This is a birthday post about my face & the forces that have led me into the 26th year of my life. (Read along if you love a good tl;dr). This is not necessarily about the anxiety of growing older, but more so about how that anxiety manifests in us, in different ways. About the anxiety of growing responsibilities and of proving our self worth in this hyper capitalismo world... in the crippling nature of how thinking what we’ve done or accomplished so far is not enough (especially in how impersonal and up-close magnified we’ve become). Today I get to be brutally honest, because it’s my birthday... And every day, because I’ve made it another day past what I believed my due date to be. I spent a greater part of my earlier 20s analyzing and picking apart my face... each feature subject to the same intense scrutiny I felt was prey to inherent racial bias stemming back to a post 9/11 world where my father was pulled over by the state for simply for being brown, having a rounded nose... hair sprouting out of every pore, name unpronounceable, not yet a citizen. My mother plucking her chin hair out of anxiety now becoming a pastime (a trait I’ve seemed to pick up as well, drawing joy out of feeling the stalk of hair slowly but surely slicking it’s way out of its home, the keratin at the bottom proving how home is never constant but what we make of it). I’ve found a home in my rounded edges... my nose, a swelling belly proof of a people subjected to multiple famines... finding safety within the folds, tiger stripes, skin worn by the sun, each wrinkle a testament to the gods that made us- beautiful and resilient. Each casting video seeking the perfect answer on beauty when tbh, beauty is imperfection, it’s time, resilience, confidence in the hurricane eye of adversity, kindness to ourselves and others even when our words stumble over the titanic sinking ship of emotions that settle in every bone, unrepentant when society tells us to for something we cannot help. My face... remnants of freedom fighters of every type of body that existed before me, those that fought for their home. For their right to live and find peace. (Cont. in comments)