My parents raised me in a competitive household

They said, "To us Zentzs, everything is a competition."

And so I went about my life doing just that:

competing

Not out loud though,

in my head,

comparing my test grade to his,

my singing voice to hers

And I believed I was a winner

 

Until I entered middle school and I saw how people were just as good as me,

or even better than me,

without putting in any effort at all

And then I started to question everything:

if I was a winner,

why I felt like I was always working twice as hard as my classmates,

why my genes don't perfectly align to make me as naturally good at everything like hers,

and his,

and theirs

 

I began to ask myself:

How can I compete?

When she'll always be better at sports than I ever am?

How can I compete?

When she can look people in the eyes and speak,

without her voice crumbling,

and her words spluttering out of her mouth like foam?

How can I compete?

When boys ask me for her phone number?

How can I compete?

When she looks like that,

and I look like this

How can I compete?

When she's owned a business since she was 9,

and the most grown-up thing I've done since then was learn how to make pasta?

And then why does her pasta taste better than mine?

---When I watched her simply throw the noodles into warm water, 

whilst I was very cautious to measure out precisly the right amount of water to noodle ratio,

I waited for the bubbles to dance upon every inch of water in the pot,

only to glaze it in my grandma's velvety, homemade sauce---

I bet her grandma doesn't make her sauce---

and I grated the parmesan cheese with my own hands

And it tastes...

disgusting compared to hers

 

"You just haven't found your thing yet," someone once told me

And so I was always a stranger in someone else's kingdom,

because no matter what I liked doing,

there was always someone who could do it better

She was a people person,

he was an art person,

they were the athletes,

they were the theater kids

And who was I?

Just a person...

And shouldn't that be enough?