Journal 1 - 12/9/2025

A bunch of rambling thoughts, especially about broken families and poverty.

I look at their eyes, their hands, and see my own.

The coal miner veins, the painter pupils.

My family tree hits many dead-ends. An absent father's name erased, a child abandoned on a train. Born out of wedlock, like me.

When I browse through the records I can find, our social status remains. Poor now, poor then, poor in the Appalachian Mountains. A mining accident, a young marriage, no house left to our names.

I am stunned to see that my father isn't the only carpenter. His great grandfather was, his great great grandfather was, so on, and so forth. I didn't know what my grandfather did on my mom's side. I find his obituary...a carpenter. I know he was a decent musician and worked at a record company when he was younger. I guess after the divorce, he went back to his roots, and into the mountains.

My father doesn't know who his father is, either. That left a tar-black, tarnished void in him. Right in the stomach. I look at my wrist again, but the mark looks like a cigarette burn. It feels like one, a mild sting.

But it hurts.

Most of the bastards are boys. They proved themselves by breaking their backs in the sun and numbing the pain with flat beer. What is a girl bastard? Who is she?

Who is the bastard child, of the bastard child?

The cigarette burn manages to taste like ash in my throat, even though it's on my wrist. The taste permeates my mouth, every night.

I find a little pride, a little solace learning about how folks really relied on each other. The communities I look into have my family's surnames, as I peruse the ancestry tree. Families that survived without the assistance of the ultra-elite, that made their own soap and bread.

I saw our small migration from West Virginia to Virginia, and I realize some things probably weren't so different for me.

Stereotypes about my neighborhood being 'tainted' or 'ghetto' because it wasn't gated. Because we were all poor, and most of my neighbors weren't white. I never understood the fear of a place, so full of families that played sports together and watched each other's kids. Things weren't easy for us, but we were connected.

We got the mail in Spanish, because there was no way a white family lived here. Not a fully white one. And some of us were just ambiguous enough (even if that just means olive skin and black hair), it was almost like we had an ethnicity or race assigned to us. And no matter what it was, the message was clear:

You are not white enough. Because you are not rich enough, and your children's eyes aren't blue. And you live HERE, of all places.

I get little flashes of these moments.

I take my glasses off, while I'm sitting on the daisy yellow school bus.

A shift, a pause. An accusation.

"What the fuck is wrong with your face? Are you like Native American, or Asian or something? What's wrong with your eyes?"

I put the glasses back on. Thanks Kyle.

This was a little moment, but it annoyed me. What was I going to say? Usually, all I could say was that my mom 'looked' Asian to people. When I asked her about it, she said kids used to ask her if she was from China.

She's not, and we're not, but I guess a shitty white suburb is a shitty white suburb. And it also hit me, that the same kids who asked her that, are adults now. And I wouldn't be surprised if some of them still believed that misconception and gave it to their child. The same questions then got directed towards me.

And no one leaves the town, for some fucking reason. It'll be four generations of the same old money social climbers, and the same four generations of the same working-class laborers.

I think back to what may have been the worst moment similar to this.

My teacher stands beside me while my yearbook photo is about to be snapped. I am in preschool, maybe five at most.

I have a red scrunchie, chapped lips, and an apple red sweater. It's my favorite color, after all.

"It's so sad. That girl is wearing lipstick, because her mom is Latina. Look at her lips..."

I snap.

"I can hear you. I'm not wearing lipstick, and we're white."

All she could do was shut her goddamn mouth. What an asshole.

I didn't realize until now, but she either thought I wasn't intelligent enough to understand her or assumed I didn't know English. I guess I was kind of a quiet kid. It's hard to remember. But her vile comment is scorched there.

Back in the present, I peel back the layers of my family tree again. I look for historical context and clues.

My family was almost certainly discriminated against for even living in similar communities. There was an attitude that even daring to share resources, churches, or inter-marrying with a family of another race was deeply taboo. Landlords, cops, and government officials feared venturing into certain hollers because they didn't know the layout. All while calling the people who lived there dirty, backwards, and stupid.

I read a few cases of people that 'mysteriously' disappeared or died, that were probably murdered. Attempts to collect debt were often given up. Sounds like they were just smart in ways mainstream society didn't value.

I look down at my hands again, and they're not calloused like theirs. But my moms are. My dads are.

I start to wonder, and hope, if maybe it can change with me. My thoughts are interjected:

"You're going to get pregnant young. You're going to fuck up your life and get pregnant like me. I know it. I can't wait. Do you have a secret boyfriend? Where is he?" - Mom

(There was no boyfriend. We lived at a hotel and the bus zipped by us because the driver didn't want to pick up 'kids like us'. She is fired not long after, for a separate incident. This is reportedly where my mom's assumption of the secret boyfriend came from. Years later, I graduate high school. No boyfriend, a virgin, and terrified of becoming like mom.)

"Ugly. Pig nose." - Classmates

(Mostly in elementary school. The boys would shove me, push me off the swing, pull my hair. Sometimes the girls would throw the same verbal barbs, but they rarely became physically violent. Eventually, I start running against those same boys. I beat the 'fastest runner' in fourth grade, but he is surrounded by only his friends. They tell me that no one will believe I'm the fastest, since only they saw it.

They are right. It's not long after that, I quit running. I still don't run anymore.)

"Oh, well. Emma is the smart one. She's sweet. But she's not the pretty one.." - Grandma

(The comparisons made between me and my younger sister was sore point in childhood. I also looked much more like my dad's side, than my mom's. But I felt rejected by both. My values and politics weren't compatible with his side, and my face didn't fit enough into my grandmother's puzzle. I feel like an alien, to this day.)

But I get out. I do. Finally.

I've ran so far away, three-thousand miles. I don't even have close friends left from my hometown.

Tonight, I read snippets of Kurt Cobain's lyrics and writing and relate to it painfully. I even have the bipolar disorder to match. Stealing food, being described as a burden by family, being seen as too damn sensitive. Alien, alien. Get out.

And I know. I already know that I can't even look my sisters in eyes sometimes, because it's too painful. They figured out a way to blend into the town, even with all the stigmas. I never really did.

I still can't. And I still feel like I belong nowhere, born of nothing.