Where Do I Belong?

I’m a seventeen year old girl. I’m half white and half African American. I did not choose to be. I didn’t choose to be the spawn of jokes when I only half apply to them. I didn’t choose to have curly hair, honestly I wish my hair was straight. I didn’t ask when I fill out a survey and it says What’s your race?(Click one of the boxes) How do I click one and be two. I then end up in the ¨other¨ category. I’m not a person half the time. I’m just a other.

When I was adopted, my parents gave me black godparents so I could ask them my questions.  My mom said I needed more black friends and I was confused. I just want friends. I don’t want people that look like me. My mom would actually get mad sometimes when I didn’t have any black friends. Not that I had  many options in a small town. I tried hard to just please my mother so I invited a girl my mother would love me to be friends with to my birthday party. She was happy.

I didn’t even care that I was different till I was thirteen. When I tried to straighten my hair for the first time. It didn’t really work, but I didn’t care because I wanted to be like everyone else. The hard part is I could never be like everyone else. It gave me the question: What am I? The Answer: I don’t know. I’m a person. That wasn’t enough for me because I didn’t know what describes a person.

Nothing or no one made me feel like them. I was an equal but I didn’t feel like I was one. I was an outsider in my own life. I relate to the quote from Ginny and Georgia 

               I’m too black for the white kids and not white enough for the white kids. -Ginny Miller

This quote made me think differently because I dont have black friends. I’m supposed to according to my mom and every teen movie ever. 

In my opinion why make me choose, why can’t I be both as I am. Why do I have to pick a race or an identity? Why am I defined by skin tone or my hair? Why can’t I just be a girl or a person? Let me choose for myself. Let me decide who I am.I bring back my opening question. What box do I choose? Well I choose to be myself. A seventeen year old girl, not a seventeen year old black girl or white or anything in between. So you’re wondering what box I choose? Well I choose to think outside of the box. I become my own person. What box do you choose?