if I don’t do a brief update now I’ll tell myself I’ll get to it later and then it probably won’t happen :)
I read from someone’s “How I did it” about part of the problem stemming from being bi-racial in a place where just about everyone’s one flavor, so that reminded me of my own situation—I’m multiracial and it’s been years—YEARS—since school days when any dumb kid made a comment about it, but it’s like I haven’t developed enough to reliably shake it off any time someone says something about it now, even though I either know or am pretty sure they don’t mean their comments to be rude, especially when it’s a compliment/something positive about whatever, but I have this incredibly self-conscious kneejerk reaction and I just.feel.ugly.
These days comments about my racial/cultural mixup are only as weird and bad as I let them make me feel…
And when I talk about the comments made, I mean both based on appearance and details, of culture, religion, language speaking skills, etc. Why don’t I know more about this? Why don’t I speak that language? Why aren’t I this, why aren’t I that… all the “Why aren’t you…” questions for me at least chip away at the nothing I already feel like.
Today and all tomorrows are the best days to Not Feel Ugly. I’m not a child anymore. I’m about to turn 26, which puts me on that side of 30. Not that I’m all grown up, definitely not, but I have to come to terms with what I see in the mirror and how I feel about the person I am now.
I have to accept things I can’t change. I can’t change my pedigree, and I wish I could say I wouldn’t want to, and maybe someday I’ll get there.
I don’t have to be a victim and listen to people put me down for not being what they expect me to be based on my face, my name, my parents.
I can make up my own rules, because basically I wasn’t raised with many :) Just to be independent, self-sufficient, and happy. I wasn’t raised in any religion, I’m not part of any of the kinds of communities based around certain ethnic groups, I don’t identify really with anyone on the basis of culture, race, ethnicity, except for the closest thing is… here… sort of. Lance describes “people like me” in my generation as “media children” and in a way he’s right. I wasn’t fond of his tone or the implications he was making in the context of that conversation, but in this way I unwittingly lied.
I guess it’s called “American culture” or “Americanized” or the melting pot or whatever, but using that term unsettles me. Maybe because the definitions are constantly shifting, those definitions are multiple and vague. I need a way to say I was raised a blank slate, here, as a first generation US citizen, without affiliation to anything…
sigh. I think I’m gonna give up and just say I was adopted by white people and watch the question-askers go “Ohhhh” and then dash away before they think of other questions …
this entry had lots to do with Not Feeling Ugly.
