u/Miftuh2170

I'm Armenian. I'm born and grew up in western Europe, with immigrants grandparents. For context I look very white, chat gpt said of my pic "likely baltic, nordic or russian ancestry". I have extremely pale/rosy skin, green eyes (that my grandmother always looked at saying it was the exact same as my genocide survivor great grandmother, super blonde hair that turned bronde - brownish blonde (русые) now. I'm very christian, have a "stereotypical russian name" too (Armenian surname of course). I'm not mixed Russian or anything just Armenian. But my grandparents grew up like most Armenians in the Soviet union (in Armenia proper then in another part of the Caucasus), they had all stereotypical Russian objects and food like kokhloma, jostovo platters little lacker boxes icons etc, pelmeni borshch ogurets kasha etc (obvously specific armenian food too manti lavash everything), even taught me to speak Russian, and friends and family members that are Russian, Ukrainians, Poles (now I have a boyfriend he is slavic too, he is balkan slavic so we have even more in common being oppressed by ottomans, dolma, reading future in coffee ...) ... And in the country I grew up caucasian=white, my country was literally on the caucasus, and I looked the same as all my european classmates so Obviously I was white, and the culture , religion, food, communist trauma I grew up with, is super similar to slavs/romanians/balkan etc, and even when visiting the country its super cold communist architecture orthodox churches so Obviously for me I was eastern european. And in the news people say "Armenia candidate EU" etc so for me it was a closed question. Now my father/grandmother is dead, I felt need to connect more with my roots so I looked up plenty pages on Armenia on Instagram. (i dont have a pic of me there just my name). Now I see every time plenty of mean comments, saying Armenians are brown skinned, that we came from India, that we are 0% European, comparing us to Iranians and Arabs etc. I said I was fully white and European as an Armenian and got a comment laughing at me. I know it sounds stupid but I really feel extremely bad about all of this, it is making me incredibly distressed, all my life I was very white, very eastern european (even guys have a saying for us "the girls of the east" for like stereotypical blonde girl from Russia/Ukraine that look like models, I have been called it several times by guys, (im very tall and thin too). Now people on the internet say I should have more in common with Lebanese and Iranians etc that with Russians ?? And that I'm not really white or eastern European but a larper ? In the country I grew up we did have plenty of middle eastern and north african immigrants, never once it crossed my mind I could have anything in common with then, not only they looked super different from me, they were muslims. My family hated all muslims, at school I learn how they had to be stopped in southern france and that it was the foundation of western europe etc, and at home I learn what muslims did in the caucasus and balkans, and then in the news (you will get it if you are in the country I grew up or around) you get all the day this discourse about the hijab, the migrants, terrorism, laicity ... And I don't care I have nothing against muslims I know some nice ones, but like now I see all these people online calling me and my country "asian" "brown" "close to arabs and Iran" etc. And like I look myself in the Mirror I look perfectly white I speak Russian I'm a christian? No one ever doubted I was European to my face, but then people who talk about people like me say this? I feel like I am going crazy, everyone is invalidating my identity and calling us wannabe european (when council of europe, eu, president of Poland etc literally called us european). I just feel so bad because being eastern european is a very important part of me that I feel like is being taken away, and people try to force me in some group of "middle eastern" where every country I don't relate in the slightest, nor the way they look, their religion, their climate their language their history their food etc. And like I never really identified that much with the country I grew up in either, there is a huge culture of like "everyone is a citizen regardless of race" but I never really felt that way for myself, I identify by my ethnicity (and I love being Armenian, the uniquely armenian food not present in russia, our very long history of being the first christian country and resisting islamisation... and I love my Armenian family members (most are dead now)), and also I felt like I had in common with other eastern europeans in our country a whole lot (that I would never have had if I was not armenian, people of my country call all of us "countries of the east" and have 0 interest in it. Idk what to do I feel so exhausted and bad having to defend my culture and ethnicity, having to find arguments for it, I never felt anything and was never thought of as anything other than a white (eastern) european growing up now it seems like the algorithm know what makes me type comments so it give me exactly the type of content to trigger me. I know the first advice is "leave instagram" and I agree, but I really need help resolving my identity crisis and to tell me that im not crazy and have not hallucinated my race and skin colour all my life.