I've often asked myself this question: am I white, or am I black?

Sometimes I honestly don't know.  

While I have the features of a black person, I definitely appear white.  For starters, my skin is milk white and my hair is the color of straw.  And get this: my eyes are BLUE.  Ice blue.

I am the only one in my family who looks like this.  It's made me an outcast among my family (excepting for my mother) and the people of my village.

Whenever I go out in public, I am spit upon, hit, kicked, and called nasty names.  I am the laughingstock at my school; for this reason I often feign sickness, so I don't have to put up with the ridicule that I endure every day.

My life is a hard life.

I have often wondered what I could have done to deserve this, to bring shame upon my family and my village.  Could my mother have done something different, so I could have had been born with the brown skin of my people??  Are the gods mad at me or my family for making me suffer like this??

I look at my reflection in a mirror or in a glass window, and I see ugliness.  I hate myself for being like this; I often wonder if I would be better off dead.  

I don't deserve this; why of all people must I go through so much pain???

~To be continued!~