"Back in middle-school and high school, I had the biggest crush on this guy from my hometown. He was the dark, mysterious cool-guy that every girl probably dreams of dating. He was the kind of person that only let a few people get to know him really well. Everyday after school, we’d talk on MSN Messenger (it was still relevant then) and sneak late-night conversations for hours on end. By the end of my freshman year, we ended up dating. He was about 3 years older than me, so I was overly excited to be dating this “cool” senior. For a while, everything was like a dream come true for the young 15-year-old me in love. He drove me around in his own sports-car, and took me on fancy dates around town. He was my first kiss. We still have our initials carved on a tree at a park somewhere back in my hometown. It was the epitome of a Taylor Swift love song.

We eventually broke up after many months of dating on and off. I remember being so heartbroken on our final breakup, because he just disappeared from the face of the Earth and I couldn’t contact him at all. Turns out, he spontaneously decided to go on a solo backpacking trip to South America. I knew he had a bunch of demons in his life, but I didn’t know that he was the kind of person to just drop everything and move on so quickly, as if everyone that he left behind didn’t matter to him at all. I remember crying for days, and always calling his phone to see if he returned.

I’m glad it didn’t work out with him, because I’ve dated some incredible people afterwards. Through my experiences with him, I got to understand myself better, what I wanted from a relationship, and how to handle relationships maturely. I still think he’s a bit of an ass for just taking off like that, but I also don’t hold a grudge against it. Looking back, I’m also glad our relationship didn’t last any longer, because I think the younger, naive me could have easily gotten lost in the fairy tale moments of the relationship, lost the sense of who I was, or sacrificed my own well being to help him with his demons."

"As a first-gen Indian living in a predominantly white suburb of metro-Detroit, I, like many with the same story as me, tried so hard to push away my Indian heritage in order to fit in with a type of people that were so far away from who I was. I stopped wearing a bindi to school, I took my hair out of the braids that my mother so painstakingly did for me every morning, I never took Indian food to school. I made being ‘brown’ a small part of my identity, a part I only took up on weekends and after school. My parents had lived in America longer than they had lived in India, they were not the ‘fresh-off-the-boat’ Indians so many sitcoms display. I lived a normal life, yet I tried so hard to hide my heritage. I remember once being strangely happy when someone told me “Pooja, I always forget you’re Indian because you’re so different”.

I ended up going to a predominantly brown (South and East Asian) school where almost the entire senior class was first-generation, either from Asia or Europe. Being in this environment was not something I chose (my parents enrolled me into this higher intensity school), but looking back, I am so grateful my parents forced me into that decision 4 years ago. Because, after four years, I now love going out in my Indian clothes. I do henna for my friends. I eat Indian food everywhere I can, and I introduce my friends to Indian food. In fact, many of my friends are first gen now too. And I love it. And now, more than ever, being Indian does not define me. Before, it defined the person I hid, but now it complements the other aspects of myself. I’m bold, curious, witty, opinionated — and Indian. Looking back, it is tragic to think that so many generations of south Indians had honed this beautiful culture, and there I was, being ashamed of something that was hundreds of years in the making. I will keep making amends to my culture for the rest of my life in the only way I know how to now: by living in it so completely without shame."