Out of the Water

I find I have to prove that I'm Hispanic. As if somehow, saying that I was born and raised in Colombia, my dad is Colombian and me self-identifying as a Colombian is not enough to give me space and credibility within the latino community.

I spent this last weekend on a latino retreat with InterVarsity. Their latino fellowship is called LaFe and doesn't really exist on the U of I campus. However, there was a regional retreat going on called Encuentro and we gathered together a carload of latinas and headed off to a weekend of fun and fellowship.

When we arrived and got into the elevator, on our way to meet everyone else, I felt quite apprehensive of what the following social encounters would be like. I was glad I did not have the ability to read minds as I did not want to verify what I assumed they'd all be thinking, "Why's the white girl here?" Maybe a kinder version followed the lines of, "Oh, she's really into building cross-cultural relationships..." But never in a million years could I fathom the others in the room seeing me walk into a room full of latinos and have them assume I was one of them.

This weekend threw me back into that season of my life where all I did was process my bi-cultural identity. I realized that building relationships with latinos on this campus has been harder for me than building relationships with any other student groups.

At best, they're nice and quite polite, but often I feel evaluated... continually. If I'm late and running on latin time, then that's a latin point for me. If I don't/can't dance well, then that's a white point for me. White. Latin. White. Latin. White. I wonder when they'll tally up the score and share their verdict with me.

And then, to go full circle...

I had dinner tonight with a lovely couple interested in going to Colombia to work at ECA. They wanted to know all about Colombia. They asked about the food, the language, the culture, the people. I didn't need to convince them I was Colombian; they believed me. I wished that loving Colombia as intensely as I do and that the gut-wrenching homesickness was enough to create a space in that culture for me to be at home there.

And yet, I know that I'm not 100% anything and it frustrates me quite often. I want to be able to claim an ethnicity and a people group and culture as my own. Instead, I'm suspended between two, and find myself swinging toward one or the other. Some days I feel so Colombian and so comfortable with latinos and in the place I call home. Others, I feel like a fish out of the water, wondering why I don't just let them think I'm white and leave it at that. Some days I feel like I've begun to adjust to white American culture and others, I've never felt so foreign before.

An Odd Kind of Loneliness

I've been struggling with an odd kind of loneliness.

Come Monday, I only have ten weeks left in Illinois. Ten. The realization of how short my time really is smacked me in the face this last Monday. Time is running out. I began goodbye letters this week. My heart already switched from "living in Illinois" to "saying goodbye to Illinois." I feel hesitant to invest too much in relationships that aren't already fairly close to me. How could I add more to the list of goodbyes? My brain silently tags events as "lasts" and I'm realizing that this is all happening automatically.

Every year in high school, come May I'd have my goodbye letters written out and a list of people in my head I knew I'd probably never be seeing again. I was ready to transition into occasional catch-ups, but mostly being notified through Facebook on how they were doing. I was ready to now have a friend in Oklahoma, California or Europe.

Senior year, I was bracing myself for too many goodbyes way back in January. Everything was a last. Everything. But everyone around me was automatically switching into transition/goodbye mode. All of my friends were wrestling with the idea of turning best friends into long-distance friends; some were trying to wrap their minds around the idea of home when their family was moving away from "home." We all handled it differently; we had learned to cope in different ways. But it wasn't abnormal for someone (usually me!) to bring up goodbyes, transitions and leaving. And then everyone could relate.

But how do I process this transition occurring within me when my peers aren't on the same mindset... at all? My friends my age still have a year and a half left of college. My senior friends still have a semester and are on a job hunt now. My married/engaged friends are mostly out of college and know where they'll be living. I know I'll be in Canada. The country. No idea what province or city. Who knows how long the paperwork process will take; I can't worry about job searches now.

I used to say that I rather leave than be left.
But I think I rather we all leave... than be the only one leaving.

I want to promise that I'll come visit. But I won't. By the time I can come back to Champaign to visit, most of my friends will be gone and graduated.

I want to promise that we'll run into each other... in Illinois?

I want to say I'll miss everyone... but how many more people can I make room for in my heart to miss?

But I have come to love and be attached to people and places here in Illinois more than I was expecting. Saying goodbye will sting-- no, actually... it will hurt.

And this odd kind of loneliness comes from not knowing how to process it all or with whom. No, its not a huge deal. No, its not the end of the world. Yes, it is a First World problem.

But it still... hurts.

On Facebook...

Last week I went through a major deleting-of-Facebook-friends stage. Within 24 hours I had deleted more than 200 acquaintances. Something got into me and I couldn't shake it off. I felt squirmy thinking about all the hundreds of people who were on my friends list who weren't my friends, but could click on my profile and look through my life. I'd like to think that they'd have no reason to do so if they aren't my friend, but I'm guilty of looking through more than one non-friend's profile before.

And so, I was unable to focus on my paper due the next day until I went through my entire friends list deleting people. I started off with 870 people and I wanted to get down to 500. Unfortunately, I wasn't able too; I'm at about 650 at the moment.

My friends laughed at me and thought I was ridiculous for wanting to unfriend all these people. They asked me why. I've come up with a three main reasons as to why these excessive amounts of Facebook friends were bugging me...

1. Facebook feels cheap. It does, doesn't it? No one wants to find out the news through Facebook. Why? Because that means that you're finding it out at the same time as that one girl you met at that one party three years ago... or that one guy on your list but you can't remember how you met, but you have mutual friends. But what if I only had friends and family that I wanted to know about, keep in touch with and know what was going on in their lives? Perhaps it wouldn't feel so cheap.
2. Eight hundred and seventy friends is excessive. To be honest, so is 650. There is no way that I know 650 people, much less care about them all. There is no way that I care about knowing all about their lives, seeing their weekend party pictures and knowing about their stressful exam weeks. Like I mentioned before, I don't like thinking of how many (hundreds) of them can (or do!) click through my profile and can just know about my life...
3. Facebook doesn't actually help me keep in touch with most of them. Keeping in touch does not equal stalking... or even reading their status updates when they appear on my newsfeed. Keeping in touch would mean that their status update would cause me to go write on their wall, send them a message or call them! Then Facebook would be "helping" me keep in touch.

I've seen these reasons amplified even more in the last couple of days. Lucas and I finally decided to update our relationship status on Facebook from "in a relationship" to "engaged." We had originally decided to wait for a long while to make sure that no one "super close" would be finding out through Facebook... because Facebook feels cheap. So, two months after the proposal we changed our status. We were trying to delete any notification so that it would just "switch," but there'd be nothing to like or comment on. But no, there were still plenty of ways for our friends to be notified. Except all of our friends knew two months ago. And still, our walls have been cluttered with congratulations as we "begin" this new stage together and asking if we've "begun" to think about when and little do they know that I got my wedding dress yesterday, we booked a venue last week, and our date(s) are definitely set.

And so, I will continue to dwindle down my Facebook friend count... hopefully, one day, I'll have everyone on my list meet one (but hopefully more) of these criteria:

1. They're family. Regardless of how close I am to family, or how often I see them or keep in touch, family is family.
2. I talk to them/see them regularly. I want to be able to communicate with the people I talk to and see regularly. Facebook is a fabulous way of doing that. I want to be updated on their lives, but hopefully, because I see and talk to them, Facebook won't be the primary way of knowing about them.
3. Their Facebook posts will urge me to start keeping in touch again. As much as I'd like to keep in touch with everyone, I can't. But if the people on my friends list post things that will urge me to go write on their wall, send them a message, a text, a letter. If seeing what they're up to in life will encourage me to schedule a Skype date or shoot them off an email, then I definitely want to let Facebook help me keep in touch!
4. We were really close friends in the past. Again, I wish I could stay super close to everyone, always. But I can't. But I don't ever want to delete people of my list who were near and dear to my heart simply because they aren't anymore.