Essay How Do I Identify Myself And Why

How do I Identify Myself and Why? The wonderful thing about America is that there are masses of people from different backgrounds and there are a multitude of diverse cultures who have varying ways to identify themselves. I think of myself as diverse and my life and the way I identify is in a numerous amount of ways. I identify myself through a good deal of aspects in my life including race/ethnicity, class, gender, religion, and sexuality. My race and or ethnicity play a key role into how I identify because of my pride in who I am and what I come from. When anyone asks me, ‘what are you,’ I proudly reply with the answer “I’m Filipino/Italian.” Growing up in a Filipino household has helped shape who I am and what I believe and stand for as a person. The language that I was taught aided me to appreciate my background and it helped me realize how much I enjoy languages and would take pleasure in learning more than what I already know. My manners, the way that I think, my superstitions and how I do anything is shaped the way they are because I grew up Filipino. The different mannerisms, like eating with your hands for almost everything and always taking off you shoes before entering a house, for example, made it easier for me to grow up and learn what I believed is right and wrong and I was able to nit-pick what I would do as an adult and what I could get rid of because I do not agree with it. I usually throw in that I am half Italian because it is ‘cool’ to be half a race and another half something else other than American. I did not really grow up with much of the culture and or heritage because my dad raised me in an Americanized style rather than Italian. I would consider myself and my family a middle-class family, leaning towards the poor side. We live comfortably; however, we struggle sometimes and are on food stamps. We cannot afford to over indulge much and I had to get scholarships to pay for my tuition because we had no money to do so. Because I grew up always worrying about money and budgeting this and that, it made it so that I am more cautious with my money and what I spend it on rather than constantly going out to restaurants and wasting money every day. Growing up middle-class leaning on the poor side helped shape me as a person and aided in the way that I live my life. I identify as a girl/woman. Growing up, I was really into boy-ish clothes and interested in what most boys were interested at the time. As I got older, I started to figure out what I was interested in and what I thought made me, me. I became more comfortable in my own skin as a girl and I realized that I really did enjoy stereotypical ‘girl’ interests and items. It took a few years, but because I thought carefully about what it meant to be to be a girl, I finally figured out how that plays a role into my own life and how I see myself as a person. I grew up in a Catholic household in the typical, ‘God is our almighty savior and you should embrace and believe in him and all that he can do,’ type of family. Being in that kind of household exposed me to many different aspects of the religion and from there I decided on what I agreed and disagreed with. I do believe in a higher power and I also have other beliefs like in a higher plane and or planes, in angels and demons, in chakras and the mind and body, and in witchcraft. I have many different spiritual beliefs and superstitions that I believe in, but I do not tie myself down to just a single title because I take out what I agree with from most of the religions and just do my own thing when it comes to my beliefs. My sexuality is straight, for the most part. I am attracted to men and I would only date and or marry a man; however, I do find myself sometimes attracted to the other sex. I am still confused myself and it makes it harder for me to figure myself out because of these confusing thoughts that I have. I do, however, identify as straight because I only feel attracted to some women sometimes rather than having a real attraction. Through all of these key factors in my life, I am able to reflect upon them and consider what in each aspect makes me who I am and why it does. The reason I am who I am is because of how I identify myself in those categories and how what I identify myself as affects me in my life.