I’m glad you took the click bait. Not to be a hipster, but I was mixed-race before it was cool.

I have been called “my mixed-race relative.” People have mistaken me as the niece, and not the daughter, of my white father when we go out with extended family. I have been told repeatedly that I don’t look as ethnic as my brother, he is actually ethnic, I’m far more white. Always too white for my ethnic community, always too ethnic for my white life. But those are all explicit examples.

The subtle ones are far more complicated. It’s losing. It’s losing when objectively, I had a higher score. It’s scores of friendships where I was just never first choice, never the best friend. It’s becoming numb to the stares you receive wherever you go while others try to figure out what you are. It’s hundreds of smiles and waves that were not returned, an awkward hand lingering and waiting for a handshake that will never come. It’s being routinely told that these were caused by my personality, that I was far too sensitive, jealous, lazy. That I should try harder next time.

I pass enough in casual situations. It’s a privilege that has been a comfort my whole life. At a glance, I get curious leers, but they’re cautious, because quite honestly, my ethnic background has likely not ever been seen by most people. My ethnicity represents only a small fraction of the global population, and it’s only a quarter of me. But as someone who passes, I’m a sort of spy. I have heard horrendous comments about minorities because people assume I’m white. When I have confronted offensive commenters, I have heard over and over again, “well, not you! You’re basically white.” I know that most people I know are still guessing or assume that I am white. I know that if I comment or share anything on social media about race issues, that most of my peers will assume that my perspective is a white perspective.

As these experiences accumulated, formed my view of the world, formed my view of myself, an introvert and an evidence gatherer also formed. Concrete evidence of the high dosage of microaggressions I experienced everyday was rare, and I held onto it tightly. I thought evidence would alleviate the rejection and alienation that I felt. I thought I would feel justified for the things for which I was labeled “sensitive.” But the funny thing is, when I piled up all the evidence, I felt no vindication, just another wave of now concrete, objective rejection.

How can one write in a blurb or a blog about the enormity of the experience of being born as a “person of color”? I can’t. But I can say that I had never thought of myself as a person of color, only as a person. And really, that’s all I ask for, to be considered a person, a person with thoughts and dreams and emotions and experiences and a life. Sometimes, people don’t want to give a tour of their ethnicity. Sometimes, people don’t want to be collected and kept in a “non-racist’s” trophy case. They just want to be people.