They all took my hand, shook it
told me their names and where they were from..
and I shook theirs in return and said
"yakari, pleasure to meet you"
then one of them asks "where are you from" and I say, my tongue weighing heavy with shame.. "Santo domingo"
Then she says "why do you say it that way, aren't you proud? ,wait where you born here, when did you come, when was the last time you visited there..what wait, no you don't say your country's name like that! it makes you look ugly"
..Well, so be it.. let me be ugly, being ugly is prettier than being a hypocrite anyways..I can not lie..
Nobody ever prepared me for how badly not belonging would hurt,
nobody ever said here girl, take all this strength because you're going to need it, I have to deal with feeling shame on my own..
and maybe, just maybe if you get close enough you can smell the pain on my skin. I smell like someone who's been running for a very long time ...
Listen, I don't want a nationality to identify who I am...I don't want the pre-judgments or live around carrying all the ideologies of what people think a dominican woman should be like
Let me introduce me as Yakari. Yakari the woman, or the human. Who cares where I came from..because just maybe home is somewhere I've never ever been to
because I've never felt like I was home anyways, the last time I visited my country my father locked me in a house for 3 days, a man tried to rape me, and everyone on the streets looked at me as if I was a meal..
I am terrified. I am terrified of the latin culture, I am terrified of the machismo, the oppression, the cruel way of them raising children.
my mother is the pasta in hot water, she crumbles all the time..
my father is a lame excuse, is absence
I have no siblings. You don't understand..
You don't understand that just maybe, maybe nationalities and countries are the system ways of fooling us into believing that we should stay in one place, that we only belong in one place...its the way of throwing a preconceive idea on us, its the world's way of making us become cowards
Oh,how quick we are to use where we come from as an excuse to not know better...you just blame it on my country...the moment you cast a nationality on me, you are putting boarders on me, you are putting expectations on me...
and you should stop that
I don't want to hear:
"Forgive her, dominicans are build that way"
..No,you are.
I don't bathe in the pride of where I come from, because where I come from does not define the woman I am..
I am what I make myself be, I have no culture to stick to.. no religion to chain myself on..
and you don't have to accept me, you don't have to understand me, you are not going to..
but please don't cut your eyes,
when you look at me, please don't give me your cruelity..
If you can't give me acceptance, atleast give me kindness because...
truth is
I'm just a girl who's been hurt and disappointed so deeply,who has hurt people too.. I'm a girl who is about to become someone and I want to figure it out, on my own..
