Choosing To Belong

As I got older, I struggled increasingly with my sense of belonging. I felt so alone and wanted more than anything to feel worthy. In a superficial way, I belonged to my mom, but it was a practical belonging, not an emotional one. Although I believed I was Mexican, I no longer had a tie to my Mexican family or my Mexican culture. I no longer belonged at Our Lady of Guadalupe church or visited the Mexican bakery. I vividly recall in 7th grade being asked in the girl's locker room what, exactly, I “was.” I was taken aback and thought she was insulting me, so I snapped back, “What are YOU?” with attitude. She responded that she just wanted to know if I was “mixed”—at that time, “mixed” meant Black and White, but I nodded without grasping what I meant. At the time, I didn’t feel like I belonged anywhere. I felt othered, objectified, and still unworthy—a thing, not a person who fits in somewhere. Soon, the question of what are you? It was front and center. It wasn’t that others hounded me. It was more that I asked myself the question over and over again. I asked myself because I started noticing, for the first time consciously, that so many different kids had various skin tones and hair textures. I saw that lots of kids I knew didn’t obviously belong to one race. Another girl asked me what I was mixed with. Eventually, I said, “My mom is White, and my dad is Mexican.” “I know Mexicans, and you don’t look Mexican,” she said, and then she laughed at the shape of my nose. I felt the same feeling I had felt way back when a teacher had labeled me White in front of the whole class. I felt like a fraud. The conversation ended, and from that day on, I detested my nose like any insecure middle-school girl. But I didn’t like anything about myself. I thought that if my hair were less curly and more blonde, if my eyes were light colored eyes and not dark brown, if I were taller, had longer legs, if my skin were clear, and if I had a shorter, better nose, I would be beautiful and happy. I was teased and sometimes bullied. When I was with my boyfriend, he told me my acne made me look like My Pet Monster. Another time, I had my hair done by a White hairdresser; he laughed and said I looked like a lion. I never had a comeback for these insults. Instead, I internalized the jokes and took it as further evidence that I was unlovable. Without any real sense of my family or my culture or of where I belonged, and with a fear that I was a phony or a fake, I started to experiment. I remember, at 13, talking in my living room with my friend, who was Black and White. The conversation had a lot of Black vernacular and slang. I remember saying things like, “she be,” and “he be doin’ this ‘n’ that,” probably saying I was “hyped” about something. Suddenly, my mother turned around in the kitchen and said, “You are not Black, so why are you trying to talk like you are?” I felt that pit in my stomach, and I looked at her with absolute detest in my heart. I was embarrassed about being corrected in front of my friend, and I was embarrassed because many of my friends assumed I was mixed with Black, and I had allowed that assumption to take place. I already knew I wasn’t White; I didn’t have any ties to my Mexican family anymore, and then my mom confronted me in front of my Black friend by taking away the culture I had begun to identify with. It was hard. It was lonely. It felt like I wasn’t allowed to belong. Maybe I wasn’t because she never felt like she did. Growing up knowing that I was “just” Naomi, but also knowing that being just “Naomi” wasn’t good enough to be loved, at least in a way I could understand, it was a dark and empty feeling. I repeatedly wondered Are you there, God? It’s me, Naomi. Do you even hear or see me?