My childhood was spent in Lexington, Kentucky, as an American girl, born and raised. My mother, however, is fully Greek, and my father is fully Cypriot. Throughout elementary and middle school, I was known as the "foreign girl" for being fluent in Greek, and for having a "weird" name.

Although I wasn't foreign at all, nothing would change anyone's mind, and nothing would serve as a sufficient argument for me to be seen as everyone else. My parents had "weird" names, and "weird" accents from "weird" countries. That was all the evidence they needed to denounce me as "different."

If I can't be classed as an American, then I must be a Greek, right? Travelling to Greece every summer to see my friends, and cousins, I was known as the "American girl" rather than the Greek I thought I would be. But how does that make sense? It doesn't. If I'm not American, and I'm not Greek, then what am I? It was like no one or no country wanted to claim me as their own, and I was just drifting into oblivion.

And the question still remains: who am I?

It was always so difficult for me to grasp why people wouldn't consider me as the American that I clearly was. Both my parents have US passports, as do I and my sister; I was also born and raised here. What was the problem? Just because my name was a bit unorthodox, my parents sounded a bit funny when they spoke, and my school lunch wasn't a PB&J, it automatically meant that I was not worthy of the title "American" in their eyes.

This conflict is one that I still fight today, and it is one that I will be fighting for the remainder of my life. I have to accept that, maybe I don't necessarily belong to any certain region fully, but that makes me unique. And I have learned to love it.