Dear society,

I want you to know that it does not matter who I could end up falling in love with in my life. We are in a day and age where people should be able to be with whomever they please. Whether he is black, white, green, blue, or yellow, I can promise you that he will treat me right and that he will respect me and love me in my entirety.

I am fortunate enough to have grown up and witnessed two people love each other, through better and worse, for 26 years. I have seen what it is like to care for someone else endlessly and what it means to be treated right. My parents taught me that someone else not only should treat me like this, but that I deserve to be treated in this manner.

I also consider myself lucky to have experienced the opposite of being treated right in a previous relationship. I look back at what that person has taught me and look now at the person I have become and I thank him for being so awful. I am finally able to look at myself and look at others and realize that I deserve so much more than to be put down constantly. I want you to know that whoever comes along will treat me right and I will never allow someone to put me down again.

With that being said, I also want you to know that I refuse to discriminate. I will not predestine the color of who I will end up with, whether that person comes around tomorrow, in a week, or years down the line, I refuse to let society or anyone else tell me who it is okay to be with. I refuse to let the world look at me through their small lens and tell me “you should be with him because he is white” or “you should not be with him because he is a different color.” That is disgusting and that is wrong.

Now I understand that, that may not be other people’s ways of thinking, but I am asking you not to look through your small lens at anyone, with this way of thinking, and judge them for their personal decisions. I am asking you not to look at those people in disgust like you might have before. I am asking you to look at any mixed couple like you would anyone else walking down the street. That is how our society should be nowadays and that is what I want whomever reads this article to go out and do. I want people to realize the world that they are living in and realize that mixed couples are out there and they are just like any other couple. They care about each other as any other couple would, they respect each other as any other couple would, and they live everyday expressing their feelings to each other as any other couple would. I am not writing my destiny, I do not know what the future will bring for any one person, but I see this judgment every day of my life and it is worth being talked about.

Love will be with the person it is meant to be with. Love should not be judged because of a different identity or race or belief. Love will not be defined by anything other than that love itself. If someone cares enough about someone else to call it love, they have found something special and we should all be saluting them.