Mia Mercado

“The thing about real life is sometimes your stories don’t have any immediate moral. Sometimes you chalk something up as a triumph and then immediately try to forget about it. Sometimes you sit in the back seat of your mom’s car, years later, half-laughing about the time you tricked your teacher, and your sister says, “Oh my god, you did that?” Sometimes you ignore that sour stomach feeling of regret for two, three, ten years. Sometimes you take a literal decade to finally reexamine those stories, to replay your self-proclaimed victories, to pause at a moment you only now realize was pivotal. Eventually, you sit quietly through your life’s credits wondering, “Who did I really defeat?”
― Mia Mercado, Weird but Normal: Essays