Illustration by Kelly Qinyi Fan
As an adolescent, I often found myself intrigued by the notion of breaking rules. I loved the idea of not doing what I was supposed to do, of going against the grain, of not fitting into the glorious plaster mold that the universe had constructed for me. It really did fascinate me—this thought of not conforming to the established way of things. Perhaps this was because I lived the majority of my life doing just the opposite.
I have enormous difficulty recalling instances in which I consciously and premeditatedly did something “wrong.” I said my please’s and thank-you’s with overwhelming diligence. I ate a lot of spinach. It took me two and a half times as long as everyone else to complete my art projects in pre-school because the dreadful thought of coloring outside the lines was much too heavy for me to bear.
No matter what it was that I did, no matter how painstaking or silly the deed, I was always able to find solace in the notion that this was the way things were meant to be.
