Sunday, April 11, 2010

Outsiders view of the outside


I think it's finally starting to hit me. The realization that as much as I think I'm part of my culture, I'm not. What I mean is that I am a Mexican. I was born there and I identify as one as well. But I am not entirely Mexican anymore and haven't been soo for quite a few years, 18 to be exact. That's how long I've been in the U.S. At the same time, it slipped my mind that I've passed the three year mark of coming to L.A. on a whim, to visit after moving to Utah with my family and sleeping at at friends houses/floors for two years straight.

It's weird to phrase it this way, but it's true. If anything, I'm more Chicano than anything. Around my family, I'm still me, but when I got out to eat with them or I'm in dense Latino/a stores or restaurants, I see people looking at me like I'm an outsider sometimes. Like I'm one of "them." Who ever "them" is. But at the same time something else pushes this notion of not fitting in any more. The way I think and see things now. Before I would just take things as they are, but now I find myself thinking critically about environments. Why things are the way they are, why people do this, thinking like a scholar if you will.

It's a trip to be able to see my growth as an individual and how my thinking has changed over the years, because my families hasn't, and there's a part of me that acts like I'm on an ivory tower. That I know more and know things they will never know about. Seen things and done things that could not understand. This is the biggest hurdle that gets in my way, now more than ever. I catch myself and put myself down because thinking like that won't make any more different that the kind of people who do think they're better than everyone.

It's easier for me to see this change because of constantly being in two worlds, going back and forth. I'm always in the middle. Duality. It's off setting at times, but there is no escaping it. I will forever be in the middle path. I like that though. It suits me perfectly.