Stamp Of Individuality

The Stamp of Individuality
When asked to fill in your nationality in the check box, what do you check? Are there any second thoughts or is straight forward? For me it’s complicated. My mom was born here to become a US citizen then immediately moved back to Mexico and became a citizen there as well. My dad was born in Nicaragua, but I don’t feel like I belong or am a Nicaraguan. Is my nationality really supposed to be some label I’m assigned so people can know what to think of me? As a young kid I always wondered who I was. I remember sitting one day in my room after coming home from elementary school and thinking, am I really Hispanic? That day I had gone to an ESL class to learn more English because of where my parents come from and my accent.
At this point, as young as I was, I had created a stereotype for Hispanics. They were in my opinion funny, athletic, and social with their own kind. Knowing this I tried to follow my own guidelines without success. My jokes were never delivered well, and at home my mom would drop me off with my cousins, but they would always make fun of me and treat me badly. At school, the Hispanics didn’t appreciate the logical way I looked at life. Instead of worrying about my dilemma I tried to calm myself in the engulfing of books and started reading late into the night, finishing three novels every week. It was wonderful to forget my anxiety’s in the carefully witting bindings of literature; however, my reading skills didn’t translate into my speaking skills. I always found myself stuttering, second guessing myself, or not knowing if the other person understood me or not. I was bad at the one language I spoke and bad at my native language. I was mad and frustrated at the way the world looked at me, and many people at school and church thought I was Middle Eastern because of the color of my skin which made me question my appearance and wither I even looked like I belonged in my own culture. All these doubts made me hostile to any person who labeled me wrongly and question if it were true when someone got it
We went twice and each time the stay was about two weeks. Visiting my father’s country made me realize I wasn’t from there and on top of that, each year my family and I would travel to Mexico at least four time a year, and yet I didn’t feel Mexican either. So where was I from? I lived in the US but never belonged to it. A ship tossing and turning from the powerful heaves of the ocean from both sides would be an accurate description of me. I felt like an outsider all the time with the knowledge that my parents will die one day, severing my connection to the two cultures I am descendant from. It was just going to be my siblings and I against the world, and I didn’t like it. As time went by, I realized how lucky I was to be considered Hispanic, Middle Eastern, and American because of the attributes I gained from such