“South of the border,” we always said, referring to our mid-sized town, Fayetteville, North Carolina; that is South of the Border Motor Inn, home of King Kong and Fort Pedro. Reading, even so much as writing, never left a tickle in my throat. It came easily to me, of course, as all of my ELA teachers had a quirk to them that left a sort of bad taste in your mouth, like flat Coke. You could drink it if you were thirsty, and it was especially satisfying on a 98-degree humid day. Rather, growing up, I dreamed of changing STEM for good, putting away The Westing Game, trading it in for whatever would win me the most points.

By high school, I was burnt out. I exhausted every extracurricular in the hope it would give me the strength to enjoy my existence, but of course, you never get a break from your own eyes, your breath. And after a long battle of fighting the sharks to third place of the mathletes and fourth chair violin, my mother passed away from a drug overdose three weeks shy of the COVID pandemic. I named her death as a suicide in hope it would come across as more couregeous to outsiders unaware of her years of hallucinations and strung out abuse, but inside I knew all catholics sent her to hell anyways.

Between the sweat-dusted cheeks and hardened plaque on my teeth, I realized there would be no one to pull me out of it. Slowly, I crawled out of my corner of mildew onto the internet, reminiscing on my hazy Quotev days (Wattpad, but for grad students). One horribly brilliant online novel to the next, I was in big-box book stores in the world of Orbiting Jupiter and The Stranger.

The death of an orphan, a man, and my mother taught me this: life is too short to tirelessly translate a language to be happy. STEM, although admirable, I desperately sank myself into success. I laugh at my younger self, secretly reading her online books, trying to “nerd” out on biology. To those out there avoiding the “traditional”, the extraordinary, and the mundane, take that chance; you may spend the rest of your eternal rest behind the lies of a young adult woman getting by.