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I feel like my life is defined by what I’m currently studying in school, in state college, at any given epoch. First it was English lit.; then it was education—k-12 special education. Maybe someday it might be school counselorship? Disability services administration? My life might also be defined by which type of volunteer work, community service hours, I’m pursuing at any given period. I think it was Kiwanis Key Club back during high school that sort of gave me the courage to volunteer, and to be in volunteer settings. 

My life has never been defined by my social circle, or anything like that. I don’t really have a social circle, I don’t have many friends.

Another running theme in my life has been that of moving around a lot, from place to place. My family used to move around a lot—I’m not exactly sure why, to be honest.

I feel like if my Arabic language skills were better, I could communicate with my family in Sudan a lot better, and I wouldn’t feel so isolated in the world. But I’m merely a heritage speaker; I can hardly carry a full conversation. I understand a lot of spoken Sudanese Arabic, and I’m semi-fluent… but that doesn’t cut it when it comes to maintaining strong ties with my family.

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I’m just now starting to accept certain very negative things in my life, things that have been distressing for years. What to do—you just have to be patient. Patience, patience. There’s nothing to be done about it, other than to be patient.

I feel like my life is defined by my academic journey, my attempts at community service, and maybe my creative writing. That’s all I can really point to–I don’t have many prestigious things going on, or any extraordinary occurrences. I developed schizoaffective disorder when I was a young teen, and that has been impactful throughout my life. It’s caused a lot of problems and mishaps. 

For some reason, music, poetry, writing, films, video, art, doodling, and religion/spirituality, make everything worthwhile. It gives me something to do throughout the day, it makes me feel better.