As a bewildered immigrant child imported to the hills of central Kentucky from metropolitan Japan, I often found solace in torturing small animals.
Although my peers seemed to migrate to me during those first few years of living in the south due to my inadvertent ‘foreign’ allure, I was often distant towards their offers of friendship. When asked about my after-school playtime activities, I hid underneath a façade of a benevolent tomboy who enjoyed solitude and basketball. In reality though, I had surrendered myself to life as an introspective strange person who manipulated…