Personal Narrative: What A Girl Wants

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“Do you hate me?” Those words finally hung in the air between us, suffocating, and I knew I couldn’t take them back. Not now. How did I get to this moment? And why does it feel like I am being broadcast in a Lifetime movie? Except in this movie, I’m not a babysitter-turned stalker out to kill the housewife so I can take her place and live happily ever after with her middle-aged husband and their three kids. “No entiendo?” Those foreign words sucked me back into reality and the fact that I was here in Mexico, physically, and not wandering obsessively back in Nebraska over those four words. I said them and it’s too late to continue my facade that everything was okay and that this crazy situation was okay. I stared back into those kind brown eyes across from me and knew I had to speak.

Back when I was fourteen, I used to roll my eyes at those awfully cheesy stories where families reunited after not speaking for a thousand years and everything falls into place and ends up perfect. I used to cringe at that Amanda Bynes movie What a Girl Wants; I’d scoff at the idea that a girl could all of a sudden reunite with her rich prince father and live a life of luxury after her mother refalls in love with him. Of course that would happen - in a movie. But in this story, I’m not Amanda Bynes and my father is …show more content…

My father and brothers would smile and nod along but I knew that they did not understand a single word of what I was saying. There is a huge disadvantage of growing up in the United States and being raised by my single Native American mother: I only speak English. I’ve never learned how to speak Spanish and only knew the occasional phrase like “hola, como estas?” or “donde es baño?” My Spanish teacher growing up was Dora the

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