#mikey2talks

When I was about 7 years old I prayed to God to bring my hamster back to life or I'd stop believing. My next hamster was on the brink of death when we found him, and we were able to warm him up and give him a few more precious hours of life before he finally passed. When he first started to breathe after my mother wrapped him in a warm cloth and gave him tiny chest compressions, it felt like the second coming.

At about the same time, I prayed that God would tell me that thing about myself that I didn't know. That thing about myself that I knew was there but couldn't see, like an elephant behind a curtain. It seemed to me that it must be obvious to everyone that I met, and that they just weren't telling me. People would praise me for always being myself, and I would privately think that I had them fooled, because I didn't even know who myself was. It would be 8 years, a lifetime to me, to discover my sexuality, 9 before I would tell my mother. It would be 13 years, my life almost twice over again, before I uncovered my gender.

You know how cells have all of their information preprogrammed into them? How seeds know to grow into grass or trees or flowers? you know how if you prune all the flowers but one off of a pumpkin vine, that single flower will produce a giant pumpkin? You know how rhubarb grows insanely fast and leafless in total darkness? You know how you can prune trees into bushes and bushes into trees?