“To learn that my beauty comes from within despite what anybody else may think.”
“To learn that everything will be okay when I reach rock bottom because I will rebuild as much as I have to.”
“I will learn how to finally love myself and become superior to the girl I was yesterday.”
The girl looked in my direction with a softness in her eyes as she slowly walked toward me. She extended her arm and interlaced her hands with mine. We stood there for a good few minutes looking at each other when she said:
“Don’t you recognize me?” A smile spread across her face as she saw my empty eyes.
She then gently cupped my face in her hands and planted a kiss on my forehead. I remained motionless, unable to move or to speak.
My eyes traveled to her face once more and only then it dawned on me that something seemed familiar in the way she carried herself, the energy she exuded.
And only then did it hit me that this girl was me. A better version of me.
Then she was gone. I was alone. And I could move again. I let the towel drop to the floor.
I turned on my music and I told myself:
I am worthy.
I am strong.
I am beautiful.
This is the mantra that I will carry through the rest of my life. It is a reminder that all I need is within myself.
I am worthy.
I am strong.
I am beautiful.
When I sat down to write something for this anthology, all I could think about was apologizing to these girls for the world we’re giving them. My apology turned into a prayer.
Dear Nathalie,
(and Kiana and Cleo and all the young women I know and don’t know in Generation F),
I wanted to write you a poem.
This is not a poem.
This is an apology.
I wanted to write you a poem of hope and praise and encouragement.
Not this.
This is not what I meant to write.
This is not what I meant to say.
But it is what I have to say, right now, in 2018.
I am sorry.
“Sorry” was not the word I had planned to use
when I wrote to you.
When I wrote to you I was going to use the word
PROMISE.
I was going to say:
The future holds promise.
Go for it.
Go for it with all of your might and heart and goodness of purpose.
But might and heart and goodness of purpose—these are only a fraction of the qualities you need now.
What you need now is might—and more.
What you need now is tenacity and anger and fury and rage.
Rage for the good, rage against the bad.
Those of us who came before you, with hope and idealism, we are angry and sad and mostly we are tired.
We have lost the
fierce spirit we used to have.
Or maybe, I hope, just misplaced it.
I have, I know I have.
I don’t have the right to speak for my whole generation.
I will speak for myself:
My heart is filled with grief.
I am exhausted most of the time.
When I am not exhausted, I am frustrated, my impotence exploding into volcanic flames of fury,
bursting from me, too-hot-to-touch
erupting continuously . . .
I know, I hope, that the eruptions of fury will cool,
turning to ashes and
please, Generation F, let us hope that
from the ashes the phoenix will rise.
May there be a rebirth of hope for me, for all of us.
So this, after all, is not a poem, or an apology, but a prayer:
May there be a rebirth of hope.
Hope for a better world.
Hope for the world you will make.
May there be a rebirth of promise.
A promise that the world can be better, can be yours to
shape.
Make the world yours.
Shape it for good.
This is a prayer.
A plea.
To you.
SAONY CASTILLO
YEARS AS MENTEE: 1
GRADE: Sophomore
HIGH SCHOOL: High School of Art and Design
LIVES: New York, NY
MENTEE’S ANECDOTE: Sarah introduced me to new genres such as playwriting and screenwriting. She made me outlines of screenwriting stage directions on Starbucks napkins, which were both helpful and confusing. She always made me laugh. We are pretty weird and talked about the plot of the horror movie The Human Centipede for like forty-five minutes today.
SARAH CONGRESS
YEARS AS MENTOR: 1
OCCUPATION: Executive Assistant to the Deans and Faculty Services Coordinator, Columbia University School of the Arts
BORN: Alexandria, Virginia
LIVES: New York, NY
PUBLICATIONS AND RECOGNITIONS: No Knowing Where We’re Rowing, produced by the UP Theatre
MENTOR’S ANECDOTE: Saony and I quickly learned that we both have a deep love for Pretty Little Liars on ABC Family, and one day we did a TV writing prompt for an episode of our favorite show! Which was very funny and our scripts should totally be produced ASAP.
My mentor and I share a love of dark humor. We also have been trying to explore power and gender roles . . . while