My Double Life
“Spanish is a very romantic language. It’s the language of love. I think it’s very sad if we forget where we come from. Because we are who we are. I think the color of our skin is beautiful. I think people should be proud of that.” – Selena Quintanilla, famous Mexican singer
I was five years old when I first realized I was different from my classmates. Every day, at the same time, me and a couple of other kids from my grade would be taken to the back of the library of my elementary school. It smelled like books. It was so routine I never once questioned it until I went back to class one day and saw that all my classmates were having fun without me. They were making bunnies out of paper bags and enjoying themselves during playtime. It was the first time I felt different. Why was I in the library practicing my English while my other classmates were having fun? Did I do something wrong?
As far as I remember, ESL practice was everyday, maybe only once a week. My group had about 5 kids. One of the girls, her name was Asrar, is still close to me to this day. We went to different middle schools and then reconnected in high school. Her story is much more interesting than mine but she’s the oldest friend I have and she always grounds me by reminding me of where I come from. We were in those ESL classes together and that can cause an early bond.
Right above is an example of an ESL class
That feeling of being different never fully went away. I think back to first grade when my mom brought a cake to my class to celebrate my birthday. I spoke to my mother in Spanish, as I always did, but it was a different setting. A boy from my class looked at me with a wondering face and said “you speak Spanish?” This moment has been ingrained in my memory. I was too young to understand why this was baffling to others. Yes, I can speak Spanish because my family and I emigrated from Bolivia when I was two years old. But why was it a shock to others?
As I continued to grow up and become self-aware I started to resent my background. Why am I from this country that no one has ever heard of? Why don’t I look hispanic enough? I felt like I had two identities: one at home and the other at school. At home my parents would call me by my middle name, Adriana, while at school everyone knew me by my first name, Ingrid. There is no significance behind this except that it was pretty common in my family. This only confused my young self even more. It made it really easy to separate my two identities. It almost felt like I was living two different lives.
If someone asked me where I was from, I would feel embarrassed. It would make my heart drop and then I would want nothing more than to disappear. But, I knew I wasn’t alone because so many of my classmates came from Spanish speaking countries as well. I looked different than them, they didn’t expect someone that looks like me to have a similar experience to them. My skin was lighter than the other latino kids and my hair was straight. It wasn’t their fault to assume I had no latino background.
I internalized this feeling for a long time but then I came to realize how unique my culture really is. Most people hadn’t heard of the country of where I came from and instead of using that to make myself feel isolated from everyone else I began to like that part of myself. It was during quarantine that I realized that it wasn’t something to be ashamed of, but something to learn more about. Instead of resenting it, I started asking my parents more questions about our culture.
In high school, this especially changed. I decided I was done letting others’ opinions make me feel ashamed of my background. I came to realize that it was a good thing and I should combine those two identities into one. My perspective on the situation changed. I now enjoyed talking about my culture and found it as an integral part of my identity. Over my high school years, I developed a diverse friend group. No two people were from the same background and in a way that unified us.
I started to realize that being different from others is a good thing, not a bad one. Because of my culture, I am bilingual, which is an important skill to have and I don’t feel embarrassed or ashamed when someone asks me about my background. During a summer job, I worked in a predominantly Spanish speaking neighborhood. I was the only person out of a 6-person shift that could communicate with the customers. It helped me feel more comfortable speaking Spanish outside of my home. Whenever someone asked me to speak Spanish I usually felt embarrassed to. Many of my family members had said I had a “gringa” accent. I would never talk in Spanish outside of my home unless I had to. That job helped with that fear because I was more interested in helping the customers
Right above is a picture of me and mom taken on my high school graduation
Being the daughter of Bolivian immigrants is something that I walk with everyday. It isn’t something to be ashamed of, but to be proud of. Being able to speak two languages fluently is something I will never let go, instead I want to make my spanish stronger so that I can feel more confident in it. I hope that when I’m older I can share the language with my kids. I want them to learn Spanish so I will do my best to talk to them in Spanish. There is no longer this random feeling in my pit that tells me that I’m different or weird.
