The Weight of Being ‘Other’
A teen’s perspective on identity and belonging
I woke up filled with apprehension, burrowing deeper under my blanket to avoid facing the day. It was the first day of school in a new country, and I dreaded it. How would this school be different from the one in the US where I had been bullied?
My American classmates couldn’t tolerate that I wasn’t just like them. They would mock what I wore because the style from Brazil was different from theirs, and they’d lob spitballs at me, acting surprised when I didn’t find it funny.
I cried every day on my way to school, dreading the place where no one cared who I was or where I came from. At 14, everything about me felt like a target for ridicule, and it was impossible not to take it personally.
But now in my new country of Portugal, no bright yellow school bus waited for us. No carpooling or walking to the new school either. Instead, we stood on the side of a busy street, waiting for a city bus that blended in with the others. It was supposed to be marked with our school’s name — St. Columbans — but I doubted we’d spot it in the dark, wet dawn.
Just days earlier, I had been in snowy Cedar Rapids, Iowa. My classmates, born and bred Midwesterners, were blissfully unaware of the world beyond their neighborhood. They eyed…
