Southern Belle.

It may just be me, I don’t know. But every single time I see this on my dash or on someone’s blog or anywhere else, I kind of just breathe a sigh of relief. That’s one more person who cares. That’s one more person who doesn’t hate me.

Because it means so much, especially when all the media is spewing out is that I’m a terrible person and no one wants people like me near them. It means so much because I’m tired of people who won’t sit next to me in class, or who choose to join the longer line at the grocery store because they don’t want to be beside me and my family. It means so much when I have to lift my head any time someone says the words Islam or Muslim because I’m scared that they’ll say something that’ll hurt, when I have to pay attention to the news because who knows what so and so is saying now, who knows which of my people are being attacked now, who knows what’s going to happen to me now.

It means so much because I’ve been given the idea that the world is against me. And a huge part of it may be, but at least I’ve been reminded that some of it, just a small group of people, acknowledges that I’m a person too. That people like me are just that, people.