this is the next essay in the study of self series. listen to the previous episode here. Content warning for: mentions of suicidal thought and intent, allusions towards self-harm. Nothing graphic, but it is a recurrent theme of the piece. The first time I got recognized from TikTok, I was at a porn convention. [insert the really cute but compromising picture of me at said porn convention here. I most definitely cannot post this photo so just imagine xoxo I need you to be right here with me in this moment. You are at a work event, crop topped and busty, see-through bedazzled mini skirt stretched over a bright pink thong, standing sure on seven-inch chrome Pleasers and an iconic bright pink mini afro (to match the thong, obviously). And you are freezing. Like, yes, it is cold in the convention center when you’re wearing this little clothing, but I mean deer in the headlights, this cannot be be happening freezing while knocking back your third (work-sanctioned) shot of the evening. Maaaaaaybe you’re wrong. Maybe you’re just intoxicated! Maybe you totally did not just hear someone gasp and say “Oh my gosh, are you on TikTok?” to the back of your head. To you, the stripper. I’m not being a very helpful narrator— you and I both know that’s all just wishful thinking. LMAO you definitely did just hear that this shit is wild. Now what? You’ve been on TikTok for like… a month. No one prepared you for this eventuality so soon. Being recognized is for famous people!! What the f**k!!!! Do you think of a lie? You cannot just stand there omg think! Think of a lie!! You’re draining the shot awkwardly and now you’re… swishing that casamigos around on your tongue? oh my word now you’re grimacing. Do something. Okay. You’re breathing out. That’s good!! You’re swallowing the shot. Great momentum. You are turning around on some newly found liquid courage and move to open your brilliant mouth and then this voice in the back of your head comes forward, all bright and toothy: Everyone can see you. Already. How did you manage to imagine this social media thing would never really affect your life? You can officially never go backwards. Hi. My name is Ismatu. I have for you an essay that used to be called, “on being surprised I bloomed sunflowers.” It comes to you in three acts, with the following thesis: One of the best ways, the kindest ways, the most lasting ways I can love myself is through archival. It’s through constant self-perseveration— not only “self-preservation” as in survival, but in my record of life. And because I love myself as a stitch in a quilt, a part of a whole, some of my archival belongs to the people that see me. Let’s begin. Act I: Germination My first era of life was spent in the lovingkindness of anonymity. Such is life in the mountains— one thing they will do is shelter you. Earth that’s stacked toward heaven like that is hard to get to know. She slow to like and she longer to love. Mountains and the love you find there press on you in ways that renegotiate time. They impress upon you timelessness. I appreciate moving slow from being brought up there. Mountains make you get to know your neighbors because you need each other to survive them. And the mountains I was raised in (the Colorado Rockies) were kind to me in their various reminders: that I was teeny and always will be. That clean, good air is a blessing. That I am lucky to be so small and yet held so gingerly by mighty Mama Earth. “We ourselves are only her fingertips, her eyelashes,” they chorus. “How big she is; how gentle all the same for choosing to hold your hand every day.” Mountains also remind you of how little you’ll ever know and it makes you breathe a sigh of relief. This world exudes stress in its constant quest to become larger than life; I was always content as a finite little being because of the mountains that made me. For me, life was about as long and thick as a tree— and I was