Gigis

 It was year 10 perhaps, to my childhood, and I meandered along the path of the immigrant-educated-disfunctional-many child household. Broke but intellectual, living alongside wealth and privilege, and always the feeling of being on the outside looking in. The passive belief that others live in a christmas movie, the unspoken understanding that we play along, we dont announce to the world that ours, our life, our family, doesnt fit the mold. It's bad enough what they can see - the messy house, the drabness of our existence in comparison. Later I would encounter a high school friend wandering through my house into bedrooms, remarking and exclaiming about the mess, more mesmerized than criticising. I wince only mildly.  My first boyfriend and his remarks, I winced more heavily at those. I saw with interest that my sister, close to me in age, seemed less embarrassed, less critical for her to hide our circumstances as much as possible. I would do emergency clean up to the best of my ab