What It's Like to be Raw

Raw is what you call something that is not quite there where it needs to be. I am a raw individual, in many different ways.

Finish college for one reason, get employed for another, and desire get into graduate school for yet another -- that's raw right there.
Fall in [and out of] love with four completely different males. Yes, that is raw.
Desire to augment other's needs in the name of social welfare, but find that you yourself are also short;
Be fickle with your fashion signature; can't quite decide between preppie East Coast, easy-going West Coast, business chic San Francisco, clean-lined Wall Street, or just a drawer-full of push-up bras. That, is raw.
Non-fiction or novels;
Poetic or prosey;
Quality or money;
To be confident, or conservative;
Dreams, or other dreams;
A nice dinner together, or time to myself;
Stay indoors and get some rubber tire rest, or explore the world out there;
Sleep in, pay toll, and drive to work, or get up early, save gas, then take the train.
Save the world, or find myself first.
Pursue my dreams with reckless abandon, or consider people I care about and their feelings.
That all, makes me raw.

I am a child born out of wedlock. It never was a problem for me. My mother's family was very loving; while my father who migrated to the US before I came out gave me all the expatriate care all the way.

After college I decided to take advantage of my father's US Citizenship to be somewhere else, and try something different.

I now live in Boston, Massachusetts after calling the San Francisco Bay Area home for five years. Once again, just to try something different.

Before I flew to the US for the very first time, an ex-American told me to make this country my "playground."
That's exactly what it is.

And after all, I am still a child with an impressionable mind. Just recently have I come to use the explanation, "I am developing myself" whenever situations find me indecisive.
That's all OK. I am almost an American now anyway. Not just literally, but quite figuratively.

Here since Day 1, I've been presented with food servings fit for four-six people (unless I'm in a tapas bar), a multi-ethnic array of friends, the vastest commercial choices in the whole world, and a cute white boyfriend [who all along took huge pride in his German descent only to find out later he was Portuguese and Hawaiian, too].

This is where dreams are possible for conversion into your reality. This is America. And I am one of the many Raw Americans. Living within a continuously evolving hyphenation of cultures, and struggling to find my own.

I may not be as American as an apple pie, but I am for now the Bob's Red Mill Old Country Style Muesli found at your neighbor Trader Joe's; and prepared Swiss Style, eaten from a bowl made in China. This is my life. Only in America.