Marielle Dorsey
Saturday | August 8th, 2020.
I’ve known Marielle longer than any of my other subjects, but not in the way one may think.
We met in our freshmen year PE class; I was a cynic who rocked a killer glasses-braces combo and she was the kind, outgoing one who instigated our conversation. I never really talked to her again until junior year, unfortunately.
But, I’m still pretty grateful for that same dynamic today—she’s always one to get me out of my comfort zone and coax me into trying new things, especially as it relates to my love life.
We aired out our dirtied laundry as the game started.
Somehow, we were always stuck around the wrong people—constantly trapped in an unfortunate series of misunderstandings. We would both get excluded from our friend group; and girls at school would say she was full of herself behind her back. In reality, she simply enjoyed sparking genuine conversation with random people and held up her own, reasonable front of confidence. She admitted most of her confidence was rooted in a “fake it ‘til you make it” mentality.
I saw her smile and chose to believe otherwise.
“I grew up as the only tall, black girl for miles.”
She explained. The black community in San Mateo and Foster City is few and far between. I rolled my eyes in disgust. People can be so cruel for no reason.
We made morbid jokes about the insanity of eating disorders—how they drove us to do and eat the stupidest things to impress people who likely didn’t give a shit about us. We cheered to the wonderful joys of unhealthy attachment, but I wanted her to know that any guy she was treated terribly by did not deserve her in this slightest. That she was miles above their league.
She led me to a peculiar spot named Water’s Edge, and told me she would come here to contemplate life. How her happiness was fleeting and could only be found within herself—not in boys, not in a certain body, not even in the people closest to her sometimes.
We both looked out at the little stretch of lagoon—I commented on the water’s beauty as it shone underneath the sunlight. I let out a deep breath. In that moment I no longer felt alone.
Then we both got distracted by the cute ducks and proceeded with the shoot.