they who do not want to swim too far away from the centre of the universe that is themselves. She knows that she can never go back to where she came from - she must keep swimming away from the centre, and meeting more and more people Just. Like. Her.

First written in an Ochre Sky Writing Circle.