When you're wrapped up in my arms, dancing to a reggae song.

I have had a little bit of an identity crisis lately. Using the word crisis is a little over dramatic. What I really mean is I just cried to my mom for an hour.. some crisis.

My mother always said, 'you are who you hang out with.' And for the past seven months I have been on the financial level of my friends, eaten their food, danced with them, worked with them, lived with them, loved them. But I could never shake the color of my skin. I tanned until I burned, used black people hair dye, talked like them, lived like them. But I could never get rid of the person I was and the evidence lay plastered on my skin. I was different and always would be.

This past week my friends from the States came to visit and I was placed in a completely different world. White people, money, sail boats, American music, American dancing. And as much as I wanted to fit in, I just couldn't shake the person I had become. My clothes didn't match up, I wasn't as affluent and whenever they would ask where I was from, I proudly exclaimed 'I'm not a tourist. I live here.' I was different from them and always would be.

So, as I lay in my bed completely defeated, feeling as if I didn't belong in either world, I realized that maybe we're not who we hang out with. Maybe sometimes we just are who we are.

There is more simplicity in the man who eats caviar on impulse than in the man who eats Grape Nuts on principle. --G.K. Chesterton