Starfish

I don’t want to need anyone. I want to stand on my own two feet. I want control of my own life and my own emotions. I don’t want to be a branch in someone else’s life anymore—I want to be the tree on my own.

But you can’t spend your life trying to make a starfish happy, because no matter what you do, it will never be enough. They will always find a way to make themselves the center of attention, because it’s the only way they know how to live.”

ut you can’t spend your life trying to make a starfish happy, because no matter what you do, it will never be enough. They will always find a way to make themselves the center of attention, because it’s the only way they know how to live.”

“At his funeral, I overheard some people referring to him as ‘Starfish.’ I asked them why they gave him that nickname, and they told me it was because he always had to be the center of attention. Like the legs of a starfish, all pointing to the middle. He thought he was the center of all things.”

I know not every family is the same. We all have different personalities and names. Different colors in a box of crayons. Different shades in a box of graphites. And maybe love looks different to different people, the same way beauty looks different.

But the kind of love I need isn’t the kind I have. I guess I’m still trying to find a way to be okay with that.

I don’t have to be white to be beautiful, just like I don’t have to be Asian to be beautiful. Because beauty doesn’t come in one mold.

It doesn’t make it okay that people are jerks about race. But it does make me feel like I’m not alone. It makes me feel like less of a weirdo.

If I can’t figure out how to live on my own—how to do things on my own—how am I supposed to live at all? I don’t want a crutch. I don’t want someone who feels like they have to take care of me. Someday in the future, my dependency would suffocate him. It might even end up suffocating me, too

He doesn’t understand what’s happening inside my core. He doesn’t realize there are earthquakes and tsunamis and volcanic eruptions destroying my brain and my heart and my soul.

Of course it doesn’t make sense—feeling this way doesn’t make sense. But if I could fix myself and turn off the anxiety long enough to feel normal, I would have a long time ago.

“We all have to dream our own dreams. We only get one life to live—live it for yourself, not anyone else. Because when you’re on your deathbed, you’re going to be wishing you had. When everyone else is on theirs, I guarantee they aren’t going to be thinking about your life.”