For as long as I could remember, I had been transparent to myself, unselfconscious, learning, doing, most of every day. Now I was in my own way; I myself was a dark object I could not ignore. I couldn't remember how to forget myself. I didn't want to think about myself, to reckon myself in, to deal with myself every livelong minute on top of everything else - but swerve as I might, I couldn't avoid it. I was a boulder blocking my own path. I was a dog barking between my own ears, a barking dog who wouldn't hush. So this was adolescence. Is this how the people around me had died on their feet - inevitably, helplessly? Perhaps their own selves eclipsed the sun for so many years the world shriveled around them, and when at least their inescapable orbits had passed through these dark egoistic years it was too late, they had adjusted. Must I then lose the world forever, that I had so loved? Was it all, the whole bright and various planet, where I had been so ardent about finding myself alive, only a passion peculiar to children, that I would outgrow even against my will?

The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.

Now, Mr. Antonio. I understand that there are people who are close to you who want me dead.___o, mija. They don__ want you dead.___hen explain this._ I handed him the picture.He chuckled again.__o, they don__ want you dead. That would be too easy. They want revenge.__old sweat broke out all over me, but I kept my face calm. I looked at him straight in the eye.__ell, then they are going to be quite disappointed, aren__ they?_ I flashed my teeth at him.__enorita, you might want to warn Senor Smith, you see, my nephew he doesn__ like to share, and if he sees another man after you, he__l get very, eh, aggressive._ The silver fox looked at me and winked.__h, he won__ have to worry._ I said as I was walking out the door. __ doubt he will be alive long enough to know Agent Smith.__hen I slammed the door.

I think of what it means to be a teenager in America, necessarily pushing boundaries, making expected mistakes. Here there is no margin for error: a mistake, no matter how insignificant, dashes any small hopes to break the cycle of poverty. Here in Kibera the world is relentless and unforgiving.

If this was mental illness, or even just a particularly clinical case of adolescence, I was bearing up pretty well.

I__ always the one who doesn__ have a date, the one guys walk up to and say, __o, is your friend, you know, with someone?_ and I may not be the only girl without someone, but it feels like it sometimes. A lot of the time.