“Identity is the essential core of who we are as individuals, the conscious experience of the self inside.” That quote from the reading is what really stuck out to me. I thought about this in a different light because people also say that it takes a very long time for someone to realize who they really are as a person, and the quote is referring to the experience inside of ones self. That experience that someone is going through is what makes them who they are.
I remember when I was a little kid, I was being raised by my fathers side, which was all filipino family. My first tongue was Tagalog, so naturally I fit in with my family and was able to speak our language fluently. However, my parents were going through a custody battle so I ended up going back to my mother who only spoke English. I completely lost the ability to speak Tagalog, but my mother went through the hardest time trying to get me to speak English again.
A few years went by and I ended up visiting my fathers side of the family and that’s when thee trouble started! I couldn’t understand everything fully, and felt completely out of place around my own family members. I only remembered a few words that ended up sticking to me.
When I finally got graduated from high school, I grew more comfortable with myself because I accepted the fact that I wasn’t just one part of my races, and just had to embrace that I was both. I couldn’t speak full Tagalog but I can understand it for the most part. Being a certain race has nothing to do with who you ACTUALLY are, everyone fails to see that people learn that down the road.
destinyarielle 