Dying to Be Me Read Online Free PDF

handful of people who noticed what Billy had just done, but it felt as though everyone in the room was laughing at me.
    I felt a huge rage rise up within me. I’d reached the point where I’d had enough. I was sick of being called Sambo, being the last to be chosen for teams, being picked on, and having my belongings taken from me. I just couldn’t take it anymore.
    I stood up with a jolt, picked up my cup of sweet orange soda, and turned around to face Billy, who was now also looking at me and laughing. I looked at him square in the face, and poured the drink over his head!
    Now the entire room did burst out laughing, but thankfully, this time it wasn’t at me. They were looking at Billy, standing there with sticky orange soda dripping down from his hair and running all down his face and clothes. He looked a real sight, but I was too scared to laugh. I was afraid of his reaction.
    Billy glared at me with so much anger in his eyes that I felt as though they were boring holes right through me, and I didn’t stick around long enough to see any more of his reaction. I ran. I bolted out of the canteen like lightning, went into the girls’ washroom, locked myself inside a toilet cubicle, and started to cry. I cried because I knew what I’d done was out of character for me. I wanted more than anything to fit in, to be accepted and liked. I couldn’t change my skin color or race, and it made me feel so helpless!
    Why am I always different, wherever I go? Where do I belong? Why don’t I feel like I belong anywhere? I desperately wanted to know as I let out deep sobs, crouched inside the small cubicle.
    T HANKFULLY, AS I GOT OLDER AND entered into my teen years, the bullying eventually subsided. However, as my classmates started to gain independence, I found my parents becoming stricter, particularly when it came to going out in the evenings with my friends, and especially if boys were involved. Going out with boys was frowned upon in our culture, so I was rarely able to attend our school youth evenings or go out on the weekends with my classmates.
    As a result, I never felt that I belonged. I always felt left out when my classmates talked about their weekend evenings at the youth dances, laughing and sharing stories. I watched them with envy, and so wished that I wasn’t Indian. I was left to focus on my academic studies instead and kept to myself most of the time. I spent countless hours locked inside my own world, and I had very few friends whom I was really close to.
    My parents continued to try their utmost to indoctrinate me into our own culture and to have me meet other Indian people, but I pushed back against their attempts.
    “I don’t want to go to Vedanta class,” I proclaimed to my mother one Saturday when I was about 13. Vedanta is the study of Hindu scriptures, and I used to attend weekly lessons where I met other Indian children.
    “Then things will be more difficult for you as you grow up, particularly when you get married. You need to know what it means to be Hindu,” my mother told me as she fussed with my hair.
    But I don’t want to be more Indian! I want to be more like my classmates! I thought. Aloud, I told her, “But I want to go out with my other friends—my friends from school. They don’t have to attend Vedanta class!”
    “Your father and I want you to attend, and that is all there is to it,” she said.
    I still wasn’t convinced that I wanted to be a Hindu, but as a good Indian girl, I obeyed my parents’ wishes. Over many years, my Indian friends and I met at our classes every week to learn the ins and outs of our faith. I found the Vedic teachings in and of themselves to be interesting and stimulating to study. We had a great teacher who encouraged discussion, which I was very good at. I was a popular member of the class, which was in sharp contrast to how I felt at school, where I so desperately wanted to fit in. I felt as though I were leading two separate lives.
    How I wish I