“You’re good.”
My hands curled up into angry adolescent balls. I wanted to tell the counselor how wrong she was. I’ll tell you exactly how good I am. Better yet, I’d show her. I wanted to upturn her bowl of sweets, evidence of ersatz benevolence. Their unsympathetically colorful existence was at odds with the raging torrents within me. The very sun mocked me the same way; it shone bright, happy, and without a care. A cheery air seemed to hang over the school premises.
Perhaps she noticed my tremulous lip, or perhaps this was a reaction she had anticipated, but she let me know that I could take a moment on my own if I’d like. The gall of the woman, to act as if she knew me; to tell me that I’m good. I’ll take exactly as many moments as I’d like, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me. The seat outside of her office next to the door was the only one that I felt confident approaching without upsetting my mental map, and I left the door open on my way–a rebellious victory, but an inconsequential one.
It had been six days since I had last seen my parents, the six worst of my life at the time. That blazing rage within me directed at my own circumstances had been invalidated by three words from the counselor, however well-intentioned they may have been. My resentment directed itself towards her instead. She did not cling to her mother a week ago, pleading to not be made to leave. She did not glance at the only apartment she had ever known for the last time. She did not lose the opportunity to say goodbye to the only friends she had ever known—no, she was good. I wasn’t.
As I reached to wipe away the tears—that I would have then so desperately attempted to convince you were the result of an exotic condition (and of course, you wouldn’t know it)—I glanced at the impressions my fingernails made upon my palms. I was acutely aware while I clenched my hands of my doing so, but that caused me to only intensify my efforts then. However, now it seemed like a foolish course of action; there was no audience to share my pain. As a 15-year-old stumbling through his first real experiences of isolation, though, it was enough to know that it was there. I needed to channel those emotions into something that existed. I needed to argue with the counselor’s words. I needed to prove to myself that I was, in fact, not good. For the emotional little kid that I was (and still am), it was no challenge.
Despite that, if someone were to ask me today how I got to where I am and which people have had some of the most positive impacts on me overall, the counselor would be damn near at the top of the list. Regardless, had I known that then, my response would have hardly changed. I had never been called “good” before, not even when it was most justified. This was the least good I had ever felt. But that phrase hadn’t existed in my universe before this. Even if it did, I wouldn’t have felt the need to contest it. My hands would remain unblemished.
As my tears left, the human blessing of critical assessment returned. Perhaps her saying, “You’re good,” wasn’t a reference to my childhood. Maybe it had something to do with my apology for not speaking clearly enough that preceded the fateful sentence. In hindsight, my response was entirely unwarranted. Hindsight, though, unlike critical assessment, is not a human blessing we have while events occur. My school counselor had learned of my existence less than two hours before, and my mind was already portraying her as the main antagonist of my story, my tragedy. She had not conspired to bring me here or have me kidnapped against my will. Perhaps I should have factored that into my pubescent assessment of the lady. After much internal debate, charity prevailed while teenage angst lost, and I succumbed to the all-too-familiar feeling of shame. It was a somber epiphany, and at that moment I understood the dread Nicolaus Copernicus must have felt; perhaps indeed I was not the center of the universe. The only lasting effect was that I’d obtain a new phrase, one that would help me communicate with my American fellows. Or so I thought.
“You’re good.”
This time, it was not my kindly sophomore-year counselor speaking. I felt that same familiar tremor in my hands, the desire to clench my fists, the urge to disagree. Three years of growth since that day with my counselor had clearly not been enough to stamp out my knee-jerk recalcitrant reaction. This time, however, the circumstances were wildly different. It was still a markedly older woman saying it to me, and I was still on the brink of tears, but the difference was that I had brought these circumstances upon myself. I had driven to the restaurant on my own, and I had decided to order the highest spice level they offered for my meal on my own. It’s funny how remarkably difficult it is to feel sorry for yourself when you have no one to blame but yourself. What’s funnier still, though, is I’d find a way. But I digress.
Between my general distaste of the curry and the overwhelming sapor of the peppers from hell (evidence of some sort of superiority complex, or perhaps my masculine ego—I was trying to one-up everyone at the table by “out-spicing” them), lunch was proving particularly difficult to swallow. What was even more infuriating was that my proclivity to make bad decisions had chosen the absolute worst moment to surface. I was in the company of my college advisor, English professor, and my textbook author; in short, people I was desperate to impress. My sputtering red face and injured ego did little to that end, though, and I felt an apology was in place. The author’s gracious, “You’re good,” was in response to my equally ungracious excuse of an apology, and though one would assume three years would be sufficient to overcome any misgivings about the phrase, I’ve never properly shaken them off.
But for the brief moment that I did my nod of appreciation (words were certainly beyond me at that point) and we locked eyes, a realization swept over me. This was a woman whose book centered around being a product of multiculturalism, about feeling the need to blend in and assimilate into society. Even though she didn’t mean it that way, if anyone would understand me, it’d be her. She would perhaps understand the sentiment of feeling like an alien living amongst humans that would communicate to each other in phrases that sounded like coded language of the enemy with all their innocuous sheen. That fleeting meeting of our eyes though was an unspoken thrill for me. While surrounded by the enemy, a fellow spy had recognized me. This simple pleasure was enough to steer me into finishing my food, and at the end of lunch, my masculine ego was satisfied—I was the only one at the table to empty their plate.
My internal voice giddily repeated that phrase the rest of that day. You’re good. You’re good. You’re good. I had finally understood what had left me so perturbed that morning with my counselor, and what caused me to experience the same feelings—albeit to a much lesser degree—all these years later. It was not the simple answer of adolescent lamenting that I thought it was, nor was it as trivial as a “bad day.” The phrase, however subconsciously, reminded me of my own upbringing and the stark differences between it and a regular American youth’s. All that time I believed that this was a surefire indication of me not belonging here, not with other teenagers. No matter how many times more I hear it, that phrase will always cause me to remember both of these aforementioned fateful days. It reminded me of my mother’s thick accent and my father’s dark skin, it reminded me of the religion I was brought up in that I could no longer connect with. It reminded me of snowfall I hadn’t ever seen and of dances that I’d never attended.
But that look with the author caused me to reach another more subtle conclusion. It informed me that, no matter however much I saw myself as either an alien or a spy, that essentially meant nothing. My fellow alien, my fellow spy, the author had been able to reach where she was irrespective of the need to hide. She too was alone in who she was, she herself had struggled with the conflicts any product of multiculturalism has. In spite of this, she is an accomplished writer and teaches at the same university I go to—she even has her own Wikipedia page! If she could, then why couldn’t I? I still have the vigor and passion of a teenager, and more importantly, all the time in the world. But it would be of no help if I dwelled exclusively in the moment that I last hugged my mother, or the apartment that I lived in the first fifteen years of my life, or with the friends that I hadn’t spoken to in years. And I recognized at that moment, finally, that it was time to tell myself that I’m good.
Awad Ulhaq is a first-year English major at Penn State-Lehigh Valley, headed for a career in the law. Born in Florida and a 2021 graduate of Quakertown Area High School, Awad has resided in Saudi Arabia and has roots in Pakistan. His creative nonfiction piece “Bastard Monkey Boy” was originally developed for ENGL 30 during the fall 2021 semester.