In My Skin

I was born to a brown skinned Guyanese father and a white skinned Canadian (with Hungarian heritage) mother. Since colour is a prominent factor with children I came out with brown skin, dark brown hair, brown eyes, and an east Indian overall look. I was the child of a love affair and my parents were unwed. I have a half sister and brother whose father is the man my mother cheated on to be with my dad. However, despite all this my siblings have never treated me differently. I am my mother’s third and last child, and my dad’s only child. I lived with both my parents and my siblings until I was four and then my parents split up. I was raised by my mother is a white household and in a predominately white neighbourhood. After that it’s been a constant battle of having to defend one parent to the other. I’ve heard countless hateful things about the other with how the other chose to raise me being a frequent issue. You don’t put a child in the middle of things, you don’t make them the subject of your displeasure with the other parent. I can’t justify the actions of my parents or their parenting choices, all I can do is defend the person who loves me and raised me in the only way they knew how.

My whole life I didn’t think I was different than anyone else. I had tons of friends, played sports, did activities, and lived my life. I never payed attention to my skin colour growing up. I assumed I was just like everyone else on my street. They never made comments about it and it never affected our relationship. It wasn’t until high school that I truly realized that I was different. It became about dating others with the same skin colour and being friends with people that had the same skin colour and culturally background. After that it just got worse.

I now had to be aware of what clothes I was buying, what makeup I put on, and what nail polish I would wear. Gone were the days where I could just buy and wear something that I thought looked nice. Now I had to buy things that matched my skin colour. I couldn’t go back to not seeing my skin colour as a deciding factor in my choices. I growing sense of self-consciousness came in.

Then there were the frequent questions I would get. Are you Indian? Are you Palestinian? Are you Muslim? Are you from this country or that? Why did that matter? Did it somehow shape your outlook of me? Would my answer come with assumptions of what I ate, how I smelt, my religious customs, etc.? Why does that answer matter? You normally don’t ask people that question unless they have an accent and are just curious as to where it comes from. You just don’t ask a stranger that. It just doesn’t matter. More self-consciousness came as I wondered are they asking that can they are assuming things of me? Is everyone, even the question less assuming things of me?

#World