Personal Narrative: Growing Up And My Family

Even today, I cannot imagine becoming the person that I am without, first, witnessing abuse and being one of three children in a single-parent household. For the longest time, I lived in a poor community, which was primarily inhabited by minorities. Specifically, in my own household, my step father was abusive, and my mother could not afford to leave. Thus, there were two main factors that have had a major affect on me: the social environment where I grew up and my family. These factors influenced me to, both, deviate and conform to specific social norms and values.
To begin, the family structure that I grew up in made me more independent and less concerned about maintaining a romantic relationship. The household that I was raised in was not …show more content…
Romantic relationships were and are a beautiful bonus to a person’s life as my mother confided in me; however, having seen my step father abuse my mother, I avoided romantic relationships. I do not feel the need to maintain a romantic relationship; I do not need a man to be valuable, which is another value my mother taught me. One could say that I became more independent because I didn’t feel incomplete without a relationship. Thus, I deviated from what I was taught. In fact, I do not see not getting married as a loss, and I could not care less if I ever got married. Not putting romantic relationships on a pedestal made me feel—at least, think—that I was not depending on someone; I felt autonomous. Also, not labeling passionate love as a priority taught me that there were different types of relationships that I could rely on—without feeling as if I was depending on someone. Friendships became my main priority, and I saw my friends as my …show more content…
Most of my friends were hispanic, asian and african american, so I see minorities as my equals. In today’s society, it seems as if most people don’t see the importance of minority lives—partially due to individualism and teaching white privilege in schools—but I acknowledge the importance of every person’s life. Acknowledging the value of other people’s lives is a major reason that I support Black Lives Matter; minorities are not treated the same as whites. Even though I am white, I never allowed white supremacy influence me; in fact, I used my white privilege to help minorities because every person who is a minority reminds me of the friends I had while growing up. I deviated from the white supremacist school district that I grew up in, and I had a better understanding of minorities and how their lives operated. Being a white child around minority children made me realize the privileges that I had; however, I refused to abuse my privilege by deriding