Mixed Feelings

This should be a month-long celebration highlighting the Latinx community in the United States, but for me, it’s a period of mental turmoil as I question my identity:

How do I celebrate something that I can’t fully relate to?

I feel a little extra pride when it’s Black History Month but Latinx History Month? I don’t know if this month includes me. 

If the world sees me as just black, do I identify only as that?

On the outside, the world sees me as a black woman. They don't see inside of me where the blood of my black, mexican, and white ancestors all flow together to give me life. Since they cannot see all of me, they deny me. They tell me that I’m not “enough” to claim the other parts of me.

If I could speak Spanish would it make me “enough?”

My grandma speaks Spanish but her white husband banned her from speaking it in their house because he thought she’d talk bad about him. So my mom never learned.

I never learned.

Anybody can learn Spanish though, so what would really make me enough?

I don’t know.

I never figured out what “test” I needed to pass in order for people to accept my Latinx identity, nor what “threshold” I needed to meet so that I can claim it without being told I’m “not enough.” 

And I don’t think I’ll ever know.

For me, this is a month of reflection as I try to understand my place in the Latinx community.

I wonder if I even have a place?

Am I “enough?”