Back to the Carolinas: I'm officially a grenade!
*post originally written on August 8, 2015
You have no control over what others think of you; you can save an entire nation and it wouldn't matter, if someone wants to view you in a negative light, they will continue to do so. All you can do is live your life.
Due to the location I was raised in, the organization i have been involved in, the classes i took, and schools i went to, i have always been either the only minority in the crew or the darkest person in the crew; being different have always led people to assumed either i hate myself because no one around me is BLACK or AFRICAN (i'm African as in my family and i are from DR Congo, Africa), or they assumed that i'm into urban culture (Hip hop, Rap etc) or other racist nonsense. Being black in a group who aren't my complexion also affect my perception of what beauty is and made me more self conscious. Beside my family, i rarely saw black women being portrays as good, beautiful, smart and lady like in the media or in my community. Those who were praised or portrayed on shows that i would watched had either a stereotypes attach to them or praised for their bodies (I'm not a big fan of this).
The boys around me were never interested in me either because i was black (I know they never cared for me truly) or they were interested but we could only date in secret (they didn't want people to know of us) or i was their social experiment (they never been with a black girl and wonder how it was). I thank God that my family was so strict on dating, so none of those experience went anywhere.
So because of everything i stated above, i had a distorted perception of what beauty is. I knew that i would look awful in any other skin color other than the one i was born with, but everything around me told i was not beautiful. I know its pretty vain to be concern with looks but its my truth.
So in high school, college and law school, whenever the boys were inviting us out, i knew that they were inviting my friends and i was just there so i got the invite also. This happened with boys of all ethnicity. Eventually i got over it and told myself that if i truly believe that i was created in God's image then I must not be worried nor care about how others treated me.
I stopped accepting pity invites, stop pitying myself and stop answering dumb questions that everyone assumed that i would know because i'm BLACK.
I stopped accepting pity invites, stop pitying myself and stop answering dumb questions that everyone assumed that i would know because i'm BLACK.
*Sidetrack: whenever there were another black person around, people always assumed a) we knew each other, b) if the other person was a boy and single, we should date since you know we have ALOT in common!!!, c) i know all the raps/hip hop songs and i voted for and agree with President Obama, and my favorite of all time d) i got to college and law school because of affirmative action. It has nothing to do with my intellect, my grades, community services, reference letters, and hard work; NOPE, its because i'm black.
Back to my story: this July, i went to hang out with one of my college friend and her friends, all were fair skin Latinos and a few whites. We were at the pool and as always boys appeared. At first i did not pay them attention since we were all having fun but as the day progress i realized that not one of them had said hi nor introduced themselves to me. They would talk to the person to my right, left and behind me but not me. It felt like de ja vu in a way. I'm back to being invisible again. Then they left and another set of boys came. This time more diverse. The same thing happens again. Overall, i did have fun at the pool and on the drive home, i thought to myself that i' am so glad that i'm not 18 or 22 because my feelings would of been crushed that day. But as i was analyzing the events of that day, i realized that i don't mind being the grenade of the group and sometime its my perception of the situation that clouds my view.
*Grenade: The not so pretty friend of the group/crew (that's my definition of it).
~xoxo
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