"I never quite fit in with any set group of people, but I was always thankful for the friends God decided to put in my life."

Growing up, I always had such a vast interest in many things, especially music. I didn't care who sang it or what genre it was from if it caught my attention I would listen. As a younger child, I'll say from the ages 5 until about 7, I was obsessed with the "Backstreet Boys," " N*Sync," "Brandy," "Janet Jackson" and the list goes on of early and late '90s artist. I could express myself with no judgment from my peers, because at that age discrimination never really crossed my path. As I grew older I noticed, peers and even members of my family begin to say that I acted white. I guess at first it didn't bother me because, I was a typical 9 year old and comments like that didn't phase me. I wasn't actually hurt by one of these comments until one day when I was playing on the playground, and I was swinging with out a care in the world, and a girl comes to stop me on the swing and she asks me did I know what color my skin was. Of course I was baffled by this statement, however I responded with, "Yes." She then scrunched up her face and asked, "Then why are you wearing white girl shoes?" I was shocked at her statement, then I started to get angry. I kept my composure and simply stated that they were just shoes.

Let's fast forward, the year is 2010 and I had just started my sophomore year in High School. This was the year I started to branch out in the music world because the Jonas Brothers held my heart for about three years straight, and I decided it was time to add some more music to my collection. This is where Drake comes in the picture, and I had some friends who were not the biggest fans of rap and always called it crap. One day, I decided to show off my rapping skills and quoted an entire verse from Drake's song Over which was a pretty big hit at the time, but when I got done one of my "friends," (that term is used very loosely) told me to embrace my inner "Oreo." To clear up what she meant, she wanted me to act white on the inside even though I just happened to be black. Like having a black friends that liked a black artist was the worst thing ever.

With all of this confusion that had spiraled over the years of my life, I really did have a difficult time trying to figure out how to keep true friends, who shared my interests, even if they were not typical "black" interest, which is actually a weird thing to say because I don't believe your interest should be defined by race, but I digress. I then did something that I still cringe at...I changed who I was. I acted different around different friends just to please them and to keep the "friendship " we had. After about two years of keeping up that charade, I just could not do it anymore. I had to be honest with my self and be who I was, because being someone else was way too much work. In the midst of all of that, I did have some friends who were keepers and accepted me just as I was. I never quite fit in with any set group of people, but I was always thankful for the friends God decided to put in my life. They did not see black or white, they simply saw Tamara.The moral of this story is to never be ashamed of who you are, the people who are meant to be in your life will accept you.