Debating was a large part of my formative years, and throughout all my teenage ones it really helped form me as who I am. Debating showed me what it was like to be listened to, what it felt like when people heard the ideas you wanted to share, and not just heard but took them in and digested them and responded to them. It was in my school's debating club where I found people who were like me -- who wanted to win, and weren't embarrased about it; who took criticism as advice or suggestions rather than bullets; who had a thirst for knowledge obnoxious as dustiest part of a scholar library; and who's jokes were just as crass and rude and ill-informed and funny as mine. Debating was where I made a lot of friends. It was where I became loud and clever and rude and I made mistake after mistake and felt okay with that because it meant growing and learning and striving for better. But I stopped. I did it less and less, I pulled back, because when you start to lose parts of yourself -- when they go to sleep for a bit -- you don't want to taint the things you care about with that stain. But friends stayed friends. And then at university after years of pulling away and trying to turn my back, I returned to debating, and made plans to see a friend there as well, a friend from another university I went to high school with who was visiting mine. And I was ready to go back to debating, I thought. But that friend killed themselves the weekend before we were going to meet up. That friend was a lot of what debating was to me. I didn't go in the end. And for now, I'm not loud or clever or funny or crass or brave. For now, I'm half. And that friend is six feet under, and she's rotting in the ground, and I feel like my spirit to make this world a better place is rotting with her.
Amenah
