Between Two Worlds

In response to the question, "How do you identify?"

I am a queer, mixed Hispanic woman. Many aspects of my identity feel like a tangle between two worlds. I choose not to define my romantic orientation because I don't want people to draw conclusions from a word that aren’t true to me. I'm attracted to all, with varying preferences, and I know there are many words for that, but none of them feel quite right. I am stuck between gay and straight, desperate to fit into the brave and loving community I am proud of, yet worried that my experiences aren't "enough" to fully belong. With my cis, straight boyfriend on my arm, I feel like he is all people see. With a rainbow in hand, is that all people see? Both are me.

I am 50% Italian, 25% Ecuadorian, and 25% Puerto Rican. It's a lot more complicated than that if you look at the DNA, but those are the backgrounds that matter most to me. I feel like I often put parts of my identity on the shelf to relate to other people. If someone says they are Italian, I am, too. But when I meet someone Hispanic, I assert my origins immediately so they know I'm one of them. I once spoke to a lovely Hispanic worker at my bank. She said my name right, the Spanish way (Eh-va). I complimented her curly hair and she complimented mine right back. The way she smiled, I felt like we had a connection, without even having to come out and say that I was like her. Then my very White mom walked in and approached the desk to ask some questions. It was like the identity I carefully brandished had been snatched out of my hands and shoved back on the shelf. The worker's entire demeanor changed. She even pronounced my name wrong (Ee-va).

As hard as I try to feel like a real Hispanic, my own tongue holds me back. I didn't speak Spanish at home growing up, so my knowledge of the language resides in the rough and formal lessons from a public school classroom. In papers, I feel invincible, words flowing from my pen faster than the ticking timer. Yet once I open my mouth, my brain hits a thousand stumbling blocks. I trip over every word and phrase, the accent so many people praise betraying me when I have to repeat myself once, twice, three times. I visit Ecuador, the country where my abuela was born and raised, and I feel myself stick out like a sore thumb. Any doubts about where I come from are dispelled the second I say "um."

 ˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

My family is Catholic. That's how I describe my religion when people ask me what I practice. My father and my mother both went to Catholic high schools, my mom even a Catholic college. Inadvertently, I followed in their footsteps by choosing a Jesuit school. I've stopped filling out forms with "Roman Catholic" and started picking "None of the above." Still, the classic Catholic guilt prevents me from saying “no” when someone asks if I believe in God. I grew up attending mass, know all the words to the church songs, can recount at least some stories from the Bible, and even have a favorite verse. I’m in constant limbo—purgatory—with faith I was raised with and ideals forged on my own. If so many people love a God for his hate, is it fair to love Him for His love?

I pondered this question while seated in one of the largest Catholic churches in the United States, a point of pride for its parishioners. North Carolinians love their pride. Pride for their mountains, pride for their confederate flags, pride for their awful professional football team, pride for their state-championship-winning high school football team, pride for their state schools. I never shared this pride. I refused to call myself a North Carolinian, refused to even say y’all. I was born in New York, after all. What do sixteen years in the same house matter? My parents are firm Yankees and raised me with a subtle distaste for the south. I didn’t realize until I was driving through my hometown for one of the last times before moving 625 miles away that the familiar roads, whose names I still barely know, will always belong to me.

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

There is only one rock in the cloudy muck of my identity. The most visible part of who I am, the one piece of myself I can never escape from. The reason boys in kindergarten told me I couldn’t play soccer with them. The reason I call myself a feminist and the reason boys all through middle and high school made fun of me for the title. I am a girl, a young lady, a woman. I’ve never had to wonder what that meant to me. It is the one part of my identity that makes perfect sense. The only thing that still confuses me is why I will have to spend the rest of my life proving that I am a human being and not the weak, flat stereotype the world wants me to be.