Personal Narrative: Who Was I An American?

The arguably most important experience of my life was something that I was definitely not seeking out. Something that I was unhappily forced into, yet something that I am still able to look back upon with a smile. I am a born and raised American, a Texan to be exact and all my life I have felt different, not because I was a "weird" but rather because my parents were from India and I was always struggling with finding out who I really am, I didn 't even know what I should call myself until recently; was I an American? Indian? A first generation American? Due to their financial constraints, my parents were barely able to visit India, usually once every five years, and as such the summer following my sophomore year in high school

Our conversation seemed to have no direction and eventually Sufi propped up on his elbow and asked me a question in English, albeit broken, that will never leave me: "In America do you do as the Americans do, or do you stick with your culture?" At the moment I did not attribute any importance to the question and waved it away, I was more surprised that another person was able to speak in English. That night as the three of us were sitting on a bed doubling as Sufi 's bed, dining table, ironing table and worktable eating American style burgers, sipping a traditional Indian mango drink and watching the USA play Belgium in the FIFA world cup my mind wandered to the question Sufi had asked me earlier on in the day, something that my mind kept inexplicably returning back to, annoyed I pushed it out of my

During that trip I learned many things, but most importantly, I learned about myself, who I really was and not the person I pretended to be depending on the nature of the company I associated with. It did not matter to me any more that I was some sort of social misfit, and the following year at school, living by my grandfather 's words I learned that I never was and it was just me that perceived myself as such. I learned that neither of my cultures has to be abandoned so that I could be myself, so that I could understand who I really was and did not have to fear what others thought of me and as such the new mindset allowed me to finally grow and change based on only my perceptions of myself. I believe that this realization and mindset is something that will help me through college because it would allow for me to look at things from angles that others who come from just a singular culture may not be able to look at from. I believe this experience will help me in college by allowing me to keep an open mind in situations, because seeing as how my perception of myself changed, something that is not necessarily easy for most people. I would be able to assure myself that even what really seems to be, is not always set in stone and that their is always an end to a