When the girls on my soccer team didn’t know where Nicaragua was, I tried to breathe and tell them it was in Central America. “Oh,” they laughed. “So, like, by Kansas?” I still remember feeling my words catch in my chest, like the visibility of my body and invisibility of my story were suffocating me.
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For the first eight years of my life, it was just my mom and me braving this mostly white city together. My mom’s family was either in California or Nicaragua, so we were on our own. When she remarried, I gained a present white father and family, who are all loving and kind, but who will never fully understand a part of who we are. I am Latina, but I grew up isolated from that culture. I attended a school with no one who looked like me. I took Spanish classes with people who butchered my language and laughed. I played on a soccer team with girls who didn’t know an America outside the US. I went home to a neighborhood with no one who shared my culture or experiences. I made lasting relationships with some genuinely good people, but people who could only see part of my identity.
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I learned early that the mixed color of my skin, the ambiguity of my cheekbones, meant I would never belong with the girls on my team, the kids I went to school with, or even to an extent, my family. I also learned if I pretended enough, silenced enough of myself, just held my breath enough, I could pass unnoticed—definitely a privilege, but also a curse. To survive, I learned to suffocate a part of who I was. I said I had pride in my culture, but hid that culture from everyone, including myself. As an adult, I’m relearning to understand my own identity. I’m relearning how to live in Portland. I’m relearning how I live in my family. I’m relearning how to live in my skin and my language and my experience. I’m relearning what pride means—pride in self, in history, in culture, in community. I’m relearning the complexity of who I am. I’m relearning to speak. One breath at a time, I’m relearning to breathe.