Amber Acquaye: "Dear Chuck Wendig: Life is Scary"

Dear Chuck Wendig: Life is Scary

By Amber Acquaye

Deciding on what I am interested in is a daunting task that takes a lot of brain bower. It is like when I put a complicated function into my calculator and it has infinitely many solutions, causing its operating system to lag.  There are so many things that I have not been exposed to that may fascinate me. On a general level, I think that the subject, topics, and activities that I gravitate towards most have to do with mechanisms, the intricate ways that things interact and work alongside each other. This can be between the processes of cellular respiration in our bodies and how our perceptions of beauty based on shade develop from the time we are born. Specifically, I find anything having to do with the historical advancements and movements of racially black people fascinating. Having not learned much about my own history and culture at school outside of slavery and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whenever I have a chance to learn something about who I am I take advantage of it.

 In reference to the second portion of your  comment, I think that Ray Bradbury’s the Martian Chronicles was a piece that I was actually interested in out of my four years in high school because of the fact that it explored the complex relationship in between what we find fascinating but also fear. My roommate  always tells me that the Netflix movies that I recommend to her are boring. I can tolerate and enjoy movies that have slow plot development if they have strong character development as they show the intricacies of human relationships. On that same line, I enjoyed The Martian Chronicles because  entire novel wove threads between the exciting developments of “discovering” a new land and the complexities of our human capabilities for destruction.

             Deciding what troubles me is much easier than saying what I’m interested in. Perhaps it’s because I’m being a cynical second semester senior (almost), waiting for my college decisions to come in while simultaneously trembling with fear about the future.  When I was younger, the only thing that had the power to shake me to the core were tornadoes. I will never forget one fall day afterschool when I was chalk drawing on the driveway with my neighbor to the left, Keely, and across the street, Jourdan.  Before going to our respective homes after playing, we went into Keely’s house to grab  a cupcake. Over those few innocent seconds, the sky had flipped from a calm blue to a dark greenish turquoise foreboding scene. As Jourdan and I stepped back outside to go my house, my dramatic child brain remembers my mom screaming for us to run from inside the garage as the door was slowly closing. Jordan and I were sprinting, trying not to be sucked away by the wind. When we finally made it inside the house, we huddled in the basement praying our house didn’t get blown away.  I distinctly note that my cupcake was ruined as all the icing and red liquorice decoration had blown off. After that fateful evening, I was traumatized. Every time the tornado sirens went off, even for their first Tuesday of the month tests, I got a chilling anxiety wondering if it was the time I would finally fly away. I cannot articulate just how much I miss the days when the only things that I worried about were heavy winds, green skies, and ruined cupcakes. Now the stakes are too high. Now, everything that I do counts. I’m afraid of what is going to happen to my IMSA relationships when we all move across the country. I’m scared that I’m going to end up at a mediocre college after nearly breaking my back at IMSA to do go somewhere amazing. I feel like things that I have no control over mark this transition of my life. That uncertainty, the fickle state of my future is what terrifies me.

            Even though so many things in my life are unsure, from my interests to my future, I take comfort in knowing that I am only eighteen years old and have my entire life ahead of me to figure it out.