Whitewashed and Bike Trails.
Dear Journal,
I’m catching up to speed. Today has been great! I woke up looking like a homeless person because my puffs looked weird. But I didn’t care! I knew how to fix them already. I got up early and FaceTimed my brother while I worked on my hair. When I took a shower and got into the outfit I had picked, I was grinning from ear to ear with pride at my reflection in the mirror. My edges were fire, I had beautiful butterfly clips in my hair, and my dress was the most accentuating short flare dress ever made. It is a dark blue dress with subtle peppermint designs and small sleeves. I had tights on and a small black crop top underneath the dress. I used pink scrunchies to pack up my hair in two sections. I looked incredible!
When my friends, who are both older people and some of the school gardeners saw me, they said I looked like I was supposed to be starred in a commercial. They complimented me a lot and made me even more confident for the day. I could tell that some people started to look at my hair longingly. Noooo. Bad idea. It has very few on days, with an astounding number of off days.
When I went to my microcomp class, I left the classroom 10 minutes before the class started and walked down the hallway toward the bathroom. I passed by several people waiting for their various professors to open the classroom door. Then I heard my name and stopped opposite room 203 and looked down to see my friend Chris sitting on the floor with Abby, an acquaintance. They gave me all the compliments they could think of haha. Especially Chris. Then, when I turned to leave ‘cause their teacher had arrived, I saw Nate.
Back story. Nate was a boy I thought was pretty when I saw him on the 21st of August, 2023, when he was moving into the apartments. I asked him if he needed help with moving his things in. A little too much? I didn’t know what to say, that was all I could think of at that moment. Anyway, I spoke about him too much to my roommates, and one decided to take me down to his apartment and made me tell him that I liked him. I could have said no, but I half wanted to do it. It was way too early since I’d only known him for less than two days, and he was probably going to reject me. I knew from experience that getting rejected was my only way out of an infatuation. And he did. This was on a Monday night, the 23rd of August.
The following day I went to my first art class late because I had overslept and went to the wrong building for 10 minutes. Walked into the class, and there he was, Nate from last night. The only seat available was the front seat, next to this short-haired girl named Emma. And right next to Emma, was Nate. Awkward doesn’t begin to describe the emotion in this 3-hour class.
Long story short, Nate went on to ignore me until I gave up and got over him, and Emma became who I call Cyrus and the closest thing to a best friend. He started to try to get close to me when I finally stopped caring. That or I was just delusional. But, when I saw him, I could tell he was too shy to look me in the eye. He also told me he loved my hair. I shook his hand, said thank you, and walked away.
10:26 pm
I ran tonight and hit 12000 steps. While I was resting from my final lap, I saw my friend Wren walking toward the apartments. I walked with her and when we got to her apartment, it was Mirah's former apartment, and Mia and Becca’s present apartment.
Mia and Becca
I had met Mia and Becca 5 months ago, they fed me and stuffed a big bag of groceries for me to take home and try out. Why? Because I was still new in the country. Lovely beings.
Mirah
Exactly one month and three weeks ago, I met her while I was riding my bicycle around the apartments. She was dressed in her work clothes and we struck up a conversation. She said she was lonely, had no friends, and felt pressured that she had to change her accent since this town was filled with mostly white people. She spoke like a high-pitched Kardashian wannabe. We walked into her apartment so she could show me the locks her roommates put on the cabinets to prevent her from using their dishes and stuff, the texts from them asking her to stay away from all their groceries, and the empty tissue holder in the bathroom. I asked her what she did to get such treatment, and she said and I quote, “Nothing.”
We went on to explore bike trails around the area together on both our bikes and all I could think about was how much we were on very different life paths. She took me to this extremely dark and quiet trail, quite far away from the apartments and people. I said no thank you, not tonight, maybe another time in the daytime. I’ve seen too many horror movies to be that curious. She talked, and I listened. Her boyfriend was 50, she loved getting blonde braids and wigs, and he bought her a car recently. She was moving out soon and would take another break this semester. She would love for us to be bike buddies.
Back at my apartment that night, she called and said nothing when I picked up. So I mentally said no thank you to the bike buddies proposal again.
Back at her ex-apartment with her now ex-roommates, I asked them about her and they said she had moved out. They went on to tell me, with video proofs, how horrible she had been to them. She fought with Mia’s mom on the first night they moved in. She used dishes and never washed them for weeks. Some of the dishes developed permanent stains. She took their stuff; tissues, detergent, cups, dishes, whenever she went to stay with her boyfriend. She left every mess she made while eating and cooking unclean. She left raw egg yolks on the kitchen counter every chance she got. And she always called the girls sluts, poor, and insulted their parents as well.
She hated all black people because they were ghetto and she was proudly whitewashed. She made a TikTok about it. She only loved old white men who gave her money.
In the end, I learned a new word today after all. Whitewashed. I don’t necessarily like it because it stereotypes a whole race of people. I’ll probably go biking around those trails again when it starts getting warmer. Alone.
Do you agree with my decision to stay away from her because I trusted my gut or do you think I judged her too quickly?
