"I mean, they didn't help. Sometimes, people were mean. But people can always be mean. I didn't restrict food because someone told me to."
"Then why would you be so unhealthy? Don't you know how bad that is for you?"
I roll my eyes, safe through the phone where my mom can't see. "The meanest person of all is me, Mom. I'm very mean to myself. But I don't want to be anymore. I want to be able to love myself."
"What kind of granola crap are they feeding you up there? You are who you are."
I don't think she's trying to be obtuse. She's from a long line of work-the-earth farmers who just plowed forward—literally—no matter what. Even though she's never tilled the soil or milked a cow in her life, that mentality is ingrained in her.
"I don't like who I am. And I want to change that. I'm going to go to therapy, but I might need help paying for it. I'm working and getting paid here for this show, though I don't think it will be enough to cover it all."
The other end of the phone is silent for a while. Finally, I hear her voice, thick with tears. "You know we love you."
"I know, and I need to feel that for myself."
"What don't you like about yourself?"
"Aw, Mom, the list is too long and I don't have enough cell phone battery to cover all of it. Can I ask you one thing though? Will you still love me if I'm not the best?"
"Of course, honey. How can you even say that?" My dad's voice startles me.
"Mom, did you put me on speaker?"
"Of course. You never call. It had to be important."
My dad speaks up again. "We'll always love you. You know that."
I can no longer hold back the question that's been eating through my soul all these years. "Then why all the emphasis on being the best?"
It's my dad's turn to take over. "You know the Fijian people are very proud."
"Yes, Dad. You've told me a million times. Being Fijian is the best thing ever." I roll my eyes again. Maybe I should speak to my parents on the phone more often. It's quite satisfying to be able to be snarky without them knowing.
"But when you are back home on the island, there's a part of the culture that's not so great."
"It's the cannibalism thing, isn't it?" Yes, the myths are true. Some tribes of native Fijians used to have a more … protein-heavy… diet.
"No, Leslie. It's the crab mentality."
"Huh?" He's lost me.
"We are like crabs piled in a bucket. One can try to escape, and probably could, but the others pull him back down. It's like if they all can't get out, then none should. As great as our people are, it's a negative way of thinking. The only way out of that bucket is through rugby or education. My parents did not want me getting trapped in the bucket, pulling down and being pulled down. Excelling in rugby or education was the only way to stay out of the bucket altogether."
"And Meri took the education route." She's a Ph.D. biomedical researcher and will probably cure cancer. Even at the age of twenty-eight, she's quickly climbing to the top in her field. She wakes up being the best. She doesn't even have to try. Not that I'm bitter or anything. "I did neither education nor rugby. I'll never get out of the bucket."
"You were never in the bucket. We wanted to make sure you were never trapped in there to begin with."
Except that's where I've been my whole life. Nature versus nurture at its finest.
I need help to climb out. I'm done with my own negative thoughts being the other crabs that pull me back down.
"So, I'm not going to be a professional ballerina. That's done." While saying these words hurt, there's an odd sense of relief.
"Did you do your best?" my dad asks.
And there it is, the feeling of inadequacy—my constant companion—is back. I want to scream, "Of course I did my best!" but self-doubt, inadequacy's BFF, is there, whispering to me thatmaybeI could have tried a bit harder and that would have made all the difference.
"I … I think so," I answer quietly.
