Just Be

New York never stops, but occasionally it is forced to slow down. A two-day blizzard is one of those things that can force this electric, sparkling, ever-moving city to take a slower breath. And that's what happened. It snowed and snowed and then snowed some more, and the cabs and buses had to slow down, subways were delayed, schools closed down, some people couldn't get to work, and everyone looked out their window to see their familiar views coated with a blinding white dripping curtain that spelled, "stop, stay, be still."

If you were to ask me, I would say my life is not rushed. I don't ever overbook myself, I don't overwork myself, I do things every day to slow me down. I am intensely aware of how stiff New York can make me, and so I constantly keep my "armor" in check. I think I do a pretty good job of keeping an open heart and a soft exterior. I think I have not let New York City's sleepless rush get to me, for the most part.

And yet...

I was pacing around my apartment. I called my friends and no one wanted to do anything. I looked at my desk and there was no work to be done. I often read plays when I'm alone, only to end up acting them out by myself all over my living room, but I had done that the night before and wasn't feeling inspired. My nails were done. My hair was done. My apartment was clean. My laundry was done. There was nothing to cook. I wasn't upset about anything so there was nothing to obsess over. There was simply nothing to watch on TV, and I don't like watching TV anyway. I didn't even want to watch a movie. Somehow, I didn't even have a book I wanted to read.

Essentially, I had nothing to do but just be.

What a rare gift that is, and how little value is attributed to it, I discovered.

I sat on my big comfy arm-chair with a blanket. I sat there with myself and thought, Ok, I'll just sit here until the next thing comes up. Boredom can be a good thing, I thought, it doesn't necessarily have to be something I have to try to get rid of when it shows up. I can just sit with my boredom for a change. I can sit with impatience too. I can sit with loneliness. I can sit with silence. I can sit with the noise in my head and not try to change it. I can sit with lack of inspiration. I can sit with anxiety.

I found out that I am afraid to just be with myself and sit with all these things because I place my worth and the value of each day on how much I "get done". Even if what I get done in a day consists of talking to a friend over coffee for a few hours, going to yoga, and then cooking dinner for myself, it still makes me feel more accomplished than if I sit around doing nothing. It terrifies me to let a whole day go by where I've done nothing. To not even have a productive thought throughout an entire day. I am afraid that if that happens, it will mean that I am empty.

There is a famous acting exercise where an actor goes up on stage and stands in front of her colleagues and does nothing, usually for a few minutes. Or tries to do nothing. Tries to just be, in front of people. I have been made to do this exercise countless times in classes, workshops, rehearsals, etc., and I always felt that I am terrible at it. I get so anxious and afraid of doing nothing in front of people that I almost poop. I am filled with a fear of not being entertaining. Of being painfully boring. Moreover, because I am on stage, I feel an obligation to do something, to move the people who are watching me in some way. It feels completely unnatural to do nothing. I usually spend my whole time up there waiting for it to be over and wondering why the hell I am being made to do that.

So, as I was sitting around with myself, sitting with all the discomfort and anxiety of doing nothing, I was forced to face myself and all my fears and feelings. Soon enough a voice came up, that sounded like an older version of myself, saying, quite forcefully but not unkindly, Hey, sometimes, you're boring. Sometimes, you're not entertaining- not even to yourself. Sometimes, you don't have to do anything. Sometimes you're not patient or exciting or calm or any of those good things you like to be. And that's ok. That's part of being human.

This realization came as a relief, and I sat there feeling a tremendous weight had been lifted from my chest. I was able to breathe very deeply because there was so much more space inside me, I wasn't cluttered with the heavy need to do something useful or create something meaningful. I could relax. I could, finally, just be.

I can see now I was overdue for a day of slowing down. I needed a blizzard to hit the city and life to strangely yet perfectly align itself so that I could to spend a whole day with myself. And, as it turns out, allowing myself to do nothing ended up being anything but empty. In fact, I think it might have saved my life.

The World In My Head

I don't remember how old I was when I read "The Little Princess", but I remember it had a profound impact on me for the rest of my life. The protagonist, Sarah, was a rich girl who was sent to a boarding school that was strict as hell, but she brought the place to life with her imaginative stories, which the girls would gather to hear. When her father died in the war, however, Sarah became a servant at the boarding school. She survived life's sudden harshness by returning to her stories, by living in her imagination, by transporting herself far far away from her reality.

Luckily I was never sent to boarding school nor did my father die in a war, but certainly- like most people- I had to survive the events that, one by one, took childhood away from me. And after I read "The Little Princess", I became my own version of Sarah, living in my imagination as often as necessary. It didn't take much to send me there- I was an extremely sensitive child- and my mind soon had a world of its own.

In my head lived endless possibilities. When my parents fought- which was always and never nicely- I could go be the most beautiful girl in the world, a princess, who lived somewhere beautiful and safe, where I could walk through jungles with giant waterfalls and have pic-nics with koalas. When I would see starving children my own age begging for money on the streets of Sao Paulo, I could disappear and go to a ball where I could wear long romantic lilac gowns and have curls in my hair and satin gloves. When teachers lost their patience with my shyness, I didn't have to sit through a lecture about social skills, I could go off and run through vast green meadows while the wind gently hit my face. I could do anything. I could be anyone. It was intensely freeing.

I would say I lived in my imaginary world quite often, and I would say it served me well sometimes. But it also worked against me. I was so used to detaching myself from anything difficult that I didn't know how to be present anymore, even when I needed to be. I couldn't focus, it became difficult to study for tests, I felt like a bad friend most of the time because I didn't really know how to listen, and I didn't know how to sit through or with any kind of pain. If I had grown up in the U.S., I probably would have been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder and given drugs. I don't know if the drugs would have helped me though, because I was very attached to my imaginary world. But by the time I got to high school, I recognized it was getting in the way, and I was afraid I would soon be failing all my classes.

I went to an English teacher I kind of liked and told her of my "problem". I explained that my imagination would get the better of me, even in my favorite subjects, like English, and I couldn't bring myself back down to earth once I was off in lala land. She suggested that every time I start to drift off, I take out a notebook and write down where my thoughts were going as though I were writing a fiction story. I was a little disappointed to hear her say that- I was hoping she would just tell me I was normal and that it would pass. But I was desperate to find some solution before I simply failed out of school, and so I took on her idea.

You may have guessed what happened. The girl who lived inside her head brought her head to paper, and a writer was born. Journals upon journals were filled with stories, observations, images, poems, thoughts, essays, dreams and, ultimately, my pains. And once I had a place to put my thoughts, they started to get out of the way.

I still have a tendency to detach from anything painful, but I catch it quite quickly and try to breathe through it instead of run away from it. I still write things down though, but I don't have to, I can usually focus when I need to. I have learned that our painful experiences are our fuel. That which makes us feel weak in life can be our weapon in creative outlets. A paintbrush, a pen, a piano- those are all important tools, but without our life, without our pain, without our willingness to access it, we can not create.

I am really grateful to have had Sarah, that wonderful imaginative little princess, for helping a shy, overly-sensitive child find a world she could live in, then to have found the teacher who guided me towards my voice, and now to have the courage, every day, to face the reality of every moment, with a present mind and a working imagination. The World in my Head is not so much an escape now, but rather a way to understand reality and generate a creative force which gives me power, freedom, and presence.

Trapped Tears

I was 7 and I fell and hurt my knee. I wailed in pain as tears streamed down my face and I sobbed wildly. It was simple then: I got hurt, I was in pain, I cried. Not just "cried" with my eyes, but with my whole body. I sobbed hard, gasping for air, letting out whatever screams my body developed in response to the pain. It was a complete release of what I was feeling at that moment. There was no self-consciousness, there was no censorship, there was no control.

Then the woman who was taking care of me got down on her knees, took my face into her hands, and said, "Don't cry darling. A lady never cries."

Those words quickly and imperceptibly traveled from her lips and into my face, freezing themselves onto my cheeks, where they would cozily create an army base called Fort Larissa Shall Not Cry.

Our bodies are smart. They figure out what they have to do to survive and they remember it forever. On that day, when my 7-year-old self's ladyhood was threatened, my body was quick to help me: it froze my face so that no tears would cross it, no matter what.

Here's the thing, though, about our bodies deciding something for us when we're 7 years old: we're bound to forget the decision was ever made. It's possible I would not have been bothered by that, if I weren't an actress. But I am, and I found out that sometimes characters have to cry. So I soon realized that it was practically impossible for me to shed a single tear in front of other people, even if I was completely emotionally connected to a character's reality. And I really thought I would never be able to change that. I didn't know why that was the case- I figured maybe it was because I should only play "strong" women who never cry.

That could have worked for the rest of my life, if I were the kind of actor who only wants to play one kind of character. As you may have guessed, that was not the case. I went through high school and college trying out all sorts of tricks, reading all kinds of books, studying with many teachers. But to no avail. I couldn't cry. One day, shortly after graduating from college, in a moment of despair, thinking I would never be a great actress, I wrote a prayer, "Please, to the Powers That Be, I ask that you help me open up as an actor and be able to express every emotion necessary with truth and honesty."

A month later I was accepted to The Actor's Studio M.F.A program, and I went. I didn't know it at the time, but that would be the answer to my prayer. It was actually a simple phrase that did it. After one of the basic exercises in sense memory, I was frustrated with my inability to let go and be fully affected by the exercise, and my genius teacher said, "Your problems in life are your problems in acting. Your habits in life are your habits on stage. Your blocks as a person are your blocks as an actor."

Immediately I was transported back to that day, 14 years earlier, when my body made a decision that would become so permanent I would assume I had no choice over it whatsoever. As though the Fort Larissa Shall Not Cry residing in my cheeks had been made of solid ice, my teacher's words became the hot air that melted it, and I was free.

It was not an immediate process. I was able to let out a few tears, but there were simply too many years of repressed sobs for me to be able to suddenly let it all go. I would find myself, weeks later, lying in bed at night and suddenly sobbing, loudly, like a child, for no particular reason. I knew something had really shifted when I watched the movie, "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" and cried hysterically in front of friends who had never seen me cry before. At the same time that I was crying, and they were asking me over and over again what was wrong, I was laughing. I was so incredibly happy, I felt so relieved! I was crying, really really crying, with abundant tears and crazy child-like noises, in front of my friends!

As my teacher predicted, as soon as I started letting go of my armor in life, I was able to open up on stage, and my prayer was answered. Bringing that day when I, at 7, learned that a lady never cries, to consciousness, gave me a choice over it. I told another teacher of mine about it and she said, "well, ladies can't be actresses, so you better give that up anyway." And I did. I cried. I cried in front of people- and not gracefully. I was no lady.

I still have to soften my face and give myself permission to cry, every day, and certainly every time before I act. It's funny because people who have only known me within the past four years think I'm a cry-baby; they think I have absolutely no problem whatsoever accessing my vulnerability and releasing emotions. I'd go so far as to say I'm known for my ability to cry. I was even recommended recently for a part that demanded a lot of crying, under the premises that "Oh, Larissa can totally cry on cue." I have to say it's still hard for me to believe that something that was nearly impossible for me for 14 years is now only a breath away, but it is, and I am forever grateful.

As I have said in a previous post, I aim to be an open vessel for every character I play to live through me. It is a gift, not only to me but to every character I play, to have this block removed from my face, history, and heart. In life, too, I find the moments when it's appropriate to sob, scream, thrash, gasp for air, and cry ferociously, uncontrollably- like a 7-year-old who has never been told a lady never cries.

It's delicious, it's precious, it's choice, and it's freedom.

Marriage & Kids & Life's Equations, Oh My!

In exactly four months I'm going to turn 25. Ok. No big deal so far. I mean, it's the quarter-life birthday and I'll officially be in my mid-twenties, but it's not exactly a big deal. And in New York City, it's certainly no big deal to turn 25. It's no big deal to turn any age here, really.

But I'm Brazilian and I'm a woman. And I'm single. Very single. So single I haven't shaved anything in over a month. (I know- TMI- but I have a point here). And that thing is starting to happen- that thing that all women loathe, that thing that makes us avoid family gatherings and picking up the phone altogether- that thing is: people are starting to ask the questions.

Actually, let me be really specific. People are starting to replace the questions. "How are you?" is now "Why don't you have a serious-boyfriend-soon-to-be-fiance?", and "How's your career going?" is now "When are you going to produce off-spring?"

Being happy, single, and in pursuit of professional success is about to stop being charming. I mean, it's all good, but you know, I should be dating someone. I should be moving in with someone soon. I should be showing someone that I'm very good wife-material so that he'll propose and we'll have a wedding so that everyone can know that he married me before doing the absolutely most important thing in this whole ordeal: impregnating me before I turn thirty.

Yes, even in the year 2010, even after women have fought for centuries for their right to be seen as more than just baby-makers, that is still what is expected. And even though everyone knows I'm a feminist, even though everyone knows I have a passion that drives my life, even though I am not even twenty-fucking-five, that is still what is expected of me.

They may have even stopped saying it as much, they may have made TV shows and movies around the world about women who are over 30 and still single and possibly even happy about that, but things haven't really changed. Yes, it is theoretically and practically "Ok" now if you're a woman over 30 and single and childless and doing things that are still completely about you. But when a woman gets married and has babies before she turns 30, she suddenly feels like she belongs in society. Society looks at her approvingly, people treat her differently, there's a certain relief: one more woman in the world has fulfilled her duty. It doesn't matter if she ends up divorced and her children end up fucked up because their mother was unhappy- she still made it, she crossed the finish line.

So when we turn 25 we have a choice. We can give in to our need to belong (and we all have that need, there's no use pretending we don't), and look for a reliable responsible mate with whom we can get married to and have children with in the next five years.

Or we can say fuck fitting in to the conventional mold, fuck society's expectations, fuck my family's questions, fuck it all, I CHOOSE ME. It sounds empowering. It sounds kind of wonderful for someone like me, who wants to live life exactly as I wish to and never because I'm supposed to do anything. I don't really see the appeal of a five-year-plan being: marriage and kids. I want my five-year-plan to look something like: get a lot of acting work, learn another language, travel to at least five places I've never been to, throw dinner parties for my friends, write more, read a hundred new books, look into getting a doctorate, start a book club, do more yoga, meditate daily, flirt with more strangers, learn more about wine, draw, paint, and dance every week.

But there's a little problem with the equation: I care about what my family wants for me. I want to have kids, and I want my parents to be able to watch them grow up. I don't want to give my mother a heart attack by getting pregnant out of wedlock. I would actually much rather answer, "Yes, I'm madly in love and in a relationship with someone I'd like to have kids with one day" than "No, I don't have a boyfriend and I'm ok with that right now." The latter statement is not false, but I can't pretend I don't want to able to say the former someday, and maybe even someday soon.

As the infamous tv show "Sex and the City" showed people around the world: It is fabulous to be a glamourous single woman over 30, until it's not and all you want is a man to settle down with. In the end of the show, all those gorgeous, smart, funny, financially successful, sexually free and happy women had settled down with a man, and were happy to do so. And I actually think that was somewhat realistic. In the end, we don't want to go to nightclubs and hip restaurants every weekend with our single girlfriends for the rest of our lives. We can still do that, of course, but isn't it nice to also have the option of staying home with your significant other, or going to the restaurant you always go to with them, or even going to that new nightclub with them? If we're single, we don't have that option. We can stay home alone, we can go out to eat alone, we can go to museums alone, and all of that can be great too, but we have one less option in our lives, and that is the option of sharing our lives with someone we love. And, in my opinion, it happens to be one of the most delicious options in the world.

So, society's pressure + wanting to make my family happy + desire to find someone to love and share my life with = planning to get married and have kids within five years. But wanting to live my life without ties + pursuing my dreams + enjoying my life alone = planning to not be getting married or having kids anytime soon.

It reminds me of when I learned in math class that 1/2 + 1/2 = 2/4, which was simplified to = 1/2. It seems I have to choose either one whole equation or the other, because if I try to take half of one and half of the other I won't end up with a whole. I can't get married and be single, I can't have kids and not have kids, I can't be with someone and be alone at the same time.

A very problematic set of equations, I would say.

Problematic because, well, I simultaneously want it all and am not sure I want any of it. Sounds like a Quarter-Life-Crisis, doesn't it?

What I know is that I'm going to turn 25, I'm going to have to deal with social expectations, with questions I don't want to answer, and with my own uncertainty regarding my future. This will never stop. On the heels of my 30th birthday or my 60th birthday I will be dealing with doubts and pressures as well, I'm sure. I know that I am affected by these things but I am aware that thinking about them ultimately changes or influences nothing. I can't know what's going to happen or if making a decision about what I want would even matter. All I can really do, it seems, is ease my way into the unknown and, like most 25-year-olds, hope that life will figure it out for me.

Their Story

Inspired by the poem "I Go Back to May 1937" by Sharon Olds, which was quoted in the film "Into the Wild".

They are drinking and laughing.

They are beautiful and stupid.

They are unwrinkled and full of life.

They are horny and blind.

I want to pull her out of there by her hair,

I want to knock him unconscious,

before they make a fatal mistake.

I want to yell No!

I want to tell her, Run away,

he'll hurt you,

he'll never love you.

I want to hold him back, warn him,

Don't do it,

she's not who she seems to be,

in a few years the girl you see in front of you

will be dead

inside the body of a tired, angry mother.

I want to shake her and say Stop!

Be careful!

No matter how many of his shirts you iron,

no matter how many of his children you raise,

you will never have his heart.

I want to kick him away and say Don't!

Watch out!

You'll never get to live the

life you wanted.

You'll never be able to get out.

I want to beg them,

Please, turn away while you still can

You will yell at each other until he goes deaf.

You will raise children in a home of war.

You will cut each other's souls and

kill each other's dreams.

Don't do it, I want to scream,

You are not the people you will become.

But I don't say it.

I let them fall in lust.

Let them turn into animals and suck the blood

from each other's hearts.

Let them age into soldiers fighting on different sides

of the same war.

Let them make their mistakes.

Let me be born of their biggest mistake.

Let them love me too much because they

can not love each other.

Let me learn love in a house of hate.

Let me be the quiet one.

Let me grow to be a story teller.

Let me be the only one who can tell their story.

Faith

I am sick with an ugly cold, which usually means I need to slow down and re-assess my life, but since I've been on vacation for two months, doing nothing but slowing down and re-assessing my life, I'm restless and not at all in the mood to stay in bed and think. And so, against my will, I found myself in bed this morning, shivering, having the following sequence of thoughts, "I feel like shit. Oh God, please let me feel better. Did I just talk to God? Yes, I did. How dare I turn to God now, when I need Him. Did I just call God a Him? With a capital H no less? Who am I? I need to figure out what I believe in. Do I? Yes, I do, so that I don't feel guilty. Uhg, guilt is such a Catholic thing to feel. Well, Larissa, you were raised Catholic- sort of. Once a Catholic always a Catholic, right? No, I don't think so. I don't support religion, really. And yet- here I am, talking to God. Choosing my words carefully, in fact, so as to not piss Him off. There, I did it again, I called God a Him. Well what's wrong with that? Could the feminist in me just shut up for two seconds so I can figure out what I believe in? Actually, Brain, can you just stop thinking so I can sleep and God can do God's thing and I can feel better when I wake up?"

Needless to say, I didn't stop thinking. I started tracing my history with religion and faith, which, of course, starts with my parents.

My mother is Catholic, but I wouldn't say she's an extremist on any grounds. She baptized us and I had a First Communion and I read the Bible (sort of) and she wore her saints around her neck, but she never really forced her children to be Catholic. She took us to church, but when we didn't want to go, she didn't make us, which I think is rather remarkable. I didn't have a bad experience with Catholicism, I mostly just found it boring. And I was never going to memorize all the I Shall and I Shall Not's in order to live my life as a good Catholic, so I pretty much gave up on that at around the age of 10.

My father is not religious at all, but very spiritual. He had a metaphysical magazine for 8 years called Amaluz, meaning Love Light, which was the Brazilian version of the Sedona Journal. He once published some poems of mine in his magazine when I was 13, which was a beautiful gesture and surely influenced my sense of my worth as a writer, as well as poking at my curiosity as to what it was he believed in. Behind his office he has a meditation room, filled with his pyramids and crystals and books on quantum physics. He never once mentioned God to me, but he taught me about meditation. And meditation, for me, brings up an energy that is far beyond my physical self, an energy that connects me to what I call my "soul" and to what I call a "Higher Being".

And then there's the main reason I know there's "something" beyond my human existence: Acting. I felt it the first time I stepped on stage, at the age of ten, to impersonate Nathanial Greene in our Social Studies class. The very shy child that I was known to be transformed instantly and completely into the Revolutionary War General and awed my classmates and teachers. I remember stepping off the stage feeling the most alive I had ever felt, thinking, "Was that me up there?", a question I would continue to ask after every time I performed for years to come.

And the answer I have now (I am aware it will probably change, since I'm still in the beginning of my journey, relatively speaking), is that No, it's not exactly me up there. I am a vessel for a force much higher than myself to express itself. My job is to keep my heart, body, mind, and soul open for this force to shine through me and tell the stories it needs to tell. As a teacher I had in grad school used to say, As an actor we open up our hearts so the people in the audience, in the safety of their dark seats, might open theirs as well. People will go to the theatre or to a movie before they go to therapy, and so in a way, actors are humanity's healers, offering them a glimpse into their own wounds as well as an opportunity to mend them. This explains as well why when I feel like I have failed I take the blame upon myself, whereas when I succeed I attribute it to a higher force. If I "fail"- a term that is difficult to use, since I am not quite sure if it is in fact failure- I believe it is because something in me is closed, and so I have failed at being a vessel for creative expression. When I am open and out of my own way, it all "just happens", my performance "flows". And it is in those moments that a Higher Being, that God, that the Creative Forces of the Universe, are real to me. It is in the space between technique and talent that this untouchable energy exists and I find my faith. I call it, simply, "It", since I cannot find a word that truly encompasses everything "It" means to me. What I know is that I have to have faith in It, nurture It, speak to It, and pray to It, in order to succeed as an performer. My heart won't open if I ignore It, and what I do is simply too important to me- I dare say it's vital for my existence- for me to dishonor It in any way.

Acting is sacred to me, I have rituals and prayers and charms for it, and I really believe it is my mission in this life to be an actor. I don't even like to say I have a "talent", I much rather call it a "gift". I was given this body, this heart, this mind, this soul, this life, so that I can tell the stories and bring to life the characters that humanity needs me to.

So, my faith seems quite clear to me in regards to acting, but it's still rather hazy in daily life. I hesitate to speak directly to God because I attach the deity to religions I do not identify with. And I do not want to attach a gender to my Supreme Being, and God most certainly feels masculine to me. I often end up speaking to The Powers That Be, which also sounds religious, but feels more accurate than God, especially since I do not feel this Energy to be singular.

I think that's how it's supposed to be though. Dictionary.com defines Faith as "Belief that is not based on proof". And so I conclude that part of faith is doubt, and not knowing quite how to define it doesn't mean it's absent from my life. Plus, it's probably healthier to accept the ambiguity of it than to attach myself to certain definitions and thereby limit something that feels so immeasurable. I shall rest my mind now, and let equivocal faith bring its teachings and treasures into my life as it so wishes.

The Pain of Others

I had a unique, if not unsettling, experience with loss (change doesn't seem like the right word here) of identity when I moved to the United States. I was 18 and I had lived in Sao Paulo, Brazil, all my life. I had attended the same school for 14 years- Graded- a school for the wealthy elite of Sao Paulo, which means it was predominately white and, as we used to joke, a "bubble" all of its own. And all my life I had identified as "white". I checked the box "Caucasian/White" in my college applications. I never even considered, for a moment, that in another country, in the eyes of others, I was not "white" at all.
Words like "racial minority", "person of color", "white privilege" and "passing" were not part of my vocabulary. Of course I was aware of racism, of prejudice, of the horrors of white supremacy and the constant struggle of non-white people to fit in to a society whose history rejected and oppressed them. And while I acknowledged those issues as human problems, I always thought that I would never truly be able to empathize with people who suffered from racism because, well, I was white. I believed it would be offensive for me, a white girl, to say that I really understood racism on a personal level. Racism was, to me, the pain of others. I didn't exactly see this as a disadvantage ("white guilt" doesn't seem to exist in Brazil), I simply took it as one of the cards I was dealt at birth. I was white. This was not just an understanding (or a misunderstanding, as some of my college friends would see it), this was my identity, my truth, my root.
So you can imagine how confused I was when a college friend of mine, who was black (that is how she preferred to be called, I hope I'm not offending anyone by not using a more politically correct term), asked me how I felt as a person of color- an international one, nonetheless- at Sarah Lawrence, also a predominately white school. I was so confused that I don't think I even answered her properly, I said something like, I have no idea, and dismissed the subject. It perplexed me- but I thought maybe she was just confused. Then, not long after, in a conversation about racism with a white friend of mine I started saying something along the lines of, "Because I'm white..." and she interrupted me, saying, "But you're not white." Well, now I wasn't just confused, I was getting angry. My reaction to her blunt statement shames me now, but I have to forgive myself for not knowing any better at the time. I was starting to sense that those people (Americans) did not want me to be white, and I thought it was because they thought I wasn't American. Well, I argued, I was an American. Legally, I was an American Citizen (my father has American Citizenship), and for all intents and purposes, I could consider myself an American if I wanted to- I spoke the English language better than most of the Americans I had met in fact, and I had been thoroughly educated in American History and Culture. Moreover, I lived there, legally, and was attending higher academia as an American. So why couldn't I say I was white? I wasn't trying to prove or deny anything, I was just trying to identify myself the only way I knew how.
It was my friend's turn to be confused and on edge now. She had absolutely no idea why her stating the fact that I was not white had offended me. She started to say, apologetically but still perplexed, "Well, I guess you can pass for white, but you're not actually white..." and I interrupted her, "Pass for white??? What does that even mean???" That was a truly new idea to me. People passing for white? Was she really accusing me of wanting to be white, but not really being white? And did people actually do that, so much so that there was a term for it?? Like most people who have never been and never thought they would be considered a racial minority, I didn't quite grasp why someone would want to pass for a race that was not their own. My friend tried yet again to explain, "Well, you can say you're a Latina, a Hispanic maybe, or a Person of Color, and you might even feel white or dress white or sometimes look white, but you're not white."
The questions burned through my mind at the speed of lightning. My vision started to blur. My heart was racing and I was experiencing so many different feelings that I'm not sure anything I said from that point on was even coherent. In fact I think I sat in paralysis for quite a while, my friend not knowing what the hell was wrong with me. I didn't know it at the time, but my body was physically manifesting the experience of undergoing what was about to be one of the great Paradigm Shifts of my life.
It would be a long road from there. There would be extensive conversations with people of different races, with people from different countries, with teachers, with counselors, with my family, and with myself. There would be a lot of reading and writing. There would be loss of friendships. There would be long heated arguments in college kitchens with friends of vastly different backgrounds. All of it as I tried to understand how, for most of my life, I had been given one identity, and then suddenly, in a different country, that very identity, with all of its privileges and prejudices, could be taken away from me.

I need to explain here that one of the reasons my experience was so unique was because I was at Sarah Lawrence, which is historically known as a boiling pot for political and civil activism, and these topics were not taken lightly at all. In addition, Sarah Lawrence is next to Bronxville, a very upper-class, and very white, small conservative Westchester city, where a "person of color" easily stood out. The kids at Sarah Lawrence said Bronxville was a scary place, the kind of place you imagine secret KKK meetings still took place, but for me it was no different than what I had known all of my life: a bunch of rich white people who lived in their own little bubble, and if anyone knew what they were really like, they'd laugh to have ever felt threatened by them.

One particular argument on one particular night in my second year in college sticks out in my memory. I was living in the multi-cultural house and there were a bunch of people in the kitchen one night, most of whom were not white, all of whom were activists for racial equality. And they started saying pretty horrible things about a white boy who up until then everyone in that room had called a friend, and whom I'll call Edgar here to protect his privacy. Edgar had apparently said something about how he had never done laundry before going to college, which gave away his wealthy background, and they had presented him with their lecture on white privilege, to which he didn't seem to respond in the "right" manner (which I think would have been to apologize for being white and ignorant of his privilege). So now they were in the kitchen outraged, calling him all sorts of names and saying they no longer considered him a friend. I wasn't looking to start trouble, I just wanted to understand something, when I said, "How come you guys don't get mad at me and lecture me on white privilege?" The agitated room went silent. One of them finally said, "You're not white, Larissa. Not here. It's different." To which I responded, and until this day I still don't know where my courage and clarity at that moment came from, "No, it's not. Where I come from I am white. I am just as much of an ignorant spoiled white brat as Edgar. The only reason you are 'forgiving' me for it is because in your eyes I'm not white, but my background is the same as his, and if you think about it, I am no different, the only thing that's different is your perspective of me. I never washed a spoon before I came to college, just like Edgar never did his own laundry. The reason I never washed a spoon is the same as his, because I thrived on my white privilege unknowingly. So you should be lecturing me on white privilege and ending your friendship with me too." No one knew what to say to that. We discussed it for hours, but no one was really able to respond to the problem I had just presented them with. They understood what I was saying, they had attached a profile to me when they met me: Not White, therefore it was okay for me to have money, because I would never be able to take advantage of any white privileges, and since I was a person of color, I must have struggled with racism throughout my life. When they learned that they were mistaken, they didn't really know what to do- it was an entirely new issue.
A new set of questions would present itself. Could they be friends with someone who was a person of color in their country but did not - could not- identify with their struggles and pains (or at least not at that point)? They thought they could, but in the end, sadly, I lost most of those friends. They wanted me to be as angry as they were at white people, and I wasn't. They didn't want me to present the perspective of a white person, and they certainly didn't want me defending rich white people. I tried, I really did, to understand them then and salvage those friendships. But they were young and they were angry (rightfully so, I would later understand their worlds), and they were not looking for mere friendships, they were looking for allies. And I wasn't willing or even capable of being one.

I have now lived in the United States for seven years and see things that I didn't see then. I noticed, for example, that when I went into a store like Prada or Chanel, I was often followed, or at least watched, by a security guard. I thought it was because I was young, and maybe in some instances it was, until I went with my mom and the same thing happened. I started paying attention, and when I noticed that none of the white women and men in these stores were ever followed or watched, I started to feel a chill crawl up my spine. The same sort of thing happened if I went to a fancy restaurant- the treatment seemed different. These little things that I had once thought either didn't exist or existed only in the minds of paranoid people turned out to be very real, and very cruel.
I grew up thinking I would never personally experience racism. No one taught me how to handle it. I wasn't prepared. And when, as a young woman fully capable of understanding exactly what was happening, I actually felt it, right there on my own skin, it seemed like the world as I had always known it had been a complete farse. How would I ever find anything beautiful again in this world where people were capable of treating others as inferior to themselves because of the color of their skin?
The parameters of my reality have changed a lot because of this experience, and I am grateful for it. When I see or hear about people of color being treated differently than white people I identify with their pain, because it could be me. What I had always thought I was safe from is now something I deal with constantly. When Barack Obama was elected president, I was elated that history was forever changed, and now every black child in America would grow up thinking they can be president one day if they want to- a thought I probably wouldn't have had seven years ago. I notice now when campaigns and ads use mostly white people, or only white people, and I am aware of how often (or should I say how rarely?) people of color are cast in leading roles. The list goes on and on, unfortunately.

Knowing what I know now is beyond measurable value, because there is no greater lesson in life than empathy, I think, and my absolutely unique experience expanded my vision of the world and my understanding of humanity, leaving me with a truth I'll share with you here. I carry it daily in my heart and on the surface of my skin, and maybe some of you do too...

The pain of others is our pain as well, and if we think it is not, life will teach us otherwise.