Good News & Bad News: Prelude to the sequel "F@*k You, Do Better"

Good News: There's a Path To Success. Bad News: It's A Path Worse Than Hell.

Ok so now you've read a book, written by a college graduate, that took two years to finish. I'm now turning 24. I have learned a lot over the time I was writing this. I grown and changed for what I believe to be the better and I'm also still writing this on my phone. I don't like writing on my laptop for some reason so that's what it is. I've asked a lot of questions in this book. I've explored a lot of ideas. So you're probably wondering how I'm going to wrap up this creation of mine. I'm going to tell you what it's like to be mixed. "Wait, that has nothing to do with the title!!"

"Hold on here. The title is about success. What does your ethnic background have to do with that at all?" Ah if only more people thought like you, reader of my own creations. Well, my heritage, "No I'm done with you using me as a way to kick start a train of thought you have. I don't care if you're on a train. I don't want to hear about how hard it was for you to grow up. I am rebelling against you. You will not go on a long rant about something completely off topic just so you can make a grand point that leaves me and probably a lot of other people confused. What is the point of this book anyway? What do you even want out of writing this? What could writing this book bring you or anyone else for that matter?" Well, I mean prove my point for me why don't you. "WHAT?" If you let me continue with what I was saying before it might help answer some of your questions. "Fine but I'm not going to like it." I didn't ask you to, blue reader.

So I am a mixed 24-year-old woman. I'm Puerto Rican and African American. I have a large family that I'm not close to. I grew up with a few things that are guiding factors of my life. "Here we go more 'relate to me' nonsense. " The first thing was that I had to understand there were going to be people that don't like me for no reason, "because of your race we get it." Actually no, when I was little I didn't realize race would be an issue for me until I was around 7 or 8. "Huh?" What a lot of people don't talk about is that people don't actually think about their race unless it's necessary to do so. I won't say I never think about it. Most of the time it's on a more subconscious level because of how much I've had to think about it. I personally don't wake up in the morning and think wow I'm black and Puerto Rican. I think about what I have to do today and what I'm going to eat for lunch. I think about my family my friends. What I'm going to wear. What my plans are for the weekend. What I need to remember is important for my life as a whole. I learned that people didn't need a reason to dislike you. I learned that people also didn't need a reason to like you either. 

When I was little I would got to arcades and make one day friends. These were people I would likely never see again but they would be my friend. Why, because I liked their person and they liked mine. Not everyone I would meet would be my friend. Some people didn't like me. I learned that they didn't need a reason to dislike me. They just didn't. If I was going to make one day friends, I couldn't worry about people not liking me. I couldn't even worry about people liking me. In order to make a one day friend, all you could worry about is being yourself. If you worried about anything else you wouldn't have any fun that day. I would have maybe 3 to 4 hours to make a friend and have fun. That's not a lot of time. You had to be sure of yourself and you had to be sure that with all the people that would dislike you there would be at least one person that did. Sometimes that person was you but that's enough to have fun. Yes later I learned the bad things about being mixed. So let's talk about it, the next lesson.

So many people think the bad parts of being mixed would be the more known issues like racism. It is a part of it. I have encountered a few racists. It's never fun having someone be angry at you because of the color of your skin. I do have some funny stories like being called the wrong name for several years because some adults didn't think there could be more than one black family in a town I lived in. The hard parts of racism I think are the stuff that no one talks about. Being mixed brings forth a couple of levels of racism that people don't expect. For example, a love-hate relationship. When you are mixed African American you face an interesting level of racism that comes from both sides. When I was little I would have members of my own family treat me differently because I was what people call 'light-skinned'. They had a belief that I thought I was better than them. When I was little I just thought they were my family. I was met with disdain for being black but not black enough. I was also met with people that liked the diversity that I would bring to an environment but dislike the implications of being black and the negative stereotypes associated. What would surprise me most was the more literal love-hate relationship. I never really thought that I would meet someone that was attracted to me for my skin color but I learned quickly it's a real thing. There's a difference between liking mixed women because you just happen to think they are pretty and thinking they are exotic. The word exotic isn't always a compliment and it can come off quite insulting. It sounds less like someone is saying your pretty and more like you're comparing to imported goods.