BALANCE

I'm not white.  Not totally.  But my hometown was quite white.  People would look at me when I was a kid and ask, "are you Indian?"  Or "what are you?"  I got that a lot.  Just completely out of context.  You might think I grew up with a bunch of rubes.  Many of them were.  Many still are.  

Anyway, now that I'm an adult, I have grown into my non-whiteness.  I no longer see it as a liability.  I don't know if that comes with age and not caring or if it comes with the realization that some people will fetishize me because of my mixed race.  Whatever.  

What I want to say is, I grew up feeling like a weirdo because people treated me like a weirdo.  It's the only way I know how to be.  But now that my face no longer feels weird enough to me anymore, I find myself unconsciously but actively working to make myself look weird.  I wear big, goofy glasses and yesterday when I was getting my hair cut, I asked the hairdresser to give me a "cross between a mullet and a grown out, shaggy mohawk."  

He executed this request perfectly.  Now I feel comfortable, like my true self.  I'm not trying to get myself noticed or stand out.  I'm just trying to satisfy an internal balance, one that only I can see.