Austin Woodz
I’m sitting on a bench in a semi-busy park, watching a toddler pick individual petals off of a flower, and I remember the first girl I fell in love with. Repeating “she loves me, she loves me not, she loves me, she loves me not,” but the petals only told me what I wanted to hear. They couldn’t predict the complexity of falling for a long-time friend, someone you know better than family itself. We parted ways two years ago, I miss her.
The child’s mother is smoking a cigarette, and I assume she must’ve just recently gotten off of work. It reminds me of my grandmother who used to work four jobs in order to provide for her kids. It reminds me of my single mother who worked two jobs, but just as hard, to do the same. And I don’t see another parental figure with the child, my heart would like to assume that maybe, just maybe, the young kid has a father at home, my mind goes elsewhere. I’m reminded of my father whom I no longer speak with. He was the type of man who’s anger you could feel even when he wasn’t around, because parents tend to pass their bad habits onto their children. I was an angry child in the form of my father. Perhaps I still am. I look away from the mother and her kid.
Playing at the park, there’s a young boy going down a slide, and he must be younger than ten years old. He’s with two other young boys, and they’re playing rough with each other as young boys stereotypically do. I never had friends like that, and I never played rough. I was always scared to hurt others the same way they’d hurt me. I may have always been angry, but I was still soft-hearted. I’m reminded that the madness was a survival instinct, that I am just a product of my environment, and I’m not sure whether that makes me feel better or worse. I am my own person, but it is a mix of how others have treated and perceived me. Maybe I’m less grown up than I thought.
The only other people at this park are an elderly lesbian couple who had previously been walking their dog, and are now sitting on the bench across from me to rest. You can see it in the way that they look at each other, and I wonder how many years they’ve been together. I wonder where they first discovered themselves, if they had to keep their first date a secret, or if they were supported unconditionally. I wonder if they were ever just two young girls who were afraid of the rest of the world, maybe they were very similar to me at one point in time.
The same way other people’s lives remind me of my own, the sound of the wind and the birds chirping is life too. Even the stray cat walking up to me has a fulfilling life of her own – from the way she acts, she must’ve been domesticated at some point, and later abandoned. Like a child without parents, she wandered the streets and figured out how to survive. Yet she still walks up to me and rubs her face against my leg, looking up at me and purring. Through everything she’s gone through, she’s still managed to stay trusting and kind. I hope to be able to do the same when I’m older.
I’ve come to the final realization that this is what we call “life.” These people are living out their stories, and I’m just writing down my observations. Perhaps this is my life too, and people may one day write it down the same way I’ve done for others. It would sound something like “There’s a teenage boy sitting on a park bench, alone, with nothing but a notebook and pen. He’s looking up and looking down, observing and writing, listening to the hustle of others and his surroundings. Maybe he’s finding comfort from strangers’ faces because he’s scared to look within. Maybe he’s writing other people’s stories because he doesn’t know how to write his own yet.”
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Austin is a young transgender individual who has a passion for music and writing. His current goal is to support the LGBTQ+ community through his work, making them feel seen in everyday stories without making their identities a main focus point.
Diamond Gazette 