soup police

So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the “bad” thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, “I’m uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.”

Once we stopped calling things “problematic” and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, “that’s racist” or “that’s misogynistic” or “ew capitalism gross” out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, “Uhhh... I’m not sure what’s so bad?” and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.

Do you know what a changeling is?

It is a child that was replaced with a lookailke,

A doppelganger,

Who knows too much and asks questions it should not

It looks like a human,

Speaks like a human– though its words are far too advanced for its apparent age–

It is, in all eyes, a human

But

It is not

Not truly

I remember when i heard of the changeling–

The concept of a child that was not what a child should be,

Something that was wise beyond its years

That seemed to understand things at a level

A 7, 8, 9 year old should not

Often i have wondered if i am a changeling,

Something that the fae placed where whatever my original was

And expected it to be fine

Or whatever a fae would think counts as “fine”

I would say i understand humans

And i do, to an extent,

But i understand the creatures around me in a different way

Than most others do

I see the patterns that have allowed you all to survive–

Despite all odds (humanity should have been wiped out many many years ago

If we go by chance, odds and some form of statistics)--

The stubbornness of humanity

How you refuse to back down from challenges

That would otherwise be impossible

A fox would not nurture a kit

That has something wrong with it–

Or what a fox would consider “wrong”--

And yet humans have made it their purpose

To help

And heal

From a standpoint of pure logic–

Which i often find myself looking from–

It makes

No

Sense

But i understand what empathy is (i am not heartless as my mother believed when she still had breath in her rotting lungs)

So i understand why we help

And heal

And still i view humanity as something foreign

Something i have not fully decoded–

Aliens to an extent though we inhabit the same realm–

They are a cipher that i do not know the key to

Though i try to crack it

An enigma machine would be unhelpful

For humans are not like those who used them

Once

Many years ago

I am not either

But i am not human

Not fully, perhaps

changelings are a concept

I am 

All too

Familiar with

And i have yet to find the others

The ones who left me in the crib

Of a child that may have fit

In a world of illogical–

But compassionate creatures