TWO WALLS - the summer i turned pretty (conrad fisher)

ten

an: remember when they already talked about conrad quitting football, well just pretend that didn't happen x

10. chapter ten
—identity issues

AGE: NOW

LA RAZA DE ORO. The golden race. It's far from what it actually feels like. It feels as though I do not belong anywhere. Too Mexican for the Americans. Too American for the Mexicans.

It wasn't a problem before visiting my dad. At least then I could imagine myself submerged with the culture that I have always seen as my normal. I used to feel dizziness and butterflies at the idea of meeting my family and visiting the places my dad used to tell me about. He would describe them with so much detail and passion that his words used to paint this bold and colorful picture. When I was little, he told me his only dream was to see his home again with me by his side.

Well, it didn't turn out the way he wanted, nor the way I wanted either. He was forced into it without me by his side. Finally feeling his mom in his arms, going twenty-one years without seeing her, he didn't get to appreciate her like he used to imagine. Instead he cried in her arms as she tried to calm him down, reassuring him that he would see me again. He listed all the things he was going to miss: my driving lessons (he had promised to teach me on his rusty old truck), my graduation (he promised to take me out to dinner and ice cream), my twenty-first birthday (he made me promise that I'd take my first shot with him), and my wedding (he was supposed to walk me down the aisle while tearing up at the fact that his little girl was all grown up. Then I would tease him about it at the reception, he'd tell me that he had something in his eye and we'd laugh so hard as we both cried).

Everything we had ever dreamed of went into shatters the moment he left the house to pick me up at the party I should've never attended. I was at fault for this. It was me. If I hadn't gotten drunk to the point where I couldn't speak correctly, he wouldn't have been detained. We would see each other every other weekend and cruise around the streets trying to find a good place to eat, screaming at the TV because a ref made a bad call on our favorite soccer team.

These tiny little things that had once been our regular nights, turned into distant memories and nights I would want to relive a thousand times over. Because I had become so comfortable with our routine, I hadn't noticed how much I would miss it all if something were to happen. And oh how I miss it.

Visiting my dad then, it had meant so much to me. Not only was I going to see him again, I was going to see my long lost home.

I had been naive enough to think that being there was going to resolve all my problems in my world, but it only made things worse. I wanted to feel like I belonged, only to be told to not speak a word outside of the house—they didn't want to be charged extra for being del norte—then suddenly told me that it didn't matter anyway since they couldn't change the way I dressed like a gringa. On other days I wouldn't care, but their demeaning laughs made my stomach turn in ways I wasn't used to feeling.

I'd never felt as terribly alone as I felt that visit. I wanted to be in Cousins with everyone and go on pretending that I would one day visit my country. Which only leads me to feel more guilty for being ungrateful. Some people would kill to visit Mexico, and there I was, wishing to be somewhere else. I think what killed me more was that I had been to Cousins every summer of my life that I had become so familiar with it, and visiting a place that I had longed so much for and then feeling no sense of familiarity. It scared me.

Cousins didn't make me feel like there was a divide inside of me. There wasn't something in my head telling me that I did not belong there because I felt it when we arrived and everyone welcomed me back with open arms and smiles. Here I was just Sonny. Here I didn't have to worry as much as I did everywhere else.