I am a Outsider

I am an outsider. I never felt like I fit in wherever I went in my whole entire life. When I was 5, I moved to Korea, where life is very different from the US. New school, new friends, and new lifestyle. The very first time I went to my school in Korea, I felt left out. I was the only kid from America, everyone knew each other, and I did not feel like I fit in. Yes, I am asian and most people there were asian, but I was American inside. I talked like an American, acted like one, and was like one. I felt like a rose in the middle of a bunch of cactuses. Alone, and left out.

I am an outsider. Every year when I used to live in Korea, we would go back to America for a couple of months during the summer, where we saw all our friends and relatives who lived there. When I met my friends, they all simultaneously said, “You're not the same anymore”. I was confused. I wasn’t used to Korea, and now I hear from my friends from my original home that I’m not like who I was. Who am I? Where am I supposed to be used to? I felt like an outsider. No matter where I went, I never felt that I fit in perfectly. 

I am an outsider. Living in Korea was great until I heard I was going back to America. Guess what? Another great time making friends, getting used to the new school, getting used to a 360 degree full change in lifestyle. Just like Korea, school in America was not easy. I was the only Asian out of the 70 kids in my class, and I was bullied for what I looked like. “Why are your eyes so small? Go back to your country!” I was left out of everything, laughed at, and was alone. I was an outsider in Korea, now in America, where I thought was my home.

Throughout my whole life, being an outsider was not something unusual. Something about me was always going to be considered as an outsider. Where did I fit in? America? Korea? Neither? Even till now, living in Orange County for the past 5 years of my life, I still do not know if I fully fit in. Some parts of me think that maybe I am slowly fitting in, and other points I still feel like an outsider. Whether it be what I look like, where I lived, how I acted, what I did, everything pointed out one thing: I did not fit in with everyone else. I am an outsider. Inside, and outside, I am an outsider.