Dear Freshman Mingus,

Hi.

             I haven’t written a letter in a while. With Facebook and text messaging and g chat writing a letter is almost as pointless as buying a VCR.  But I think what I’m trying to say sounds better in a written letter than through a glowing LCD screen.  

I want to tell you that on orientation day you’re going to knock over the lemonade machine and have lemonade spill all over the parkway and your brand new shoes.  But while you destroy your shoes you’ll create a new friend who’ll be with you for all four years.   I know the next few weeks (OK, more like months) will feel painfully awkward but believe me out of these tongue-tied self-conscious months you will find people that you can laugh with, cry with and most importantly procrastinate with at 1 AM the night before a paper is due.   

 I want to give you a heads up that freshman year you’ll have physics every day after lunch. The walk from the lunch room to the physics lab will hurt and make you feel out of breath. And no it doesn’t get better. The walk up the back stairs will ache just as much as it did on the first day of school.   However If you run up the stairs it feels a lot better than if you drag them all out.

I want to warn you that you will feel out of place. There will be days where you can’t relate to anyone. You’ll overhear conversations about people’s weekends in New York and spring breaks in Europe and you will have a wave of jealousy fall on top of you.  You’ll question your self-worth and argue with your parents. You’ll wonder why you can have all of those things, new phones at Christmas and a car for your 16^th birthday.  You’ll feel like your drowning in want and jealousy and all of these other weird emotions but somewhere between May and December those things will pass.

Mingus, I want you to know that you’ll find yourself floating between two worlds.  You’ll have this Sem world with trips to Canada every year to watch a Shakespeare play, you’ll have a class where you spend the whole class at the art museum looking at dekooing’s and Pollock’s. You’ll get the privilege to listen to so many wonderful creative successful people in the coziness of this lovely building you call school. Nevertheless when you exit those marvelous wooden doors and walk to the bus stops you’ll become just another black girl taking a crappy bus back to a crappy neighborhood in a crappy city. you’ll feel average and It’ll suck but that’s life. and sometimes life sucks.

I’m not telling you this to scare you. But I want you to know that these next four years will be filled with testing situations and having learning tough lessons. But it won’t all be that bad so I’ll let you in on some of the good moments.

During one of Ms. Millers English classes’ sophomore year you’ll fall in love. You’ll fall in love with a dead gay alcoholic playwright by the name of Tennessee Williams.  You’ll absolutely adore him and totally wish to be him, minus the alcoholism and depression and that whole choking to death thing. You’ll make a secret promise to read at least 10 of his plays before you graduate and by the end of junior year you will have read Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Glass Menagerie, A Street Car named Desire, Suddenly last Summer, The Rose Tattoo and Sweet Bird of Youth.  That six, only four more to go.

Tennessee will help you realizes that there is nothing more that you want to do then write.  You’ll write about the past, the future, fashion and parties, everything and anything. It’s what you want to do.  You’ll deal with a lot of sleepless night caused by writing for fun instead of writing papers for school.  

Mingus, I want to let you know that over one of these summers you’ll go to New York City all by yourself. You’re going to take the subway and the ferry and get lost in SOHO all by yourself.  And while you’re lost, somewhere in the middle of feeling panicked with shaking hands you will have a revelation that this is the city you want to be in. with all the people and traffic and noise and garbage. You have to be in that city. When you find your way back to buffalo you’ll return independent and focused because now you know that your dream city actually exists.

I know, since no one was created a time machine, you won’t actually get this letter but if you did I want to make sure that you know that I don’t want to change anything that happens over these next four years. I wouldn’t trade a sleepless night for anything, because I know that they have helped me turn into who I am right now. So yes Mingus, procrastinate, write love letter that you’ll never send, go to dance parties downtown and spend Saturdays in the observation deck at city hall. I just want you to know that yes, there will be good days and of course there will be bad days but you call the shots… Count every second on every clock cause time moves so fast so just don’t ever stop until it’s finished.  I really hope that makes sense. I know I can ramble sometimes. I know these next four year are going to be amazing. You’ll laugh and learn.

So just have fun.

Love,

Mingus. 

I decided to watch three episodes of American Horror Story instead of doing my homework. now i’m sleepy, slightly disturbed with a paper to write, an article for the school newspaper i need to finish, french stuff, and astronomy homework. 

ugh fuck this. why isn’t it friday?

The essay prompt is: “Community - educational, geographic, religious, political, ethnic, or other - can define an individual’s experience and influence her journey. How has your community, as you identify it, shaped your perspective?”

maybe. just maybe, I could write this essay without bawling my eyes out. I’m writing about guilt and privilege and poverty and feeling like an impostor and buffalo and being young and female and black and poor while going to a rich kid school. 

and the more words I type on the page I feel afraid that this emotion of feeling like an impostor won’t go away. That when I get accepted into one of the exceedingly white and rich small private liberal arts colleges I will still feel like I don’t belong. That maybe just maybe I shouldn’t have gotten this life. 

So now I’m sitting in the library writing this post while having a mini existential crisis.  This is too much like a Laurie Halls Anderson YA novel to be real life.

omg help me plz.