Growing up biracial is not easy. Continually battling which race you identify more towards. Deciding which race of friends you feel more comfortable around. Realizing which parent you more relate with. Comparing yourself to other biracial people as well as your own brother. Most importantly, trying to decide what you see your self as, and how you want the world to look like you.

Here's my story of growing up biracial and how it's made me who I am today. My parents met roughly 29 years ago. They met and clicked fairly quickly. Two years later they were married. Five years, moving to England, Japan, and Italy later there came my twin brother and me. Yes, I was born in Italy. No, I don't have Italian citizenship. Yes, I've considered getting dual citizenship, but would need to look further in the legality of it and how long I would need to stay in Italy to do that.

Anyways, for three and half years the merry family of four stayed in Italy before moving to Arizona. And here we have stayed ever since. For a long, while growing up I never thought anything into being biracial. It wasn't until I started going to school seeing and interacting with kids of different races to realize what a big factor it was on my life. Meeting kids from all different backgrounds showed me how different I was from them. I would see their parents and they would be of the same race. Then my mom, who is white, would pick us up and some people would look slightly different at her picking up these two little brown kids. I should mention that we both look more like our mother than our father, but since we have a darker complexion no one seems to notice.

Flash forward a few years to me attending first through sixth grade at a charter elementary school in Downtown Phoenix. The kids at my school were even more diverse than my preschool/kindergarten. I was so shocked to see some other kids that looked like me. There were other biracial students and both my brother and I got along quite well with them, but more often than not we made friends with white students. Although there was a huge diversity within the school, the overall attendance of the school was still primarily white. Us being little kids, we could care less about the race of the people we were trying to be friends with. We just hoped that they didn't think we were too weird to hang out with. For me, I just didn't want to be compared to my brother. I still feel that way now.

As we grew older, we also became a bit mischievous and our parents felt it was time to instill in us a valuable lesson: people will judge and blame us just based on the color of our skin. What a hard concept to teach a small child. I remember my parents saying that regardless of the situation that we would be the ones more likely to blame than anyone else involved. We were automatically the targets of ridicule and accusations, and there was nothing that we could say or do to get out of it. I remember feeling so degraded and hopeless to the outside world. How was I to combat all the harshness of the world that was to come since there is no possible way to change what was biologically given to me? There was no magical potion or spell I could craft that would somehow take away the pigmentation from my skin. And to be completely honest, I never wanted to do that anyways.

I have always made it a point to embrace both sides of who I am regardless of what my outward appearance displays. I am biracial. I am half white and half black. Growing out surrounded by white children was tough. Having few people living the same experience as I was hard. Do I talk to my black friends about how I feel or my white? There is oh so much I can tell my parents before they start feeling hopeless as well. There is a never-ending cycle of feeling at ease with my existence and then being put back into place by the fact that I am a woman of color.

As I went to high school I further began to recognize the different ways I was treated compared to my all white friends. I was immediately expected to be this fantastic athlete and have this extremely popular and friendly persona. Newsflash, not all black folks fit the stereotypes! I was actually quite shy back in high school. Not because I was trying to not be a part of the stereotype, but because I didn't want to be like my brother. He fit the stereotype to a "T" and I tried my best to separate myself from him. While also in high school I saw several of my peer getting in legal trouble, and I being the shy quiet one I never got in trouble. I never put myself in any kind of situations that would warrant me to be placed in that kind of environment, at least back then.

Going into college I became more rebellious and put myself out there more. I became more aware of the role I had as a woman of color. I took more risks even though I knew the color of my skin would be my drawback. I keep pushing and keep hustling not letting the side stares, the snickers, the taking a side step away to get to me. Every little thing that someone does to me that reminds me that I am different I take it to heart and use it to fuel my journey to my success. Being biracial has given me tough skin and a tender heart. I am still learning to fully accept who I am, but each day is a new way to realize how the world views me and how I view the world.