Identity

Maybe part of the problem is that I've sort of been forgetting that I'm not a poor Mexican. I joked at the start of this year that I've changed my name so many times because I'm still trying to figure out who I am, and trying on a new name helps me feel like I can start over. "I wonder who Carolina will be," I mused. That was back when I thought people might use my full name (chosen, in part, by a liguistic goof-up), before I was called Caro to my unending confusion, and before I started waging the still-undecided battle for Lina.
Whatever you call her, it's not an easy answer. In some ways, Carolina is a girl whose friends live in the "worst" parts of Cuernavaca, whose mamá makes her hot chocolate and tamales when she's sad, who walks to work to save the five pesos and fifty cents it costs to take the bus, who listens to Jarabe de Palo and Reik.
But she's also just one part of Miriam Kathleen, a young woman who has a college degree and reads for pleasure, who speaks three languages, who has had frequent opportunities for international travel, and who can get a couple thousand pesos out of the ATM whenever she feels like it. The same person who was once Katie and then Miriam and then Kat and sometimes Katja. I forget that although people frequently compliment how well I speak Spanish, I still have a foreign accent and limited vocabulary. I forget that although Licha calls me m'hija ("my daughter"), I'm still blond and a foot taller than the rest of my family.
It's easier yet to forget that all of those are me, that I don't get to suddenly become someone else because my name has changed and I operate in a new language. That I don't get to stop being privileged because I have chosen one year of simple living and accompaniment with the poor.

But I wonder, is this not true for all of us? Who is you're forgetting that you are?