Girl Shakespeare

I used to have a favorite tree. 

I loved the weeping willow. The way its tendrils could envelop me, air stiller and more intimate underneath, an undulating green blanket, mother earth’s womb. This fact I knew about the world and about myself. 

I used to have two favorite colors: purple and yellow. Maybe because they appeared together on a picture book cover that I found pleasing, maybe because I’d heard a grown up or two say they went well together. Knowing about satisfactory color combinations made me feel smart. 

I played chess. Badly, and I’d read my fantasy books throughout the whole of every chess club meeting, never really learning or caring to learn the finer points of strategy. But I could play, and it felt like a boys club, so I went because it pissed them off and I had the right to.  

Now I don’t know many of my ‘favorites’. I question the most fundamental things about myself. If I’m good or bad, if I care or if I don’t. For a moment that lingered uncomfortably long I questioned if I was made for this reality or if I should opt out. I still feel somewhat untethered if I’m honest. 

But I think we can get back to that first place. I am trying and starting to learn my favorite things again, the things I like, the things I don’t. For years I have denied much of my selfhood in exchange for being left alone, or conversely for being noticed. But I am a person, only in need of my own sanction. I am alive. I am allowed to go and be in the world, whether or not I am good at it. And I am allowed to have favorites.