I’m glad that you’ve all been very lucky. I’m happy that your lives have been so content and rose-tinted that you thought very little about the pregnant lady who had been throwing up relentlessly in the men’s bathroom. She looked very silly, trotting around like you did after you left the bar late last Friday night. That lady looked around the bathroom and wondered why everyone was men, but she was too sick with me in her stomach to even care. In her home country, everyone shared the same bathroom. Up to that point, she had no one to teach her that men and women use separate bathrooms in Canada. She barely had anyone to teach her anything. There was no mentor or guide in her life, and she picked herself off the ground with no one by her side on most days. On that day, however, her health was at rock bottom, and she was close to fainting. The only memory that she would receive on that day was the bathroom filled with your jolly laughter and your fingers that were pointed at her. My mother never recovered from being an outsider. She would go on to have very few fleeting friendships and would be cut off from her family. She would face mockery for her accent at work and would continue to cower in social situations. As my mother became older, she became more isolated and lonelier than before, yearning for human connection. You wouldn’t understand a thing about loneliness or how it meddles with your soul, and you passed your ignorance onto those like my mother.

I hope you’re happy to know that I’ve followed in my mother’s footsteps.

I know what it’s like to be an outsider. I know what it’s like to have the whole world happening in a room that you’re not invited to. I know what it’s like to struggle with vulnerability and trust all your life. I like to pretend that I don’t care and amuse myself.

We, the outsiders, always say that we don’t care, but all we need is for someone to care. Someone to know that we are still there, still here, and still scared. I know that we live in a polarized society, but we can counter that polarization through how we react. When the room is only filled with like-minded people, the people become more extreme in their ideologies and are convinced that the other side has nothing good to offer. That will destroy the good that we can offer to each other as humans. However, if we could push what divides us and support each other when things go wrong, we could achieve a lot as people.