Snapchat Cousin

Last week and this week so far are just not it. Let me explain.

During the start of April, I sent out a bunch of emails begging universities and research centers to make me an intern and it worked! Well, one did and I started my internship last Thursday and it seems like everyone discriminates against a 9^th grader who is trying to learn. The person who is in-charge of me told me that for my first week, I will do a rotation from one lab to another and see what they are working on and experimenting on; And right now, I am doing the same thing, going lab to lab asking people what their experiments are but I don’t understand a single thing when I walk out. Maybe because, for me, we just started with plant cell and animal cells and here, they are talking about extracting protein from soya bean. Like soya bean has protein? Sorry but like how the hell do you extract anything?

And it seems like everyone is too busy for me. And I don’t know if I want to continue going there because I just feel left out.

Also, me and my parents went to another doctor for my tumor, Maya and she sent us to like a proper consultant breast surgeon but I would have to wait for a whole month to consult her since (drumroll please) my dad is going to the states by the end of this week. I just think too much is happening in my life and I don’t know how I feel about any of them, when I try to process one thing, another one comes and this becomes a loop. And yes, I am happy for my dad but me and mum get left out and it’s kind of hard to talk about anything really when he is 9 and ½ hours behind. (When it’s morning for me, it’s night for him) But something that keeps me going are my grannies who flew from Chennai to here to keep my mother and I some company. My cousin too came here for the holidays and it made me reflect and realize something valuable but before that, you need to know the basic character of my cousin.

She is obsessed with snapchat, is on her mother’s phone all day and wants to become underweight. I think that sums it all up.

She reminds me of myself a few years or maybe months ago.

My cousin wants validation from random people on snapchat to give her compliments, and whenever she gets one, she gets so excited but this is not a very healthy practice, I want her to realize that she is the same with or without compliments saying she looks hot or pretty. And the same with my screen time, I was always on my phone, talking to random people who I probably wouldn’t even remember in 6 months but for me that time, they meant the world. It created a lot of conflicts between me and my parents about these strangers and my screen time. I had no self-control. The same goes with body image, society and the wide spread of social media left a lot of negative impacts on me, the main one was wanting an unrealistic body.

Right now, I do not engage too much on social media. I have my own phone and I am glad that I proved to my parents that I have grown from that version of my myself to a better one. I got an update, and I think I will be expecting more in the future.

I hope you have a great day/night.

-Sahana