most stories about reinvention skip the middle. there’s a before, there’s an after, and somewhere in between a woman gets quietly transformed. her old self gets folded up and put away like clothes that don’t fit anymore.
that’s not how it happened to me. and it’s not the story i’m telling.
i’m interested in the middle, the part everyone edits out. you’re no longer who you were and not yet who you’re becoming, and you’re doing it in public, in the wrong outfit, with your accent showing.
it’s messy. it’s usually funny. it’s almost never private.
and it keeps asking me the same question: how do you become someone new without pretending the earlier versions of you never happened?
once you see that question, it’s everywhere. in ambition. in desire. in beauty and money. in immigration, where belonging has a price and nobody shows you the bill until after you’ve paid it.
so the form changes. sometimes it’s a short film. sometimes it’s an essay about men. sometimes it’s sex, or language, or a close reading of the american dream written from inside it. usually it’s several at once, because nobody interesting is only one thing.
the subject moves. the perspective doesn’t.
a woman deciding who she is, and writing it down before anyone else can.