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"Well I took a walk around the world to ease my troubled mind, I left my body lying somewhere in the Sands of time." 3 Doors Down

I love lyrics, I love songs, so maybe I should write a little quote before each time I write now. Just something I find poetic I suppose. Break hasn't been uber helpful (or productive), my bad!!! However, in the mad search for newspapers, I find that in order to burst out of this suburban Maine bubble, one really must get out of Maine and for that matter New Hampshire as well. Bubble alert, this must be why my parents make it a priority that I know as many Vietnamese families as there are in Portland. Not that race and race relations are everything because Maine is a relatively poor state, but, one looks and besides Portland, town after town is 98 percent white......... idk...... I love my friends but lately (by lately I mean the last 4 or 5 years or so), it's been frustrating not having people to talk about the minority perspective with.

And I keep myself away from clubs based on categorization like Asian American Society, or whatever...................... there comes a point in the midst of laughing at a table full of my lovely white friends (who make my life better, who are very very caring people) when it's like....... race doesn't define ALL of who I am but dammit!! I am fucking Vietnamese and African American, when am I going to acknowledge that and take to understanding the struggles of Vietnamese people and African American people? How do I make myself a part of that when I've never really been a part of that..... are my white friends safe for me because... I never wanted to be contained in the box that said race was everything?

Once you have one Vietnamese friend, you have 45 Vietnamese friends. Once you know one Vietnamese person, 20 other Vietnamese people you have never heard of request you as friends on facebook like you go way back, because your last name is Huynh....... and what? That gives them solidarity? And the fucking International table at Deering High School and Colby College.

BUT

I've got to walk the balance. The truth is there are certain conversations one cannot have in table full of her lovely white friends. And to be completely frank, if one sits at a table, and all of her friends are white, that means that her friends make friends with other white girls.... why? It may be speculation, but my psychology tells me that, there is a relatability and safety, and comfort there, there is the acknowledgment of similarities and presumed similar upbringings__

I wonder if for the first time I'm facing the head on. It's definitely two different standards because people don't take note of it when a group of white girls are together, share sleepover secrets.... whatever..... but maybe as minorities (and I'm talking mostly about myself) we're so afraid of deliberatively being rebellious and setting ourselves apart based primarily on race, that when minorities hang out with one another......... IT IS NOTICEABLE.... AND WE ARE IGNORANT for not adapting or working harder to be part of society.

The majority does the same thing.

I've disgressed completely off what I came on here to speak of.

Maybe I will go to Dorchester Mass and burst myself out of this bubble of safety and getting everything handed to me on fucking silver platter. Even beyond the minority idea, it's the idea of being minority and not having to struggle..... EVER......... and being privileged.... while people who look like me.... sound like me........ are me... except for an unlucky flip of the coin are out there...... everywhere. People say it's not my fault, and life will kick me in the ass a lot too, but I go to a college that's $50,000 a year, my family is together, my home has 4 bedrooms. And once in a while when I'm not caught up in the superficiality of needing nice things, or needing a man, or needing to look good with ugly A&F polos.......... I'm like

FUCK PRIVILEGE

Not that I don't love Maine, not that I don't love white people, but it's time I tell the stories of people who look like me who'll never get the chance to get their stories out there.