Jessica Ding

my room. I open the windows even when the rain is plunking like marbles on the roof and let a little drizzle onto the carpet. I go to the park often and count the number of birds with green eyes I see. After all the troubles I face with the outside world, I find home in the early blooming of a daisy, the fiery flares of a sunset, and the spine-tingling vastness of space. Most importantly, you taught me that through imagination, I can touch other worlds and meet new people, no matter where I am. This is something I will always value.

Hidden

Jessica Ding

I was behind the couch, keeping every inhale and exhale as quiet as possible. I was filled with expectation, the level of it rising upwards and upwards like a tsunami before it crashed upon the shore. I was playing my favorite game of all time: hide and seek.

Hide and seek was, and has remained, one of my favorite games. I played it often as a child, and I preferred hiding much more than seeking. Finding the secret nooks and crannies throughout my house to hide away from my brother was always the best part of the game. I loved hide and seek; maybe too much. So much so that I found myself playing it in the other parts of my life too.

One time I hid myself away was after I moved back to Indiana from San Francisco. Driving out of the airport and looking through the car window, everything was unfamiliarly familiar. Looking up, the sky was the same crystal blue, the clouds frozen in place. Looking down, I was transported back into my childhood. Around me were the neighbors I woke up to every morning, the aisles of the grocery store I visited every week, and the streets that I walked down everyday. Everything was the same. Except something was different, but it wasn't the sky above me or the house down the road. It was me. I was different. I was thrown back to my childhood but my body and my mind had already grown past the girl I used to be; the life I used to live.

Returning to my house was strange. The dogs next door still recognized me. On the way home, I knew where we were even if my eyes were closed because I had memorized every bend in the road. I knew everything and everyone. Whether that was good or bad, I didn’t know; I still don’t. Maybe it was both. Maybe it was neither. Maybe it just was.

A couple weeks later, I found myself standing awkwardly in front of the door to my new classroom. When I tried to close my hand over the doorknob and push open the door, nothing happened. I was frozen in time,

my gaze fixated on the dull wood in front of me. It was idiotic that I stared at such an unremarkable door for so long. Still, I couldn’t look anywhere else. I was paralyzed, my mind suddenly flooded with new fears. Do I still know the people behind the door? What if I remember them but they don’t remember me? Will they think I’m weird? Will I be liked? Accepted?

Eventually, a teacher found me in the midst of my struggle.

“Hey honey, you okay?” she asked, tapping me on the shoulder.

Lifted out of my trance, I blinked before realizing I should answer her. “Oh, sorry about that.”

“No need to apologize, sweetheart! I understand.” The teacher’s smile was warm. “First days are hard for everyone. Here, let’s get you to class, though. I’m sure your classmates are eager to meet you.” Pushing open the door, she gently ushered me forward.

When I stepped foot inside, a gasp ran through the room. Recognition lit in the eyes of my former classmates. Everyone immediately rushed to my side, speaking over one another, their questions all flooding overwhelmingly into the same space at the same time. At a loss for what to say, I stood there, plastering a smile on my face to mask that I didn’t know how to respond. The first few days of school continued in the same fashion. The wave of positivity I received in my return was rather unexpected, but I soon settled into life frighteningly quickly. It was as if I never left.

At the same time, though, it was blatantly obvious what I had missed.

I knew many of these people, had watched them grow and had grown with them. But I didn’t really know them at all. Over the course of the past year, all of them became versions of themselves that I couldn’t recognize. When I reached out my hand to what seemed to be a familiar face, I was greeted by a stranger instead.

Then, another game of hide and seek began: hide away who you are and see who comes to seek you out. But no one did. Usually, when you’re the new kid, everyone wants to get to know you. But when you’re both new

and you’ve also already lived there before, everyone assumes they know you already.

So the game became a little different. The conversations I sparked with others never felt genuine. The person I would be talking to would always jump in and interrupt with something they thought they knew about me. I never felt comfortable talking to anyone about my feelings. I didn’t feel known. And because I couldn’t show them to others and I was too afraid to face them myself, I hid from my own thoughts. My joy became dampened, my confidence diminished, but no one even noticed.

My sadness became quiet. I held it in my chest, in my eyes, but it was never expressed aloud. My mouth was a graveyard filled with the words that had died on my lips.

I was filled with resentment. Towards others and the circumstances I found myself in, but ultimately the resentment turned inwards and I began to begrudge myself. I wondered how I could be so selfish, how I could be surrounded by people who loved me but still feel alone. I wondered if that love was even real. I wondered whether or not I even could be loved when I wasn’t whole, when I had hidden away parts of my personality because I thought they were so hideous they wouldn’t be accepted by those around me.

But that wasn’t the case, even though I didn’t realize it. I didn’t realize I was worthy of love regardless of what my brain told me. I didn’t realize that I was like the moon: beautiful, even if it was dented with a couple craters. Stunning when bright and full, but also just as worthy of admiration when I was only a sliver of what I could be. I didn’t realize that I had worth and I was worthy of love, regardless of the things I felt like my classmates felt, the disgust I saw in their eyes when they landed on my face, the resentment they experienced when they thought of my name, the utter hatred I thought they held for my existence.

But let’s go back to the beginning, where all that is far away. I haven’t even seen the California sky yet and I’m still just a seven year old playing hide and seek with my brother. But then, here’s the thing: the problem with playing hide and seek with just two people is that sometimes the other