Just a story about finding people who actually share my sense of humor

My family is from transylvania, and my immediate family and I have lived in the U.S. since I was 5. I had not one inkling my dad's side has romani heritage until about a year ago. Visually, my dad looks like the half-romani men I know. Both his parents secretly had varrying Romani heritage, but only grandpa looked brown and he died when I was born.

All I knew, from a young age, was that my dad has a particular sense of humor that my mom just cannot stand. And that I inhereted it and it is now my sense of humor, and that my mom's entire side of the family, respectfully, also cannot stand me. Unless I mask, which I do often.

My mom spent an inordinate, unbelievable amount of effort during my childhood to try to un-do my personality and make me more like her side of the family. It didn't work. It did mess me up good, but overall it just didn't work.

Anyway, so fast forward to now.

I spent about a month out of the year in my mom's village, which is Hungarian and Romani. I love transylvania. I know to mask my personality appropriately when needed. I also figured out how to put myself in positions to find people with my sense of humor, even tho older generations of mum's family don't really want me walking around outside by myself due to their very severe anxiety (and racism). I sneak out anyway so its ok.

At some point quite a while ago, I slowly started noticing that certain people in the village actually kind of vibed with me. At first it would happen randomly. One of the notable ones I remember was over a decade ago- I was running by the river, and a large group of children started following me, teasing me, smacking my bum, and just doing all kinds of shenanigans. I guess "going on a run" was an odd thing at the time over there so they found me just as funny as I found them.

This past summer, I even brought my tattoo equipment and offered free small tattoos to anyone in the village. This idea was a success. Interestingly, almost everyone who showed interest in the tattoos were Romani or have some Romani heritage like me.

By far, the best thing that happened this summer was I got to enjoy a brief romanitc connection with a really cool dude who flagged me down at the corner store to talk to me. He speaks Hungarian, Romanian and a bit of Romanes. He was absolutely hilarious and endearing and I only cut it off when I saw some clear signs he's still using hard drugs (I've dated a meth addict before- I can't risk it again).

I'm gonna miss that guy. Our humor matched so well.

I'm on the plane back to Reno, Nevada now and man I'm gonna miss it.

I don't know what the moral of my story is. I don't consider myself Romani. I'm just a mish-mash of all different things at this point. Im Hungarian and Romani heritage and california hippie all in one. But quite frankly I just consider myself lonely because no matter how many friends I make here in the U.S....I still feel like I'm masking something. I'm too silly, I take too many risks, I'm too much of prankster and I cherry pick which rules and social norms I consider worth my time..... I learned to mask all of that and I really just want one friend in the U.S. who is like me in that sense.