Hello World
I sit here in the nicely appointed bedroom of my exchange family in Taiwan, and wonder about the world. In this in-finite planet of possibilities and diversity, the thought that occurs quite suddenly is on the strange sensation of suddenly shock as like freezing water of, by a simple plane trip, going from being an unacknowledged part of a heedless majority, to being very much a minority that people lean out of cars to stare at you, and children hide behind their mothers' legs to watch in wonder.
And then there is the change from being a girl on the fringe, liked but ignored, to being watched constantly, an anomaly, being intimidating for no other reason than your skin color and your hair color, people having to work up courage to speak to you, suddenly having eyes on you when before there was not a single guy out of all of them that you had known for more than 5 years that had looked at you twice.
And maybe it is not that big a thing. In the grand scheme of things it is not going to come down to even twelve months, and a single blip in the space of your life. But the fact that life has not been lived yet. This constitutes a significant part of my life experience right now, even more when you only count those you can remember.
And it is not discrimination. It is not hatred or anything. It is not even dislike.
Those would all be infinitely more frustrating, but ultimately easier to deal with.
It is looking at someone weird just for their being different. It is a regard that would not be there if you were the same as them. It is a fear that you never engendered even in people you did not know, but is there because you are foreign. It is the careful distance that comes with slightly more acceptance, but still novelty.
And that is not what you set out to do this year, what you had as goals, and that distance from your peers is so incredibly frustrating. Your new sister has friends, but they are her peers, and you would not want to steal them anyways.
But most of all, this is not a complaint. This is a plea. A plea for everybody back in the US that I am just starting to intellectually understand, writing this out. And a plea for myself, that I understand this better while I am here, and that when I go back to the US, I take that understanding with me, and I never let difference cloud my vision. That I make a stand in the melting pot for not seeing skin or hair or sex at all, and instead see intentions and emotions and intelligence and fire in all that I meet, and maybe, just maybe, am able to demonstrate that for others.
And then there is the change from being a girl on the fringe, liked but ignored, to being watched constantly, an anomaly, being intimidating for no other reason than your skin color and your hair color, people having to work up courage to speak to you, suddenly having eyes on you when before there was not a single guy out of all of them that you had known for more than 5 years that had looked at you twice.
And maybe it is not that big a thing. In the grand scheme of things it is not going to come down to even twelve months, and a single blip in the space of your life. But the fact that life has not been lived yet. This constitutes a significant part of my life experience right now, even more when you only count those you can remember.
And it is not discrimination. It is not hatred or anything. It is not even dislike.
Those would all be infinitely more frustrating, but ultimately easier to deal with.
It is looking at someone weird just for their being different. It is a regard that would not be there if you were the same as them. It is a fear that you never engendered even in people you did not know, but is there because you are foreign. It is the careful distance that comes with slightly more acceptance, but still novelty.
And that is not what you set out to do this year, what you had as goals, and that distance from your peers is so incredibly frustrating. Your new sister has friends, but they are her peers, and you would not want to steal them anyways.
But most of all, this is not a complaint. This is a plea. A plea for everybody back in the US that I am just starting to intellectually understand, writing this out. And a plea for myself, that I understand this better while I am here, and that when I go back to the US, I take that understanding with me, and I never let difference cloud my vision. That I make a stand in the melting pot for not seeing skin or hair or sex at all, and instead see intentions and emotions and intelligence and fire in all that I meet, and maybe, just maybe, am able to demonstrate that for others.