"It"

^{On the way to the airport I see a CITGO gas plant right next to the packed highway we drive on. Towers of oil line up like crops on a farm. Little lights on each tower flicker away like Christmas lights. On one of the towers, an unexceptional logo of the company is plastered on it.} 

^{On an oil tower before it, in bold, violent black words writes:} 

^{“DRIVE SAFELY."}

^{When I was 8, I sat in front of a boy with chocolate skin. Every time he laughed or talked or even yawned behind me, the hairs on my neck would stand up. I imagined it with no boundaries, a violent battlefield where I was invincible, ploughing through it to reach him.} 

^{When I was 16 I made the grave mistake of falling in it. This story is short; it was the longest three years I battled in my life. I was the gum on the sole of his shoe. I learned so much about myself then and so much about it then. I learned that I had been wrong about it. It wasn’t invincible. In my lifetime, I was never going to run through another battlefield. I was empowered on my own, and my passion for others buried my past passion for finding it.} 

^{I became teeny, tiny and terrified.} 

^{When I was 20, I stood in front of a massive door to what felt like my home. The door was inviting, yellow, like the sun. The smell of freshly pressed laundry seeped through the gaps. Plants of lavenders flooded the porch, draping down from above where honeybees and fireflies dance to what must be the soaring sounds of an orchestra. Everything in me wanted to see what was on the other side, yet my feet kept planted. White knuckles just a speck away from touching that golden door. I look down at my baggages. What would the person behind the door think of all of my baggage? They were battered, stinky, and broken - let along I was a 20 year old girl with rainbow, chaotic and childish baggage. But this is who I was, I said to myself, and this person was going to have to accept the way that I am. The slightest knock - I was scared that everything behind that door was not everything that I wanted. That was never fair of me.}

^{When I was 21, I realised that other people had different views of it. I realised that everyone had different ways of giving it, showing it and feeling it. When I was 21, I realised I wasn’t scared of going into a battlefield for someone to feel it. I was terrified of putting someone in that battlefield. No, I was scared of putting someone in my battlefield, where I held the guns.}

^{Yet no matter what I did, no matter how many battles I initiated, the cannons I fired, all that fired were broken pieces. I thought that the pieces looked like broken glass. He thought that they looked like broken flowers. I felt like I couldn’t see.} 

^{I couldn’t see in the water. I was a vicious sea monster, and he was just a fishing boat. Riding the violent sea, the humble, mighty boat paddled through patiently, and in its track, a strip of sapphire water sparkled like diamonds. The diamonds were still. They brought peace into my life. A piece of something I had never tasted before.} 

^{Will I keep being this sea monster? I don’t want to be}

^{Is the fishing boat going to grow tired? I hope not} 

^{Should it travel somewhere else? I don’t know}

^{Will the ocean eventually be an entire strip of still, blue diamonds? I pray so}

^{What does he think of my baggage? Would he help me pick them up? I hope so}

^{Will I ever walk through this door fully?} 

Will it lead to a home?

^{On the way to the airport, I thought about writing how I finally knew all about it. I had figured it all out. I couldn’t be further from the truth. The truth is that having different views of it makes it hard. It makes me feel like I don’t know what I am doing. It makes me feel like other people don’t know what they are doing either.}

^{“DRIVE SAFELY.” that tower said. The tower said that before letting people know who it stood for.} 

^{and It reminded me of you.}

^{How the safety of me comes before your needs.}

^{How you put me in front of you.}

^{and -} 

^{I ask you today - What is it for you?}

^{Is this it for you?}