Walking in Circles Toward Change

Same Walk, Different Shoes

“Same Walk, Different Shoes” is a community writing project that

Ben Wakeman

organized as a practical exercise in empathy. The premise is simple. A group of writers anonymously contribute a personal story of an experience that changed their life. Each participating writer is randomly assigned one of these story prompts to turn into a short story. The story you are about to read is one from this collection. You can find all the stories from the participating writers at Catch & Release. Enjoy the walk with us.

I found an old diary of mine the other day, dated through the 1975-76 school year. There are only a few entries, but they say more to me from what they don’t mention rather than what they do. 

Entry #1

10/03/1975

Dear Diary,

I discovered today that the zoo at Waikiki Beach is free to visit. Stopped there after school and wandered around for a while before I came home. Mom was home, wasn’t happy that I lost track of time, and wasn’t there to make dinner for my brother when he got home from school and football practice. It’ll probably be a while before I can find a chance to visit the zoo again - but it’s nice knowing that it’s there. (Enclosed: a faded, dried, hibiscus flower; there was a bush near the bus stop and I would pick them regularly to put behind my ear in the mornings - apparently, I had saved this one and pressed it between the pages for safe keeping.) 

Here’s what I remember recording in my secret mind diary on that day instead:

10/04/1975

Dear Diary,

I almost wrote “10/03/1972” at the top of the page, but I’m finally writing these words - under my blanket with a flashlight - at 1 AM. Because it wasn’t until now that I was allowed to crawl into bed. My whole body hurts, and I have to be up in five hours to get my brother up for school before I can catch the city bus to the middle school on the other side of town. The only pain I’m thankful for right now is the backache because at least that’s a pain I chose; everyone tells me I carry too many books around in my backpack but I’m not about to let them stay here at the house when I’m gone - my things disappear or get mysteriously damaged too often when I’m not home. My locker is full enough at school as it is. There’s a poem in me somewhere about the irony of my escape mechanisms - my books - being the cause of what most often weighs me down. Except I know that what weighs my body down is dwarfed by what weighs my spirit down. And what weighs my spirit down is dwarfed by the weight of my guilt. I just have to do better and be better - eventually, things will get better. 

I’ll have to wear long sleeves for the next few weeks until the burns fade. Hopefully, none of my teachers ask questions. 

The zoo was wonderful today. I had ridden past it on the bus so many times, and today I accidentally got off a few stops early because I was so lost in thought and worry about my old poetry journal that I know mom found this morning. I found myself in front of the zoo and was peering through the gate when one of the workers there told me to stop blocking the entrance and just come inside. I apologized and said I didn’t have any money for a ticket, but they rolled their eyes and pointed at the sign that I had missed - free admission. I hadn’t known. So, I walked in. And walked around. And before I knew it I had been there for three hours. The first thing I noticed was the smell. I had no idea there could be so many variations in the appearance and odor of poop, depending on the animal. The elephants were particularly noticeable because of it even before I could see them. But, after only about 30 minutes or so, I stopped noticing the smell. It’s not like the zoo was dirty or that the animals weren’t well cared for - they were just doing what animals do and the mess would get cleaned up when needed. It was normal, and it was expected. No one batted an eye or seemed bothered by it. Once I stopped being distracted by the smell, I enjoyed watching the elephants in their herd - wandering around and eating hay and fruit and kicking up dust in the heat; the baby elephant made me laugh when he rolled around in the dust and got completely covered in it. And then when that dust quickly turned to mud as he ran splashing through the shallow pools on one end of their area. 

My favorite part was the flamingos. The way they dipped their heads down, so often in unison, sipping up water like giant bendy straws on stilts. The information placard in front of their netted enclosure informed me that the reason they are pink is because they eat so much shrimp. I don’t know if I’ve ever had shrimp before - it’s usually in the side of the grocery store that we’re not allowed to go through - what’s the point, mom says, when everything we need is in the canned food aisle anyway. Or on the fruit trees in the backyard (which I do greatly prefer over the canned stuff). I wonder what it would be like, to eat as much shrimp as I wanted. I wonder if I would turn pink. I wonder if the scars would change colors, too. 

Entry #2

02/23/1976

Dear Diary, 

I was able to visit the zoo again today. This time after visiting the flamingos and the elephants, I ended up at the gorilla enclosure. I had no idea that gorillas lived in family groups, though. I suppose that shouldn’t surprise me, though, about my fellow primates. I ended up sitting and watching them for a while - they felt like good company as I re-read Ms. Ellison’s review of the poems that I had submitted at the end of the previous semester. I can’t believe that she liked my poems so much! And it felt fitting to re-read them and dive into her comments, feedback, and critique in the place that had inspired so many of my poems. I couldn’t help but notice how the companionship the gorillas have with each other felt so natural, full, and vibrant. I felt like they were letting me share it with them, a little, as I sat there - enjoying my own company and theirs. As loud as they can be with each other - as loud as all the animals can sometimes be (except for the Galapagos tortoises), I love them for it. Their noise is never oppressive - none of them ever try to tell me how I should be feeling about it all. 

Mom was working 2nd shift so I stayed at the zoo until closing. After I got home I made myself dinner and ended up going to bed before mom got home as she ended up taking another shift at the hospital, or something. I’ll try to show her the poems another time if she wants. 

Mind diary memory: 

02/23/1976

Dear Myself, 

I’ve been visiting the zoo in secret for the last several months - whenever I know I can probably get away with it on nights when mom is working a late shift and my brother is going to be out with his friends. Tonight I wasn’t sure if he was going to be out, but I knew mom would be at work late so I decided to risk it, anyway. I needed time in my safe space with my words and the joy I felt from Ms. Ellison’s feedback. 

My brother wasn’t happy when I got home that I hadn’t been there to make dinner, but he said he had made do with a peanut butter sandwich so I know he didn’t starve. And I was able to get to bed early because mom ended up staying out late after work. She’s been doing that more and more lately ever since she met Mark. It’s been hard to get stuff done for school with how often she’s out and not home, but I’ve gotten good at forging her signature and I haven’t needed to wear long sleeves in months for any reason other than wanting to. (And the signature forging comes in handy to bribe my brother to keep his mouth shut about my delays home from school, sometimes.) 

When this school year started I wasn’t looking forward to 8th grade, any more than as a means to get through to high school - and high school as a means to get through to the rest of my life and into adulthood. But my poems have changed that a little - Ms. Ellison’s English class has made me realize there are things I can maybe look forward to, and work towards, besides just getting through high school and continuing to lap my life around this island in the same old patterns. I’ve been waiting so long for adulthood - when I could finally justify making choices for myself even if it’s not what mom or my family want from me. But maybe I don’t have to wait that long? Maybe I’ve been doing that a little bit, already, on these evenings when I’ve walked a worn path - a different circuit of circles - through this zoo and around the animals that have come to feel like my friends. 

My backpack has been even heavier lately, and when I got to the benches across from the gorillas, took it off, and set it beside me, the release of the pressure from the straps made me feel like I could practically lift off and fly away. I pulled out my notebook and got some more writing done and more poems started - Ms. Ellison gave me some information about a youth poetry contest and I want to enter it - the entry requirements are for a portfolio of 25 poems, and I want to have a good set to choose from. I have a lot of work to do before the April 1st deadline. 

Entry #3

06/01/1976

Dear Diary, 

I visited the aquarium at the zoo for the first time today. I had avoided it before because I enjoyed the openness of the rest of the zoo so much and I was worried the aquarium would feel claustrophobic. It didn’t though - it was beautiful. And it had an outdoor enclosure as well - where it houses the seals. I felt so happy as I sat there in the sun - watching the seals bask on the rocks and spin through the water and play. I could see Waikiki Beach and the ocean in the background. I’m done with middle school now, my brother has graduated and he’ll be leaving for college soon. I start high school in a few months and I know life might be changing a lot as I start this next stage before I can finally grow up. I’m not sure how often I’ll still be able to visit the zoo as my route from home to school and back won’t bring me past it so easily from now on, but I’m glad I got to come so often this past year. I’m just sad I didn’t visit the aquarium until today. 

12/29/2023

Dear, precious girl of my past self, 

That day in the aquarium was the last time you visited the zoo - any zoo. Something you didn’t write down in your diary that day - or even in your mind diary that you would compose in your head at night before you would fall asleep - is that you locked eyes with one of the seals that day. And it suddenly dawned on you that this place - this wonderful place where your memorized paths and the countless hours it had provided to you outside of your own home that had brought you so much peace and comfort - was a place of cages and captivity and separation and unbelonging for the animals you had grown to love so deeply. There, as you stared into the deep brown, sad eyes of that seal as it sunned itself on a rock in a man-made pool in sight distance of the deep blue ocean only a few miles away - you realized it was just as trapped as you were. It felt like the seal was telling you something, that day. “You can swim away - you can fly away - you can gallop away - you can leap away - you can lumber away - you can crawl away. Even if we can’t. The ocean must call to you, as it calls to us. Go - take the chance while you can.”

So, you did. While sitting there, next to the seals, the glint of the setting sun sparkling off the waves on the beach in the near distance, you pulled out the large envelope in your backpack - for once, not stuffed to overflowing. Just a few personal books and that envelope that Ms. Ellison had handed you a week before on the last day of school. You finally opened it. You had won the poetry contest, and suddenly a whole world of choice - of opportunity to be grasped - opened up before you. You got a job the next day at a grocery store - a different one than the one your family frequented. You took summer classes and night classes and graduated two years early. You emancipated yourself at 16. You flew across that ocean and, until today, you never looked back. You built an incredible life for yourself - not because you became an adult, but because you made choices to live for yourself and to exist and create and love for yourself. And you never forgot those deep, sad, brown, eyes. 

I hope you found the ocean waves too, my love. And dove deep and hard and joyfully through the spray.