ONCE, when I was younger, my teacher, one day asked the whole class, a bunch of youngsters who were still struggling to pronounce the easiest of words correctly, 'what we wanted to be when we grow up'. I cannot quite remember what age I was, but I remember how that happened in first grade and everyone had immediately answered, like they had already thought of it before, and it was a no-brainer question, while I stayed in my seat clueless of what to say, because I never thought of what I wanted to be when I grow up.

As far as I knew, at that age, I was just living my life. There were no expectations from my parents, and all I did then was eat, play, and sleep. I never thought ahead, because what was the point of scaring the present you of a future that was so many miles away?

In that way, you could never grow up, if you always looked ahead, and did not live in the present, where your world was happening right in front of you. However, that was not why I did not know what I wanted to be when I grew up.

My excuse was that I was just a little child, who at that age was meant to be playing pretend tea parties with her stuffed toys, watching cartoons until bedtime. No kid that age should have to limit themselves to a profession when they could be anything and everything they wanted to be.

Now that I am older, I understand that those kids did not mean what they said on that day, they said it out of pure childishness. Their answer was born out of what they saw on television, and Doc McStuffins was the show reigning at the time, that was why quite a number had their bet on being a doctor when they grew older. Some wanted to be Nurse Hallie, the purple hippopotamus who was the nurse in the show.

At that time, I was a little girl, intimidated by all her peers, as she watched them one by one over-excitedly raise their hands to answer, and she could not even come up with anything because that was not what went through her mind after classroom and she is all alone in her bedroom. I, for one, wanted to taste everything life had to offer. I wanted to play the piano, just like my father did, and eventually play it out, if I had the bravery to do such a thing.

I wanted to write stories too, I had half-written stories and while some were completely done, I never showed anyone except my parents, and then you, when you happened in my life.

The teacher listened attentively to everyone's answers, and even though many beaming faces were right in front of her, trying to get her attention, she managed to notice the uncomfortable girl sitting at the corner of the classroom, trying to be unnoticed.

I was the kind of student that always had their head down, because, unlike the others I had nothing to say or to contribute to the class. What could anyone say when the whole class thought of you as a weirdo, because I was not just one person, but a merging of two people in one body, as I shared both Korean and American genes?

"Laurene, what would you like to be when you're older?" My teacher, Miss Anne's voice was filled with warmth—it always was– when she asked me. Her eyes tried to seek mine, but I tried to look away, because I thought by looking at her eyes, she would have found out my little secret, that I, unlike the others, did not know what I wanted to be.

Honestly, when I look back at that moment there was no need for me to be paranoid. It was okay to not know what you want to be in the future. It was okay to be clueless. I was just intimidated by the fact everyone had an answer, while I did not. So, I told her, the first thing that came to my mind, "A superhero," I answered. "Just like my mother. She saved lives."

The whole class erupted in a fit of giggles and I shyly lowered my gaze. Miss Anne tried to put down the laughter but it never stopped and some kids started talking about how I was too under the bus to realize superheroes were not real, like I didn't know that.

My mother was a doctor who worked at the local hospital. My five-year-old self thought my mother was a superhero, who exchanged her cape for blue scrubs, worked an almost twenty-four-hour schedule, and still made time to be there for me. I thought that was incredible to be able to switch roles and be two completely different people. I never considered how strenuous her job was and how that affected her ability to be at home with me.

Although I knew how little I saw my mother, that did not make me have a grudge against her, because I knew what her profession was like, even though my perception of her job at the time was not accurate. I knew she was not able to make me pancakes in the morning or braid my hair in French braids like my father did because she was too busy saving other people's lives and making their homes complete.

Since I was younger, I never got to spend enough time with my Mom as much as I did with my Dad, although we still shared a unique relationship. When she was done with her work as a doctor, she would come home as fast as she could and snuggle close to me in my bed, until she was sure I had fallen asleep because I never could until I was aware that she was home and right beside me, her arms all around me and squeezing me in captivity.

Sometimes she would read me bedtime stories or sing me lullabies in Korean. She would comb through my hair with her fingers, and tell me about our people, and how I was different from my peers, and not to throw it all away, but use it to my advantage.

In a way, she was why I found it hard to know what I wanted because I wanted to be just like her. I admired her ability to be able to recognize what she wanted, despite the world being a very cruel place, and could prowl away your dreams before you even realize it.

I wanted the ability to be able to recognize what I wanted and be able to do anything I was passionate about, without killing myself about what people might think of me, and also be as confident as she was, despite how controversial her profession was.

I wanted to be able to choose a job profession that even though it was not keen to nonwhite and mixed people, I would still be able to pull through. They say the world has "progressed" but not being fully white is still a problem in today's society, as to this day, my classmates still crucify me for being born the way I was.

While I was a kid, they were just light jabs about how I ate bugs, which should not even be termed as "light" but what I came across as I grew older, was even worse.

They would write me mean letters so that they could call me disgusting names, just to pull me down so that they could make themselves feel better, that one time one of them had regarded my looks, as "an experiment that turned out wrong." Despite knowing that is what they ever wanted, for me to hate myself, I would often cry about it, and try to hide it once I noticed you around, because of how you had handled every single one of those people who had written to me or hurled abuse at my facial looks.

However, like always, you would find out about the letters, despite my several efforts to hide the pain of being despised, and it was because, to you, I was see-through. I was transparent, and I looked at every single thought that went through my mind. If it was sad up there, my face would look destructed and my lower lip would jut out as my eyebrows deepened so hard you could see stress lines on my forehead, you would say.

However, at that moment, when almost everyone's eyes were on me, I told them about a future I was not so sure of.

For years, I struggled to identify myself, and it was hard because being half Asian and American came with expectations. It meant being good academically.

I was expected to know at least an extent of the Korean language, and know some of our cultures and traditions. Since I owe my Asian identity to my mother, the part carrying the Asian legacy and not letting it rot in my hands was my mother's responsibility, and she tried her best not to fumble it.

My mother did not want her culture to die with her and tried to awaken it through me. I was also meant to be perfect at everything, because being half Asian was a specialty, my mother would always tell me every day, but I did not exactly share those thoughts.

To me, being mixed only made you prone to subjective criticisms— especially when you are half-white. Nobody can be Korean and think they are white, despite being born with both genes. You are only Korean, especially when those Korean genes are dominant, and are hard to ignore because your face is a huge giveaway.

Most of my cousins from my mother's side, who were Korean, were expertly good at everything, and my mother's brothers and sisters would brag about their kids on their family group chat. I do not blame them, because I also wanted to be bragged about, in the family group chat, and also achieve something with my life.

I wanted the straight A's, and the recognition that I was good at many things my school had to offer because even though I was Asian-American, I would never be the white girl.

I would always be the Asian girl, who was going to be bullied for her skin color for the rest of her life, and also had no possible idea what she wanted to do with her life.

Once you are a nobody in school, and only recognized for your academic footprint, it is only normal that you have to have planned how you want your life to go - what university you want to go to, what profession you want to become, and it was limited to only three options when you are not exactly white: medicine, law, and engineering. This made society have a bit of respect for you.

I had no idea what career path I wanted to choose, but I loved medicine. I told you all about how I wanted to be a medical practitioner, one sunny afternoon, behind the bleachers, but when I did, you did not exactly look convinced about what I had told you and believed that I only chose that career because I wanted to follow the footsteps of my mother, and not truly for myself.

My school had a guidance counselor that we could always talk to whenever our mental health was at its lowest or she called us in when we were not doing very well at school.

I frequented her office not because of my grades, I did well in school and was one of the best students in my grade if I kept it up till I graduated, I had the potential of getting into a good college, but because I struggled a lot in a lot of things that people did not know about me. Not even you or Jen or even my parents knew about it.

I felt lost sometimes and was often depressed. Parts of it were attributed to the bullying I received from school, and the other was just me. I was so hard on myself to be exactly like my parents would have wanted, I did not realize when I had stopped living my own life, so now I experience difficulties in how to do things that are for me.

I used to be more expressive about what I was feeling, and there was once a time I used to tell my parents about most of the things that happened in my life, except that I never told them how my classmates felt about me. Then eventually, when I could not take the harassment anymore I told them, and I could still recall how their faces had dropped the second I told them.

They did not exactly take the news well and tried to comfort me in the best way they could while masking their pain in front of me.

I had not noticed at first, how much my news had affected them until I noticed how awkward they started acting and how they always made me go into details anytime I told them about my day. I had a gut feeling, that they were looking into alternatives of registering me in another school that was all into diversity, even though there was not a school like that and didn't have students oppressing other students.

Also, one time, when I was eight, I had walked into one of their conversations, without any of them noticing, because they were both wrapped up in what they were talking about to notice I was in the room. My mother was sobbing on my father's chest while he tried soothing her. "I knew this day would come. I just knew, and I hate that she, all alone, would have to go through this, and I would not be there." She had said.

"I will be there for her, Lin. I would make sure she is going to be okay. She's strong, my dear. Our daughter is capable of anything that comes her way, and even with that, her father is going to be there for her, just as you would." My father had told her. I knew what they were talking about, even though they never uttered it.

Things like this were topics no mixed household ever wanted to discuss. Yes, they did tell us about how society worked and how segregated it was, but to hear your daughter was being bullied for her ethnicity was heart-wrenching, all because she is not fully white. You did not have to be white to live unharmed in society. In the end, we are all the same, what barricades us is our skin color and heritage.

"I know. I will try to be there, to tell her it is going to be okay, and that it is not a problem if she is not fully white, but Fred, the problem won't die even if we do all we can. She still has to go to school, she still gets to meet those people who will do all they can just to push her to the ground, because they believe they can. I just can't let it happen...I don't want my little girl to suffer. I don't want her to be burdened with our decisions. I just can't..."

When two people love each other so much they decide to get married because they have seen their significant other, and it was only fair to them and their love to want to build a life on that. However, two completely different races should not have any business whatsoever with one another, because they are so far apart in everything, like culture, skin color, and history.

Some people act as if they agree with the alliance, to show how a society that used to be black and white was changing and becoming more accepting of other races coming together to unify.

Eventually, word spreads out like wildfire because it is so uncommon for two different cultural backgrounds to wed, and those in charge of the government of the town, the mayor and its councilors decide to invest in this piece of information, rather than buoyantly disdain it.

They make sure that the journalist in charge of spreading news gets a well-detailed report about the soon-to-be wedded couple so that it would be broadcasted on television programs, and in front of it is all sappy and crappy words to derail people and make them believe that this was a town that accepted all kinds of race when it did not. It is printed in newspapers, with the couples' beaming faces and mushy words to target the emotions of the audience.

For some time, the couple would receive immense love and care and would be invited into the mayor's office for tea and biscuits, before they lunge into what they are there for, a picture with the mayor so that he could hang at the most noticeable spot at his office. The pictures are duplicated and hung in the reception, hallway, and any place that people pass, and their eyes can catch that significant piece.

However, it is only a matter of a few months, before everything starts to return to the same way it has always been, where racial slurs and cold gazes are what follow the new couple, especially the odd one in the couple, the one who made them interracial in the first place.

My mother was the odd one in her relationship with my father since she was Korean, and up until now, people still glared at her and acted like she was an alien whenever she was near them, by pushing their kids away from her or quickly leaving the aisle the moment she entered. The same experience she endured was also what was happening to me.

Before you came, I used to eat all by myself during lunchtime when I was in middle school. At that time, we all used to bring our lunches from home, and all because a boy had powered the rumor that he watched a video that said Asian people ate cockroaches. The whole class believed him and refused to eat with me.

They did not know at that time, that I was afraid to sleep in my bedroom without my father spraying bug repellent before I went to bed. Society did not need to be hateful towards other racial types, we could all live harmoniously if we looked past things and forgot that part of history.

My classmates had all isolated me, to the point that I did not realize when I had stopped speaking. No one sat with me at lunch or played games with me during recess. I was all alone, and I remember in my mind I would count down the hours until it was time to go home. All hope to find a friend had shriveled to nonexistence and I simply just went along with life, even though internally it was hurting.

I was still a little kid, who didn't deserve to be treated as insignificant. I still wanted to laugh with kids my age, until my tummy ached, I wanted to join the others when they played tag and I could only watch from afar because I knew they would not want me close to them.

I wished that someone would sit on that empty seat opposite me, like the way the other lunch tables were surrounded by people, but that never happened, until one particular day, when a boy that I was sure was from my grade, decided one day to warm up the other chair opposite me, by sitting every day with me during lunchtime. We barely shared a word, and I did not mind at the time because my little self had been excited that at least she had someone to eat with.

The boy ate with me throughout that whole school year and did not when we started another school year. At that time, when I met you, his decision to not want to eat with me again stung so much, but we have never spoken to one another and therefore did not share a relationship, where he was obligated to have lunch with me.

Also, I never saw him again, as I used to before, and as time went by, you managed to fill up the space he left, and I had almost forgotten he ever existed.

I didn't have friends, because it was rare to see one, and at that period, I used to be happy that I had at least a friend who shunned all that the others had to say and gave me a try. He did not try to know me to know if the rumors were true or not, and as a little girl, I found it hard to understand why he never asked or why he chose to eat with me in the first place, despite knowing his quiet life will never be the same once he sat beside me, especially for the entire school year.

I still remember how that boy looked back then. I thought he was cute. He had long dark hair and brown eyes. They were the prettiest doe eyes I have ever seen, even though I also had the same eye shape. I used to admire them while I watched him eat. His food choice was also another reason that I could not wrap my head around who this boy was.

He ate the same food as me, all types of Korean dishes, like kimchi, gimbap, and tteokbokki, which would have been fine if he was Korean, but he looked nothing like Korean.

My pea-sized brain was trying to find an explanation for this, but it was with no doubt that I felt comfortable with the lunch he brought to school. He made me feel like my dish was not weird, as the others would say. Instead, I felt closer to my lineage, when I saw all the varieties of food he would unpack to eat. He was a stranger who had no link to my culture but found solace in our food, so who were my schoolmates to make me feel indifferent for eating food that made me happy?

Sitting with him and eating the same type of lunch, felt like I was a part of a tribe and I lived on getting to experience that feeling every day. Until he disappeared, and I never got to see him again.

For the time, that he was in my life, I felt peace, and I had not felt that at all my whole life.