Who am I? Who do I want to be?

Hello you lovely, wonderful, inspiring citizens of the world!
I have recently been doing some thinking about who I am as a person and whether that is the person that I want to be. Part of the reason that this matters is that I am a twenty year old person in college. However, the more pressing reason for this is that the current political climate in the United States is unacceptable and inexcusable.

Alright, so here's the deal people. I have been seriously wondering whether "who we are" is a choice we are in any position to make.  In the United States, we are told that it is possible to be whatever you want to be when you grow up. The flip side of this, however, is that each of us is born with an outward identity that we will probably never be able to change. The ability to decide how people are going to see you is a privilege. People are always going to see me a certain way because I have a racial identity that does not fit into a neat check box and I have natural hair. I feel like part of the problem that many of us mixed race people end up facing is a fight against racial identity which was never ours in the first place.
I have hopes that I can still be the person I aspire to be. I want to be an inspiration, to be a creative force in the universe. I hope that I can be a kinder person, a better person, and an understanding one. I strive to be a bigger person, a less sarcastic person, and a more socially active individual. The truth of the matter is that I can only really work with what I've been given. I have to work with flat feet and bushy hair, with spindly ankles and hands that reach for clothes other people would never wear. The privilege of making choices surrounding the way that other people see me is hard. There is no easy to display your mind on your sleeve. I just really want to figure out if I can learn to love the person that I already am instead of fighting to be someone completely different, and I recognize that this in itself is a privilege.

Alaska is already an interesting place because of how far removed it feels from the rest of the United States. Sometimes it feels like the decisions made here are somehow not going to do anything for or to the rest of the United States of America. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that this was the land of the free and the home of the brave. I can think of nobody who fits those words better than refugees. I am not a refugee; I have  the privilege of sitting in my dorm room and typing these words on a laptop covered in crumbs instead of slogging through icy water with my hungry children and the two belongings we could salvage.

These probably will not be the last words that I say on this matter, but I'll leave you all with this: the whole world could do with some more love right now. Is this how we're trying to go about it?
We should all be allowed to achieve our dreams, no matter how big or small!
I love you all,
Elena Giselle