I was raised to embrace prejudice and ignorance…or was I? I’m so confused, because my family eagerly called other people “ignorant” for simply being different.

I wonder if they truly comprehend what the word “ignorant” even means. 👀

I’m 23 today. Although I still have a lot to learn, I think I’ve come a long way from who I could have turned out to be.

My family accuses me of thinking I’m “better” than them because I pride myself in how different I am from them. Life isn’t about being better than anyone, but rather myself.

I want to be someone I enjoy living with. I’m the one who has to live my life, after all.

Giving myself grace

I’ve spent a lot of time mad at myself, regretting not speaking up or trying to escape abusive situations.

I kept wanting to go back — why?

I kept thinking that each hit would be the last, trusting my guardians would learn to control their anger. But they’d blame me once again for making them angry, and their hit would be harder, stronger, faster — and more frequent.

No matter what I do, it’s always the wrong thing. They tell me that there’s “something wrong” within me that makes them this way, that I need to be fixed.

I wonder if there truly is, though, or if they’re projecting.

I’ve spent a lot of time wondering what could be so wrong in my stepfather’s head that he can’t see his form of punishment is, indeed, abuse. Or why my mom is so desperate for his acceptance that she has to follow and believe whatever he says.

When she was sane, she knew he was in the wrong and wanted to leave him.

I spent a lot of time caring for my siblings so much that I was willing to die if it meant they could be saved from the horrible life I lived through.

Now, I realize how much he’s spared them. Because I realize I was his punching bag.

I overworked myself during high school. Our grandmother encouraged me to get emancipated at 16 so I could adopt/save my siblings. So that our mother and their father could get the help they needed.

My childhood feels so wasted. I never got to be one. I’ve had to mourn this fact, and it depresses me.

And the only way I’m able to live with knowing all of this is by giving myself grace. I have to forgive myself.

I’ve realized that I am who I am because of what happened to me and that I’m a better person because of it. It still never should have happened in the first place.

Kind humans don’t need to go through hell to learn how to be kind people.

Racism

I had middle school friends from Mexico whose English was poor. My stepfather conditioned me to perceive them as illiterate and below me.

I started questioning this superiority complex in ninth grade, when he told me that I needed to know my place in a world with Black people. I didn’t understand why he put so much emphasis on the word “Black”, like it left a bad taste in his mouth.

In 2007, I moved in with my dad and attended Trinity High School in Euless. It was sooo much more diverse. Prejudice and white superiority still existed…but people called you out if you were.

A white guy in my English class senior year accused the Black classmate sitting next to him of stealing his fancy pen. When the Black classmate responded with anger, the white classmate looked scared.

The student teacher tried to calm them both down, but focused her energy towards one of them in particular.

The Black classmate voluntarily took everything out of his bags and emptied his pockets to prove he didn’t take the “stupid pen”.

He challenged the white classmate to do the same.

The pen was in a zippered pocket on the inside of his backpack. He “forgot”.

I didn’t know either of them. I wish I could say I didn’t feel any bias towards one person at the time and was completely neutral, but I wasn’t.

My stepfather would be so disappointed to know that I didn’t side with the white classmate. I saw no reason to. I deduced that this was a Titanic-esque situation, where someone in a higher social standing per prejudice was being wrongly accused of stealing something.

I did expect the pen to be in the Black classmate’s bag, but not because he stole it. I expected it to be there because the white classmate, or another white classmate, put it there.

Society behaves in patterns, which makes their behavior predictable and expected. During such an altercation, I expect injustice to happen.

I don’t care if my family is disappointed to know I have this kind of bias. I think more people should. Maybe less racism would exist.

[Edit Sept 15, 2024: I referenced a Chicken Soup for the Soul story about a teacher learning to see people as “clear” through one of her students, rather than “seeing color”.

I edited this post to be more readable and include perspective from me today. Ignoring people’s skin color is another form of racism that I don’t know how to explain, but don’t do it. 💁‍♀️]

In ninth grade, I took Spanish II; the class had to do a movie-type project, and I was in a group of four. They came over because my mom had a video camera and all the tools for it.

I was pulled aside by my mom and stepfather and asked a question that took me by surprise, “Do you know what color you are?”

It was then that I learned racism was still a thing. And I was speechless. Because, although I was the only one with pale skin, I didn’t understand why that mattered, as their personalities meant the most to me.

I’ve realized how ignorant I once was, and I’ve realized how different I am. I’ve realized I’ve got family members who find “the retarded voice of retarded people” as hilarious as a story of a horse getting its front hooves stuck in a child’s bed frame.

I’m appalled to be related to them.

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