I am consumed by a mixture of sadness, rage and shame. I am American. I am half hispanic, and have always known that that is a very important part of who I am. I am no longer "proud" to be an American. I don't think I have felt that way in many years.
I grew up knowing my natural father's name. It was on my birth certificate after all. I would stare at that name for hours and wonder who that man was. If I asked about him, I got in trouble. I grew up in a very unstable environment, everything was secretive. I didn't understand for many years.
I was raised in an abusive household. I was told many things that were said to keep me in line. The secrets around my father just another one tossed on that dung heap. I was an orphan by the age of 13, but I didn't know it.
My abusive turned absentee step-father stopped being a person after my mother passed away. He just withired up and died, but he still walked around. He slept around, drunk, smoked and snorted everything he could find. You don't get those details.
Even my therapists don't like hearing those things. They don't focus on what made you how you are as an adult; they just focus on how to keep you on your feet. Well maybe if I had money then I guess I could tell them how I felt. Instead I was told I was brave and strong and overly-self aware. The moral being even when you ask for help, no one will help you. Everything must be fought for tooth and nail. It's only when you give up will anyone help you.
I got lost in the details, I do that. I grew up knowing what that I was wrong, my father made me wrong. I wasn't white, but I was young so I was deemed pleasing to the eye. My neighborhood friends would get chased away and called names because they weren't white... or little girls. A memory from when I was maybe 7 or 8 years old.
I was whispered about my whole childhood, by the people who were suppose to be my family. I still don't know which parts were about my unknown father and which were about my skin color.
By 15 "family" was no longer confining my heritage to whispers. I was now the "Half blood B**ch". I also knew that one of the men in the family was part of the KKK. I was calling these people family, but they regularly disparged me because I had been conditioned to it. These people were not blood. I was here because I had been programed to be here.
My mother's family couldn't handle me because I was an alien... I didn't know how to be normal like their children. I would do what I was told to do, I was too quiet, too eager to please... confused when I wasn't beat for being too slow. I was confused with receiving compliments.
The argument: Nature v.s. Nurture. I grew wild. I wasn't raised, I was contained; caged. Even when my mother lived I was only contained. You learne d the rules to live by, you followed them. You kept your head down and your eyes to the sky. Once I realized the cage was an illusion now. I became a vindictive force.
I was once contained but never broken.
I found my father's family, and then I shook them off. The reality of dream family you never knew v.s. the reality. I think I could of loved my grandmother, but everyone else's dream was to be so american that their birth names were all replaced by their Americanized versions. They worshipped my mother with her light skin and red hair. One was at least honest and told me her interest in me was purely in search of my mother.
Why was I angry that they had americanized themselves? I was sad that they idialized others instead of being proud of who they were. Growing up most elementary students come up against a project that is deisgned for them to share their "heritage" with the classroom. I grew up and that paper was always blank. Year after year. I would get passed over. I had no family heritage to share. My mother wouldn't even share her families heritage with me. My great aunt told me the most I knew about my mother's family. My DNA told me the rest.
So how is that read? Where are the two native american groups hinted at by my mom's family? Sweeden / german I knew. Hispanic I knew. So my life search of feeling closer to ANYONE, made me further away from EVERYONE.
To top off the whole cake. If I don't see the sun for more than 5 mins a week for a couple months I can appear white. I have been asked if I was Ukranian. I have been presume dto be bothe Latina and of black heritage by people from those groups. Yet I have been routinely discriminated aginst by my own family and classmates. I have no accent, I was in speach therapy for 6 years of my childhood, learning to "speak proper americanized englsih".
Everytime I hear a someone telling another that they are blessed with white privilledge..." I see red. Where do I fit in? I was a secret child, that was hidden away after my father was killed. Everything culturally was taken from. Raised as a white child who was treated as a dirty child cuz the sun couldn't be scraped from her skin. childhood bathtime always was accompanied by the smell of bleach, how bout you?
I have learned to make my family and pick my friends with care. I'm not prejudice against anyone but my own blood. To them I have always only been a tool or accesssory. So I tend to say, "I hate everyone equally, but I will treat everyone with kindness till they show me a reason not to." I do not have a whole lot of faith in human kind these days. Yet I still fight, kick and scream for the rights the country I was born in promised me. Don't roll over and let them take everything away.
My website is back up. My original host dropped my site and have spent a month trying to find a safe space to park my site at. So New site, new look. Bare with me while I sort my stuff out. Anyone who found this site before should know I tend to hand write my code and occasionally use my old school version of a program I actually own, so no AI. If you feel you need to talk to me, I'm the admin of this site. I won't spell it out because I don't need no bot selling me stuff.