“They get more attention with negativity,” Kalia said, slumping onto her grandmother’s couch cushions, slowly releasing centuries worth of dust and mothballs.

“But don’t you think it’s messed up that they’re picking on the weak? Turning people’s insecurities into a laughing matter, just so they get more attention?” I say

“Ya, maybe, but who cares, it’s not like they are picking on us” Kalia mumbled, as she slowly started to drift off, the afternoon sun gleaming on her forehead.

“Ya,” I say as she begins to snore.

Kalia and I have been best friends ever since I moved to Bismarck, North Dakota, from the Bronx, New York, five years ago.

Although me and Kalia are best friends, we grew up very differently,
I grew up in the Bronx, where the 6 train rattled our window panes, and the kitchen always smelled like garlic and sofrito, where abuelita’s couch was covered in thick crinkly plastic, in order to ensure it stayed clean.

She grew up in Bismark, North Dakota, where every morning she woke up to the birds chirping, her kitchen always smelt like fresh flowers, her couch covered in dust and mothballs.

Moving to North Dakota(my dad got transferred there because of his work)was hard, mostly because it lacked a lot of the cultural diversity that made the Bronx feel like home.

I sat there pondering what she said.

Kalia had never left the country, let alone the state; the last time anyone in her family had left the country was when her great-grandmother moved to Bismarck from London, 80 years ago. So her not seeing bullying as a big deal didn’t surprise me.

I’ve lived all over. My abuelita migrated from Puerto Rico to Florida when my mom was a baby. 25 years later, I was born in Florida. Then, when I was 3, me, my mom, my dad and my abuelita, moved to the Bronx where the rest of my dad’s family lived.

Growing up all over, showed me that everyone is different, no one is exactly like one another, and that leaving the place you grew up in stops you from feeling sedated to the sameness of a place, preventing you from judging someone for being different.