'i just heard myself'

i went up to Beacon this weekend to see my oldest friend E. she took part in an open studios event and i thought it'd be lovely to see her. off i went with 3 peeps in Hubie2 Saturday morning.

i wont bore you with details about the day other than that we saw some lovely art, went to a vineyard, and crashed a house party.

what i came away with, (you knew this was coming!) was a realization about what dear E means to me and why i've always felt such a strong attachment to her.

picture it: we met when i was all of 8/9 years old. she was my 15/16 year old teacher in Saturday morning German language school. (my mother wanted me to learn the language since i'm Swiss.) she was smart yet chill, completely charming yet humble, one of the most approachable and accepting people i've ever met and to top it off...she's a halfie. she was my first halfie role model. you may not ever think of this, or maybe you do, but it's not often that i'm face to face with someone who looks like me.

whether you recognize it as important or not, i never realized that very fact until i attended a Loving Day event a few years ago and was in a room full of halfies. i daresay most of the others in that room probably felt the same as i did. it was neither a feeling of woe and isolation nor one of happiness, rather it was a feeling of shared experience and solidarity. as you know, i have some of the very best friends in the world but i believe even they would have a hard time comprehending the feeling of awe i felt in that room simply because it's not likely something they've ever encountered. and it's not something i'd expect from them as non-mixed people. why would i? would i say i comprehend the black experience to my black friends? no. it's one of the few things in life one has to be to understand.

so it was this past Saturday I fully recognized my connection with E and why I've always held her friendship so close to my heart. i saw her almost every Saturday for 5 years and to be as young as i was and see a well-adjusted, unaffected, and brilliant biracial, i think, really had an effect on me. as i've said before, being biracial is only a part of who i am and i'd never want it to be more than that but it's an important part nonetheless. there was so much that didn't need to be spoken. we just understood each other. at one point on Saturday she said, 'it was like i just heard myself' while she listened to me rant about my Loving Day experience. precisely, how i've felt in her presence my whole life.

i know i have friends who don't see me as biracial and i honestly love that they're colorblind to it. but it's something i've always been aware of. in my impressionable years, it wasn't something that conjured a feeling of pride. i had been on the receiving end of one too many racially charged comments. i knew people didn't accept my mother because she had a kid with a non-Chinese and out of wedlock nonetheless. gasp! undoubtedly some of it was also self-imposed. was it why my dad left? and where were the role models who could've showed me otherwise? so you see, all this internal and external loathing made an indelible mark.

the silver lining is, as i became more confident and self-assured, i came to recognize my difference as uniqueness. it didn't automatically make me less and just because i didn't see many people around who looked like me (and by extension, felt as i did) didn't make me less worthy, less loved or less worthy of being loved and i needed to stop looking at myself that way.

so, dear E, please know that in the 20 years i've had the pleasure of your acquaintance you've unwittingly become my main halfie role model in all realms of life. i know you're so much more than being someone of mixed race but that part of who you are has been important to me. thank you for showing me tolerance and acceptance.

p.s. apologies for not retaining a lick of German! :)

September 14th

Much like Mother's Day, September 14th has always been a strange occasion for me. It was 13 years ago today. Yes. Yes. THAT day. The day my life changed forever. Not in that melodramatic way but in that it irrevocably changed who I was at the time and who i was to become. Believe me, I've thought about it and I know I would've been different and, i daresay, less happy which is why i believe, so wholeheartedly, that everything. happens. for. a. reason. Ironically, September has become a month of celebration since many of my close friends have September birthdays so perhaps i'm meant to think of September 14th not as a day of death but a day to celebrate life? then again, shouldn't we be celebrating life every day? i think so.

i recognize that if someone just read the first 2 lines of this post without knowing me they'd think, 'Geez Barb, that sucks. how shitty. i'm sorry.' but, i'd prefer that people not think about it that way. i'd rather people realize, as i do, how incredibly lucky i am and have been. i don't have to try to be glass half full, it's really how i am and i recognize that i could've gone in the opposite direction. but i didn't and so again, i'm lucky. i'm healthy. i've got amazing people around me and a lifestyle that i just cannot complain about, even though i do at times. it's not to say that it's all been roses, which, obviously it hasn't. but all of it has made me who i am. all of it. as a result, i'm quite resilient. i know i can get over pretty much anything in time. life is too important and fragile. sometimes i think we all let such insignificant things ruin our days. i believe there's great value in knowing what's worth truly fretting over and what isn't. it saves one's time and sanity.

this is NOT about me tooting my own horn. this is about me saying, i don't know any other way to be. these are the cards i've been dealt. this is how my brain has reacted. my mother went through too much shizz getting me here to not appreciate it. i. am. lucky. so, to a life well lived.

p.s. to a life well lived to you too, dear reader.