The lost "i"

When I am told by people to describe myself, I have a bit trouble collecting my thoughts. I just don’t know what to tell them. I don’t know, whether I will describe myself through others perception of me or my own.
When I reached college, I had this hopes that people won’t judge me that easily. Because I don’t want to have that same experiences that I had during those years in high school. But my hopes were shattered into tiny pieces. What am I kidding myself for; I can’t control people’s perception of me. You’re probably wondering what I am blabbing about.
Well, most of the people think of me as a snob. I don’t know maybe “snob” is a really strong word for me but their exact words were: “taray”, “striktahon”, and “maldita”. See what I mean, you can’t exactly translate those words in the English language, or can you? Note most of the people who think of me those ways are those people that don’t even know me...
They say that it’s the way I look at a person. They say my eyes are just so fierce, not like those models in America’s Next Top Model, but showing cruelty. Some even think that I have a hidden grudge on them, as if I hate them. How could I hate someone I don’t even know? Sometimes people really tend to exaggerate their use of language and misunderstood all the nonverbal cues.
These days I still received comments from other people that I don’t know. Of course, again my “eyes” were the culprits. So I asked my friends about it, if I was really “mataray” looking. The result of that were series of first impressions. They said at first sight I was a bit snobbish. But they told me that’s just their first impressions of me, all that was obliterated once they got to know the real me. So that just proves that what you see can really fool you. Seeing, for me doesn’t really reflects the truth but the shallow part of it.
When I was called a snob it really didn’t hurt me that much. But when this boy called me a “nigger” back in the fourth grade, I was furious and I cried. Of course that was my initial reaction, because I am aware that “nigger” is a very vulgar and an offensive term even for dark-skinned people. I’m not even dark skinned I’m brown skinned, duh! I’m Filipino, go figure.
Today, when I recall that moment, I just can’t help but laugh. Because I was very vulnerable back then, now I learned to be strong and not get easily affected by words.
You know I realized that language, symbols as they are, can be offensive because society attach or impose meaning to it that does not necessarily reflect reality. Symbolic interaction also suffers from overstatement (Griffin) like what happened to me. Although we think our four senses may be working just fine, the messages they send get scrambled in our brain (Griffin). Studying communication and language really opened my mind to new horizons. It’s a study not like any other; I think that I’m going to enjoy this journey discovering the art of communication. I am hoping for many great adventures, soon!