how i have been spending my winter break.

We (me, my sis, our parents, and our family friends) went hiking. And I ended up taking this awesomesauce picture which I might use on a book cover.

I had to edit the colors a bit because my camera sucks lollipops. 

Did I mention I got a haircut:

I'm making a creepy face.

And then, later, when I was in my quiet/depressing mode, I ended up writing this fiction story. I've just been reading about discrimination and stuff like that and honestly, it's really stupid.

I've often been accused of having lots of irrational fears. And I, surprisingly, say that's true. I'm especially afraid of just walking down the street with my family, something that normal kids do on a daily basis. But I'm not a normal kid. People take one look at me and start to judge. They don't even bother to get to know me better. It's all really stupid, this discrimination. Why make assumptions based on how someone's eyes look, or the color of her skin, or the slight accent she tries so hard to hide? They call me an outsider, an alien, when it should all be directed at them. 

And now, I'm doing just that: walking down the street with my family. My mom is forcing me to talk in my ''native language," even though people are going to stop and stare and point and laugh if I do. She's dressed weirdly, not in my choice of plain jeans and hoodie but in a long and brightly patterned "traditional" dress that she attempts to hide, for my sake, using a humongous black overcoat. My older sister is in a plaid skirt and pink blouse. People stare at her not because she looks weird, but because she can take that weirdness and turn it into something very pleasing to the eye. At least my dad has some idea of this strange thing called "normal," as he's just wearing a shirt and pants. Nothing weird or terrorist-y there. And my little brother... well, that's another story. The poor kid will never know what normal is.

I just hate it when people make jokes about loving their "insanity." I know what real insanity is. My brother hears voices in his head, always driving him crazy, and he doesn't seem too proud of it. Everyone makes random and inaccurate jokes about his condition without actually knowing what it's like for him, to be even more of an outsider than I am. His hands are pressed to his ears and he's in obvious pain. People stop to marvel at this strange child and how weird he looks and why he's like this. Kids at school think I have no sense of humor. Few have ever seen me laugh at a joke, no matter how hilarious it is. But to me, nothing's ever funny if anyone's getting hurt in any way, and this includes my brother. He may be weird but I love him all the same.

We sit down at a park bench, and my mom unloads the bags of food she's packed for our picnic. I see yellow-stained rice and other strange foods packed in foreign-looking containers. The park is crowded today, and lots of normal people are walking by and laughing. "Mommy, why is their skin like that?" a young and pale girl asks innocently. "Because they're not like us, honey. They don't belong here. You do," replies her mother. Great. A cruel racist in the making. I belong here, just as any other free citizen. But I don't walk up to the woman and punch her face in. Then the people around us will make even more racist jokes, as well as call me "unladylike" and compare me to so many other stereotypes. I don't want that. All I want is a normal and quiet existence.

"I'm not eating this," I say softly, jamming my fists in my hoodie pockets. "It's weird food." My mom glares at me, holding my head in place and shoving some of the awful food into my forced-open mouth. The normal people are walking slower now, as if to stop and stare at my family and how weird we outsiders act. "Stop force-feeding me," I grumble between breaths, right before running away from the strangers I call my family. Of course I'll come back to them later, when not as many people are staring. One outsider is less stare-worthy than five. 

I've started crying. Why? I have no clue. I sweep my hair over my eyes and eyebrows to cover both their odd appearance and my tears. My hood is still pulled over my head, to better conceal my dark skin. I look almost normal and I feel that way too... until my sister, in the slightly strange clothes that somehow look beautiful on her, touches my shoulder. 

"You're embarrassed, right?" she asks quietly, pulling me off to the side. "Try not to be. Remember how my dance teacher said to be proud of our heritage, not try to hide away from it? We're different. We're weird. So what? Learn to embrace it!" I quit dance class ages ago because of both my lack of coordination and the fact that it wasn't normal enough for me. Learning to live with being weird works for my sister, as beautiful as she is, but not for a dork like me. "I'm not buying it, sis," I whisper into her ear. "I'll hide like this until people stop teasing us for things that are so out of our control."

Once my teacher told us about racism in America. She said that because our President was of a minority, the whole thing had basically come to an end. But I can say it hasn't. Discrimination isn't just about sitting in the back of buses or not being allowed to immigrate into a new country and find your freedom. Discrimination is about the fear that people are always going to judge you at first sight, that you'll have to spend the rest of your life just wishing to be able to walk down the street without people staring. It's about waiting for normal. And it's still very real.