I looked around my 1st grade classroom then to myself and wondered,

“Why do I look different?”
“Why am I darker than my friends and classmates?”
“How come people look at me differently?”
“Why do I not look like them?”
“Who am I?”

I would ask these questions to myself everytime I would go into a new grade. My mother would be the one to answer one of those questions about why I looked a certain way and I wouldn’t fully understand her. What kind of 7-year old would understand what their mother was talking about when it came to heritage, race, and ethnicity? I couldn’t handle the concept for the longest time until I truly looked around and realized how different I am.

When I went to the Philippines, my parents’ home country, I was so excited because I would be going to a place where I felt I could belong. Then I saw these highschoolers at my aunt’s bubble tea shop, they spoke fluent Tagalog, looked a certain way, and just looked like they knew they belonged with this certain group of friends, this town, this country, and world.

At a family gathering held on the paternal side of my family in the Philippines, my cousins, nieces, uncles, aunts, and siblings all looked in perfect sync with their culture and each other. It made me feel alone, alienated, separated from the Philippines and America, like I don’t fit into either of those worlds. I had this feeling of being disconnected and distanced unlike those highschoolers, classmates, and my family. I felt as if I was too Filipino or too American, like I couldn’t find a balance between the two worlds, that I couldn’t mix those worlds and find the perfect balance.

All throughout my life I always felt like I was different from my classmates and teachers. I had that feeling deep down inside even though there’s nothing really different between me and them. The only difference was the color of my skin. But that single difference made me feel like I had a spotlight on me in a field of darkness. I felt so alone and since I felt so alone I started resenting being Filipino. I hated everything about my culture, heritage, my name, how I looked, and who I was. I felt so alienated and hateful that I started hating myself because I thought that me being Filipino was the reason that I don’t feel like I belong in school or in public. I kept denying the fact that I was Filipino so much that I would even stop eating my mom’s home cooked Filipino food, put my hand up to my nose to hide my Filipino nose, and stayed inside all day to become paler. I fell too deep into wanting to become white.

I felt like I was lost in this field of darkness struggling to find an exit, struggling to be myself, hating myself, and begging to find that balance between both paths and worlds. But almost all of those feelings disappeared once I reached a point in life where I found that group of people that made me feel like I found that perfect balance of two worlds. These people helped me realize that I am not the only one who feels like this, that I’m not alone with these feelings of alienation and feeling abandoned. They have expressed to me how lucky I am to have an amazing heritage and culture to share with others. These people were the ones who made me appreciate being Filipino and how wonderful it is having such a diverse cultural background. We struggle together with these feelings of trying our hardest to find that we belong, but I feel that balance of two worlds with them.

© Aryn. All rights reserved. If you are interested in quoting this story, contact the national team and we can put you in touch with the author’s teacher.