EXISTENCE
Early on, you face
The realization¹ you don’t
Have a space
Where you fit in
And recognize you
Were born to exist
Standing² alone
—“Outside”
There was a time in my early childhood when I didn’t believe I was worthy³ of being alive.
I was too young to contemplate⁴ ending my life but just old enough to know I hadn’t begunliving nor found where I belonged. Nowhere in my world did I see anyone who lookedlike me or reflected how I felt inside.
There was my mother, Patricia, with paler skin and straighter hair, and my father,Alfred Roy, with deeper skin and kinkier hair, and neither had faces with features just likemine. I saw them both as riddled⁵ with regret, hostages of a sequence of cruelcircumstances. My sister, Alison, and brother, Morgan, were both older and darker, andnot just in terms of the hues⁶ of their skin, though they were slightly browner. The two ofthem had a similar energy that seemed to block light. They had an approach to the worldthat made little room for whimsy⁷ and fantasy, which was my natural tendency. We sharedcommon blood, yet I felt like a stranger among them all, an intruder in my own family.
I was always so scared as a little girl, and music was my escape. My house was heavy,weighed down with yelling and chaos⁸. When I sang, in a whispery tone, it calmed medown. I discovered a quiet, soft, light place inside my voice—a vibration⁹ in me thatbrought me sweet relief. My whisper-singing was my secret lullaby to myself.
But in singing I also found a connection to my mother, a Juilliard-trained opera singer.
As I listened to her doing

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