Possession

"No that's mine," I said out loud and in my mind. "That's mine...."

You know how you were growing up, there were a lot of kids who wrote their names on everything such as their backpacks, their binders, their gameboys, their water bottles? I remember knowing and seeing so many kids back in elementary school all the way up to high school who just wrote their names on everything. Of course, many of those kids progressed in writing their names on walls through the voices of their spray cans. I was never one of those kids who wrote their names on their belongings to show possession. Perhaps, I was a little ashamed of flaunting my name. Perhaps, I did not want to show that I was possessive. But, I was some way or another.

The Things They Carried by O'Brien was a book I had to read for AP Langauge and Composition my junior year. It made me really realize the things we mark ours define who we are whether it is our stories, our childhood toys, our family. Anything. It does not have to be materialistic. Posessiveness. I've always had trouble claiming my belongings. Throughout my childhood, I tried to avoid bringing friends over to my house. Perhaps once again, I was ashamed of the belongings in my house: the blood-red lights that shine from my alter with my deceased relatives' picture staring down at you, the smell of roasted fish or rice porridge, the unconventionality of everything, the lack of American-ness you can say. I couldn't proudly say this was my house, this was my family, this was my room.

If my belongings, or at least what I believe is mine, defines my identity, I suppose it is not too late to claim what is mine.

This is me. This is mine. Son's....

In a non-selfish way of course.