Monday, July 18, 2011

Have you ever dealt with being distinctly different from your family?

Does anyone else have a really awkward family situation? See I became a Muslim like a year ago but I still live with my parents and it’s just really awkward when we’re all out together because I wear hijab and fully cover myself but my mom wears shorts and tank tops so people are constantly staring at us and seem surprised when I call her mom. It’s the same with my step dad because we’re two completely different skin tones and simply look nothing alike. At least my mom and I look like each other in the face. I feel like I’m the only one in the world who could possibly be going through a scenario like this. I hate the awkwardness when we introduce ourselves to new people and I’m not going to use our real names but it’s similar to “I’m bob, this is my wife sally, and this is our daughter ihtisham.” Like my name is Arabic so it sounds distinctly different than theirs. And my mom is a huge show off so she boasts about my accomplishments a lot to her coworkers but when I visited her job for the first time it took me forever to get past security because no one believed that “Sally Jenkins” could possibly be my mother and every one made comments like “She’s not what I expected” or things like that. When my mom and I are out in the city together people often mistake me for some lost immigrant following a woman around when all I’m doing is hanging out with my mom. Sigh it really bothers me that the world can’t seem to accept the idea that every family isn’t cookie cutter and exactly what you’d expect them to be. I always find myself feeling like “the random Muslim girl”. So does anyone else have any experiences of being distinctly different from your family at all?

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