We spun so happily. A silly thing, but it was fun and I loved being included. I spun and spun thinking I was finally being accepted. I began to spin slower and as I did I realized my “friends” had collectively began to spin away from me. I stopped and walked towards them to catch up, but they stopped as well and started running. Not for fun, no, but away from me. I had never realized I was different before this moment. This moment of innocent play as a child and somehow the cruel gringas at my school turned it into a game of segregation. It broke my pure, clueless heart.

My friends started excluding me at the age of 7. After the day that they spun away from me I started to pay closer attention. To the fact that I looked different, I lived different, and most importantly, I was treated different. Honestly, I was confused. My whole life I had been considered the “guera” of the family. I had green eyes and lighter skin than my relatives. But I also didn’t look like the girls from my school. Most of them were blonde and skinny while I was and am definitely not. My hair is big, thick, curly and dark, has been since I started growing it. When I was little I was chunky, my panza stuck out like a stuffed empanada.

I didn’t know why they treated me different. I just figured they didn’t like me because I was fat, but I kept eating. Then I realized that wasn’t the only reason. That same year this 7th grade girl pushed me to the realization that it was because I wasn’t white, and let me tell you that this event had me shook. I stayed at after school care because my mom got off of work very late and I was sitting with an older girl playing mancala by myself. I looked up and the girl asked, “What nationality are you?” Nonchalantly I said, “Mexican, Native american, and French.” She gave me the weirdest look I had seen in my young life. She scowled but it wasn’t full, it was also appalled and she said “Yea I can tell,” rolling her eyes and walking away, Why had she looked at me like that? All of a sudden I was embarrassed of my light olive skin, of my dark curls, of my round panzita. All of a sudden, I hated the way I looked. At 7 years old the way I saw myself shifted permanently.

I left that school soon after and started at my new school in fourth grade. I got here and I was excited. From my many new friendships I realized that I didn’t look different here, I didn’t live different, and no one treated me different because nobody at my new school looked the same. The ethnic backgrounds varied. I was so surprised and excited to find that most of the kids here spoke spanish at home, they understood my humor about latinx life because they could relate, nobody excluded me. However, the way I saw myself was still tainted, scratched by the traumas of bullying. I avoided mirrors. No matter how many times my mom told me I was “cute” I still knew I was fat, that there was somewhere where I didn’t belong and I wasn’t accepted. I knew this because kids are ruthless. Their comments and looks stuck to me and I have barely begun to peel off the leftover pieces of their cruelty.

Self love is a popularly spread topic right now. Trust me when I say that it is easier said than done. The fact that those girls didn’t like me because of the color of my skin, the look of my hair and body, has left me scarred. The worst part is that I know that I am not the only little girl that was treated this way, tortured this way, and I know I didn’t have it as bad as it could’ve been.

However, realize that it took me seeing others that looked like me to start accepting myself. It took being surrounded by diversity to realized that within myself there is diversity and that’s fabulous. Being brown, having a big butt, having straight hair or curly hair, light hair or dark, being whatever you are and coming from wherever or whoever you come from, that's uniqueness, and uniqueness is never wrong. The whole lot of you, mixed or not, is beautiful and should be celebrated. Celebrate every culture you come from and love it, love your ethnic difference. It doesn’t matter what other people think of you but you still care and that is okay just keep in mind that your opinion of you always matters most. Stop trying to hide or disguise yourself. Be every part of you and love every part of you.