The way I felt ... feel

I hate when people try to make me feel small - whether they intend to or not. I've worked too hard to overcome the road blocks placed by mean or ignorant people in my life while growing up. I know I'm not your white person. Or your black person. I don't have perfect vision or teeth or hair and my face is flat. I'm short and round with wide hips and have no butt. I wasn't raised in your culture, but that doesn't automatically make me inferior or stupid or incapable of understanding things. I might tell jokes differently than you do ... or have my own sarcastic way of saying things. I don't drink alcohol. Yes, I eat strange foods; but go to India and tell them you eat cows and you'd be the outcast. I wish my mom would've told me I was pretty growing up. (I wish my husband would tell me I'm pretty now.) I wish my parents let me join extra-curricular activities so I wouldn't be so shy, awkward and have anxiety about meeting new people. And more crap. But eventually I got tired of all that. Of feeling like I was nothing but a huge dart board - a target for being ridiculed and made to feel small. One time in math class in high school, I let a kid copy off my answers ... cuz I'm Asian and smart, right? I didn't mind because I didn't know the answers. I pretended to be surprised when I got it wrong, while laughing inside. That kid never asked again. Again in high school, I wore this floral spandex bell bottoms that I sewed and this girl told me it was ugly with the nastiest look on her face ... while we were all standing in a group outside class. I wasn't embarrassed or mad ... I was just speechless at how much she hated my pants to be so nasty in a group of people. Then this cheerleader said, "I like her pants. They're cool and I'd wear it." That other girl just shut up. I'll always remember that moment in my life of having someone stick up for me. It took until the 10th grade - seriously?! But that was empowering and I wore those bell bottoms many a days after that. Kids used to make fun of my culture and say the infamous ching, chong, ching, chong. So one day I told them they just called their mom a bitch. They stopped while I, again, laughed inside. I realized being beautiful shouldn't be based on needing to hear it but rather needing to feel it. I can't control what the world sees of my face, but I could control what I saw in myself. I could be the most beautiful person in the world and attract people who only wanted to be with me because of how my beauty made them feel about themselves ... or the ugliest person and keep people at bay ... but I had to like myself first regardless if I had 1 person who genuinely liked me or 100 flakes. I see it that life is supposed to throw challenges at me, but it's what I do as a result of those challenges that will help me stand tall or fall. And I've learned to love myself way too much and worked way too hard - and know that I deserve the best - to allow anyone to make me feel that small again. Go ahead. Try. I'll just laugh inside at your immaturity.