ka mana'o kaumaha

i just had this thought right now, and i don't know what triggered it...but i was thinking about marriage. not in the sense of wanting to or dreaming about what i'm going to wear and all that other crap, but who. as in what race they're going to be.

oh yeah its that taboo subject again...the one nobody likes talking about. but the thought crossed my mind, like it has before, that if i marry someone who is not hawaiian that my children will be a quarter hawaiian and then if my grandchildren marry non-hawaiians then they will be even less and before you know it...their children none at all. i know some people will say, well, who cares. people are people. and i agree. if i were to meet someone and he were the perfect person for me and he were not hawaiian it wouldn't matter.

but something in me feels this weird responsibility to marry a hawaiian man. if you don't know, there are not too many people of pure hawaiian blood left. people often trip out when i tell them i am half hawaiian. sometimes because they mistake me to be mexican or a whole list of other races, but some are surprised because there are not too many half hawaiians out there, especially my age. i heard a statistic once that in about fifty years or so there will be not one person of pure hawaiian blood left. not one! the ones who are alive (my mother amoung them) are middle aged or older...most of whom married outside their race (like my mother and her brothers and sisters).

can anyone possibly understand how that feels? to know that one day your race will no longer be? i can't even bear to think about it. in this day of sperm banks and in-vitro fertilization, i'm sure there will come a day when they'll probably have to freeze the sperm and eggs of the last remaining few...can you imagine? that one day it might have to come to that? and it shouldn't be this way. and you shouldn't HAVE to worry about the survival of your race -a part of who you are- when you're choosing a partner to marry and have children with. but the missionaries and european explorers who came here, spread their disease, and in a time span of about one hundred years caused the population to drop from 300,000 to 40,000, took that luxury away. i envy people who can make that decision without that horrible thought even crossing their mind.

regg was the first hawaiian boyfriend i had ever had and i did feel a connection to him in a way that i didn't feel with anyone else. i had a feeling he just KNEW, you know? he was someone who could relate to me on this level. if he were here and i were telling him about how i felt he would know what i was talking about in a sense that a non-hawaiian couldn't. i'm not saying that a non-hawaiian couldn't understand, but they just wouldn't be able to relate to it on a gut level. in a real sense.

of course, that didn't work out, so hawaiian or not, in the end thats not what mattered.

sigh. i don't know what to think. i feel so conflicted. its just a depressing feeling, a depressing thought. one that i wish i didn't have to think about.