What Was Expected...

The purpose of my essay was to not only explain my emotions during this time period but to be able to explain to myself what happened in this situation. I am very proud of myself for just even getting the paper done because this was a very stressful thing to write and not a very easy process. But also my analysis and how in-depth I went. In the future I see myself getting way better in my writing process by asking for more peer edits because that's what really helps the essay, by one getting more than one opinion.

I´d consider myself raised in a respected home and as my mother would say ¨ We had good home training¨. We were very traditional in many aspects. My parents wanted us to know where we came from a part of that was knowing the language. I was thankful for that even though sometimes it didn't show. One thing that they wanted us to know was there was a God and he was above any other. We were Christians. But we were also Nigerian. We were Nigerian Christian. Christians that went to church each Sunday and they made sure we were rooted in the word of God. I was considered a good Christian child up until a certain point. Then I decide to be different, I decided I didn't want to be this idea of Nigerian Christian. Where the thought are going to church seem more like a punishment instead of something to look forward to.

I became  less interested in my culture and an even more hatred for my religion. When the topic of culture was brought up I would always switch it up, or when they would call on me to pray I´d say I didn't want to. Three was a disconnect. With those around me telling me that I had to pick side, I started to believe it. In the novel Americanah written by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, she speaks about the judgment foreigners receive when they migrate to America. In the sections she explains her move to America and the different situations she had to endure to order to aline with the social norms. She writes, “Dear Non-American Black, when you make the choice to come to America, you become black. Stop arguing. Stop saying I'm Jamaican or I'm Ghanaian. America doesn't care.¨(187). With this, we start to see a larger idea of how immigrants of really viewed in society. We are often called a boiling pot but in reality, we are more like a salad because everything goes separately, each group has a group of their own. You can either find a middle ground or just or just lose part of yourself in order to gain from another. People feel the need to do this for acceptance; If they don't act like everyone else than can they really belong. This is very important because everyone wants to belong even someone like me. We live in a society that forces you to leave your own ideas in order to conform to the ideas of others. Society is afraid of the possibility that someone can ever be different so they stripe your labels, your identity and try to give you new ones.

It started to feel like I was living a double life. I was a different person depending on who was around. Like any normal teenager, I was going through a ¨midlife crisis teen edition¨. In the novel The Lies That Bind Rethinking Identity by Kwame Anthony Appiah, he speaks on the practice of his religion and the stages in which there are beliefs or even doubt in your faith. He says, “Every religion can be said to have three dimensions. Sure, there is a body of belief. But there’s also what you do-- call that the practice,” (36). This was the problem with religion and the reasons so many people stray from it because of these things called rules. There was a rule for everything there was a guildless you had to follow in order for you to even call yourself a Christian you have to live a certain lifestyle. The word half Christian is what I was. I began to pick and choose with rules I would follow and which rules to break. When we begin to break down this quote we see that you can't do one without the other. Yes, I would say I was Christians when people asked but I wasn't living the life a Christian would. This is where it hit me if I wanted to live a certain life I would have to make changes.

To end my story, it wasn’t easy on the journey to find not only who I was but also who I wanted to believe in. There was a process of self-discovery. In not only who I wanted to be but what was allowed of me. See that's the thing with the society we are so afraid of being different that we feel the need to be put into a box and if that box doesn't find correctly we find another because that's just the way society is. Society tells you, you are not normal until you have a label because we are so afraid of being different we feel we have to listen to them. But with knowledge comes understanding with that, I was able to understand that I didn't have to conform to these beliefs. It was only then that I was able to see why I was a Christian. A Nigerian Christian.