5) I Wanna Play

I Wanna Play by Protyus A. Gendher

My latest post discussed Family Scapegoat Syndrome, and its lasting effects on participants. Today I dug this one up from the vault. “I Wanna Play,” was one of the first pieces I wrote, when I was more pain than anything else. This is what it looks like from the inside.

I Wanna Play- by Protyus A. Gendher

I Wanna Play 
No really, I wanna play! 
Never mind, it’s ok 
I probably wouldn’t even like that game 
But it would have been nice to be asked to play. 

But this is my life and I know how it works 
Whether it’s because of me or a world filled with jerks 
Because the farthest back that I can think  
Those social moments were the same thing 

 I’d see my brother, four years older 
With my cousins, six years colder 
Three of them close together you see 
Each within a year either way 
But I spent my first ten years being the baby 
Ten years with no one closer in age to me 
No matter the game that they were in 
Whether standard fare, or a new one imagined 
Everyone knew I wouldn’t understand  
Being so much younger than them 
A shame really, because they’d love for me to play 
“For now, go inside, and try again someday 
When you’re older and age doesn’t matter so much” 
So, I sat by myself away from the bunch 
Watching to see if I could catch the rules 
With no invitation coming from fools 

And I’d find some patterns that made some sense 
But not with the same logic to me as them 
But couldn’t we cast those differences away 
And maybe sometimes let me play? 

You see, this theme repeats for me 
Through all my intersectionalities 
Stuck like a shadow to my identity 
Always some reason I was picked last, see  

I told myself in those early years 
That it would all change when I got real peers 
And I waited and waited to go off to school 
And employ all I’d learned from watching rules 
Maybe then they would make sense to me 
If I could perform them with others more like me 
So, I headed off to make my own friends 
And we’d be tight as a brood of hens 
“Oh my God!” “ She’s gross and fat” 
They would sneer at me as I sat  
Apart from them and all their games 
Wanting so badly to be the same 
Wanting to be worthy and allowed to play 
Begging permission every day 
“Pretty please, I just wanna play!” 

 But being fat is a social disease 
Perhaps contagious, “keep your distance please” 
And so it was that I didn’t fit 
Kids my age really didn’t give a shit 
The outcast who cannot be allowed in 
So, I took to watching the rules again 
I knew why their ways made sense to them 
But if the rules don’t apply to everyone, what then? 

 There were other reasons that I couldn’t pass 
Like my performance inside of the class 
Kids don’t like the nerd with the answers 
The smart one with ready banter 
So, I spent more time with adults than kids 
Which left me nobody to play with. 

 And what would I play with them if I could? 
Because I knew for a fact that I was not just as good 
The others have Barbies each complete with the Matel brand 
And I had a cupie doll, acquired second-hand 
Their shirts had names that I’d never heard 
But between them somehow, a household word 
And I instead had no tag to show 
Because Grandma stitched instead of a tag, a bow 
And the cool boy clothes from four years ago 
Not as cool on a “girl,” now, you know? 

I didn’t think we were poor, but we didn’t have 
All of those fantasies in Saturday morning cartoon ads 
Even when I was brave 
And tried to assimilate 
To the capitalist stimuli that required their mutual supplication 
But my participation, 
Even based on observation 
Was fraud 
The items they worshipped together like tiny gods 
Were foreign to my mouth and hands 
An unknown language barring me from friends 
Just one more thing that made me less 
In their minds and behaviors, I guess 

 Further removed I spent my time 
Without a friend that I could call mine 
Still watching rules as they fail to make sense 
While others abide and I stay on the fence 
And still I kept thinking someday 
I’d figure it out, and get to play 

But as childhood gave way to age 
Every time I turned the page 
Every time I tried again 
To play in life and make some friends 
Every single fucking time 
There was some reason they could find 
To keep me safely out of line 
Committed to watching others behave 
But my worldview a prison cave 
Because bars of steel  
Could not have had more real effect.  

Each new circle, each new town  
As my transient ass flitted around 
And every time I’d try again	 
To put away my differences 
And just blend in 
Kept thinking I could learn the game 
But every time ended the same 
And I wasn’t allowed to play 

Always some scheme in my head 
Of some magic phrase to be said 
Something spoken or something done 
To make it seem like I might be fun 
To make it seem like I might be worthy 
To spent my time in others’ company 

 At one time, I thought that when I dropped out 
Maybe my nerdiness would be cancelled out 
And I wouldn’t be the know-it-all 
Who always had to take the fall, 

 But I’d spent so long wanting social approval 
And I couldn’t get my head round the removal 
Of all of my own hesitation 
Lent to intellectual masturbation, see 
That kind of time alone leaves its mark on a girl 
It actually changes how you interact with the world 
It changes you down to the things that you think 
And the lenses through which you see 
Every single thing 

But I thought to myself after years of surviving 
And bending over backwards trying 
To be enough for any one 
That maybe something could still be done 
That maybe if I went back to school 
I could have another shot to use the tools 
Compiled from years of tending to rules 
Maybe it’s a different game 
Maybe they’ll let me play 

Community college at 25 
Keeping the American dream alive 
Ya right, I was a sore thumb there sticking out 
Older and bolder but still no clout 
Still punished for every connection 
In my cognition regardless of direction 

And I didn’t say things to make others less 
I thought that to share an idea is a gift 
But still so many things about me  
That kept me at a distance 
Pieces of my story that fed the resistance 
By then I was too big to fit in the desks 
I needed accommodations and concessions 
Just to share a space that was theirs 
A space that I missed my turn to have a right to 
So, what business did I have, having a clue? 
All Ds in high school, now straight As 
I had something to prove to myself, what can I say? 
And it didn’t make a shit bit of difference either way 
Because I was apparently not designed to play 
 
My religion didn’t fit 
We really haven’t come far since “Burn the Witch!” 
I just wanted to live in connection to this world 
I just wanted to find a balance in this “girl” 

But somehow those beliefs 
Confirmed to others that I am a freak 
Confirmed to others that I don’t deserve 
To share in their structures and words 

Even my phenotypic categories 
That aligned me with normalized hegemony 
Couldn’t buy me passage to 
The game of life that others knew 

Because my whiteness I despised 
I could see white through others’ eyes 
And I knew all the ways I was other 
And couldn’t do that in turn to another 
And so, my performance of dominant breed 
Was evidently lacking, but freed me 
To think a myriad of things 
That others couldn’t because they couldn’t see 
Because to them everything was the game 
Even if the rules didn’t apply the same 
Because, when the rules apply to you, 
You don’t really question them, do you? 

If I couldn’t play, then I’d make a profession 
Of the rules of others, and all their conventions 
My chosen fields of study? 
Psychology and Anthropology. 

 But it became apparent all too quickly 
That what psychology made sickly  
Was failure to assimilate  
Failure to play by the rules of the game 
Failure to be normal and nice 
Cooperative, and pleasant, but I’m too spicy 
So, I saw how the reasoning there 
Keeps the top at the top and the bottom down here 

 Oh, but anthropology 
Such an indulgent luxury 
Because from this vantage, as a matter of course 
We question the positions I mentioned before 

And we question the rules and we question the game 
And we question why on Earth everyone is still playing 
And we question the things that others can’t see 
And we get to question everything  

So, I thought that if I couldn’t play 
Then I might just rise above the game 
But the game pervades even those who know better 
And even while studying it, perform it to the letter 

I tried and I tried, and I learned loads of theory 
But a life spent outside the game, left jumping through hoops empty for me 
And I lost objectivity 
I repeat, I lost objectivity 
I said it twice because this part’s key 
To the rift between me and a master’s degree 
I could no longer study ways 
People fuck each other over every day 
And let it go and let it be 
For the sake of being scholarly 

 If the game is broken for people like me 
Then maybe we should be social justice vigilantes 
And use all of that theory as the fuel and the tools 
To restructure the players, the game, and the rules 
To dismantle the players, the game, and the rules 
To take the power away from fools 

All these years I thought I needed 
To be the one who first conceded 
To be the one with all the answers 
While being treated like a cancer 

All these years I only wanted 
To play the game, but I’ll tell you something 
I’ve now learned that when I see me 
I’m not staring at inadequacy 
But a new way of doing things 
These days I don’t want to play 
I want to rescript the game