Name / Etana
from Hebrew and Swahili, meaning "strength, dedication"
Gender / bigender
she/her pronouns
Sexuality / questioning
she definitely likes girls, but doesn't know if she likes other genders too
What is she most proud of?
Etana didn't make it all the way through the door to the Center City Youth Center before she was tackle-hugged.
A kit clung to her shoulders, standing slightly on tiptoe and just about bouncing with excitement. "Etana! You're back! You've been gone for forever!"
"Hey, Amber!" Etana replied, attempting to shift so that the bear hug was no longer crushing her windpipe. "I only took a week off. What's up?"
Amberley, thankfully, released her from the hug. "I'm trying to talk my parents into letting me pierce my ears. How'd you manage it?"
A voice came from the direction of the couch in the corner. "You're the eighth person she's asked that this week."
"Oh, shut up,
Payton; your parents let you get away with everything," Amber responded.
Sensing an incoming argument, Etana stepped in. "I was already in college when I chose to get my ears pierced, so the only person I had to convince was myself. I did made myself earn them, though."
Amberley plopped herself down on the sofa unceremoniously. "How?"
"Well..." Where to start? Etana curled herself into a beanbag chair near the couch, considering just how much of this story she was willing to share. "So I was in college, my first year, and I was kind of a wreck-"
"Like 'passing out drunk on a sidewalk somewhere after partying too much' type of wreck?" Payton broke in.
"No, more like 'staying in my dorm room all the time and hating everything I did' type of wreck," Etana continued. "Anyways, there was one night where I pulled an all-nighter to get a project done, and then instead of going to class, I just broke down crying because life was just too much to handle. The project was finished, but I hadn't talked to any of my friends in forever, the only thing I'd had to eat in the last two days was a cup of half-cooked ramen and a protein bar, and I was really frustrated at myself for not starting the thing earlier."
"Oh," Payton said, a little more somberly.
"Yeah, it was bad. So there I was, just sobbing on the floor surrounded by pages of notes about safety measures in coal mines, and that's when it really hit me that something needed to change."
Amberley couldn't help but interrupt. "Safety measures in coal mines?"
"Not the point," Etana said, trying to keep the edge of annoyance at being interrupted out of her voice. "Anyways, after I napped for basically half the day, I decided it was finally time to go to the campus counseling place because I obviously wasn't doing so great at dealing with life on my own. The walk over there was kind of ridiculous because I kept getting lost and didn't want to ask anyone for directions, but I finally ended up in the right place. After we talked for a while, I had an idea of what I needed to change, but I didn't really want to do it, so I decided that I'd reward myself for working to better myself."
"With ear piercings?"
"Exactly. For each of the three worst things I was doing, I could get myself a piercing if I stopped for a year. I had to eat things that were healthy on a consistent basis and not be mad at myself for doing so, stop isolating myself from the world, and try to counter negative thoughts with positive ones." Etana paused, realizing that she was starting to sound like a self-help book. Closing her eyes, she mentally ran through the days and weeks and months of work - mornings forcing herself to eat breakfast, afternoons spent typing and retyping answers to the emails and texts that had piled up, nights where she told herself over and over not to kick herself for not getting everything done until she fell asleep, exhausted. "It was a long process."
"But you won?" asked Payton, caught up in the story by now.
"But I won. I got my first piercing after almost exactly a year, my second about three months after that, and the bar piercing maybe five more months later."
Amberley let out a little whoop, and Etana smiled. She'd kind of felt like yelling too when she finally earned her final piercing, emerging victorious with two more holes in her ears and two friends (!!!) by her side. It might have been the hardest thing she'd ever worked for, and she won, she gloriously won.
"I got an A on my last test," Amberley said. "You think that'll convince my parents to let my pierce my ears?"
"I don't know about that," said Etana, grinning, "but I'm proud of you."