I'm not just an "Asian girl"

I was just minding my own business in my Biology class, when a girl from the group of people sitting behind me pulled her eyes back and the people there laughed. I was in my own world and I didn’t even realize it was happening because I was so focused on my schoolwork. My seat-mate told me what had happened the day after. We filed an incident report and I put two names on mine. Only one of them got “disciplined.” They came back from being pulled out of class and whispered to their friends about how I reported them for being racist. They whisper so loud.

A few weeks later, another kid from the same group kept asking, “Where are all the Asian kids in this class?” He then looked at me and said, “Oh there’s Waldo!” I didn’t say anything. One day I was absent from school, and that kid who called me Waldo came up to my friends and asked, “Do you know that Asian girl that sits here? She reported my friend, did you guys have anything to do with that?” My friends ignored him. I talked to the person who called me Waldo, I asked him something along the lines of, “What did you mean by that when you called me Waldo the other day?” He proceeded to deny it ever happened. I told him repeatedly that I wasn’t just an “Asian girl” and I told him my name. My teacher saw and he said to the kid, “What’s her name?”. I guess it flew past his head since he said he didn’t get my name and asked me again.

Ever since then I said it wouldn’t affect me, but it did. I woke up screaming in the middle of the night because I had a dream someone as being racist towards me. I didn’t realize how severe it had impacted me until I actually repeated what had happened to my counselor. The next week I was spiraling back into isolating myself and slowly seeping into depressive episodes. I skipped school for 3 days straight because I felt so horrible.