I can't escape my ethnicity.

I have constant visual reminders of it.  All the time I look in the mirror and see my ungainly face and what I see is the heritage of my ancestors, which includes various indigenous cultures.  And while they may seem noble and brave and fierce fighters, they also have inelegant facial structures and often look angry when in fact they're tired or sad or contemplative.  That is the heritage I see radiating from my face.

I also cannot escape that the simple foods which comprise my culture are going to be forever a part of my diet.  I may try to act the gourmet, but in reality a lot of the foods I eat are very simple peasant dishes which may be gaining somewhat of a cachet in contemporary American society for being the "exotic" thing that's in and hip these days, but when I look at those dishes I just see things that poor people developed to eat and provide sustenance to their families, i.e. dishes with very little real sophistication to them.

I myself am not sophisticated either.  I may attempt to be hyperintellectual and a deep thinker, but deep within me resides a primal self, a heart that shows itself too much and a soul that gives too much away.  The mad passionate Latina I swore I could never be is in reality not that far away from my very essence, nor am I particularly comfortable with shutting her away in favor of the cool elegance that I dream I could be but in fact can never be.

Moreover, I may be excited to share my culture's/heritage's native language with others who are well versed in it, but I fail to see how it could be construed as "exciting" or something other than a language that most of its learners take up as a necessity.  It will never gain the respect of some of its sister languages, i.e. French or Latin, nor will it be considered truly "important" IMO.  It just sounds as clumsy as we seem to the people looking from the outside in.

Also, the idea of the Latin lover has long since been proven to be the stuff of fantasy, relegated to the same section of fiction that stories of unicorns and magical rainbows exist within.  In reality, far too many of my male counterparts are uncultured, crude Neanderthals, or rude and subversively hostile chauvinists who are only far too good at hiding their hostilities to create a veneer of passion, an artifice of swoonability.  That is why I cannot trust any of these chiseled alpha males; I know only too well what resides beyond those visages.

I cannot escape who I am.  Up until now I have had no problems with that.  But after a period of self-examination which has led to this posting, I feel instead great dread and consternation over this.  "Proud to be Latina"?  Maybe not.