Thoughts.com Blogs - A first dip in the water

So here it goes

How do I start?

Well, I don't have much good experience with blogs, now that I think about it. It seems there are always some idiots out there who want to leave terrible comments or links or something and create fake accounts just to do so. I guess my strongest feeling on my past blogs is shame. Yes, shame at the emotions that I expressed at those times,( especially about past boyfriends.) But really, I hope this is a way to start anew.

These are just some of my thoughts and feelings at the moment.
(Hopefully there won't be another full-of-himself prick who will call this an "attention whore" move.)

So this year, being my second year here at UCLA, I've discovered something shocking about myself that has been bothering me quite a bit. I'm Asian. I know, right? Who'd of thought? But really, I've come to love it and loathe it. I find myself wishing that I was some white girl with beautiful blue-green eyes and autumn red hair. But when I look in the mirror I see someone short, with straight black hair (and light brown highlights), big almond-shaped brown/black eyes, and constantly winning and losing a battle with her curves. I look around and find that all my friends here are Asian. Just like me. Quoting from Hiro Nakamura of Heroes, "Homogenous. Yogurt." See the funny thing here is, coming into UCLA, I was I guess you could say, colorblind. I didn't realize that race would be an issue for me in finding friends. Back home, my high school and neighborhood being mostly Asians, I was one of the few Asian kids who had friends that were--dun dun dun!!!--NOT Asian! Strangely, it seemed so normal to me back then, but now that part of me sticks out in my mind like a sore thumb.

I guess it's something that's begun to grow into a pride issue. "Oh, your friends are all Asian? My group back home we have half-Italian half-Taiwanese, Indian, Korean, half-Indian British half-white British, Hawaiian, etc." (yes folks, there are a lot more) But it's never been an issue with me before. I've never in my life described these dear friends of mine by their race alone, and yet now I find myself doing so more than ever. And I ask myself, "WHY?" Maybe I'm just struggling to define myself, to somehow appear different from all the other Asian kids here in UCLA. (I'll always remember that article in the school newspaper first year about how terrible it is that Asian Americans now are the majority race here at UCLA, accompanied by a giant panda wearing an "asian" hat and pulling the school) (Racist..) I feel as if I'm being swallowed in this sea of dark hair and yellow skin. Small eyes and high GPAs. Pushy first-generation parents. And so many other stereotypes that I can't stand. It's like this closing darkness around me that threatens to be the only part of me that defines me. And I hate it. I guess it doesn't help that this quarter I'm taking two classes related to race, both of which so far are talking about how the "American Race" first treated Asian Americans like shit and all the other wrong-doings and blah blah blah.

I feel an urge to highlight all the ways I'm different from "all the other Asians". I feel this screaming inside of me that just keeps pushing me to do something different. And I guess so far I haven't done much, for the other voice in my head is yelling at me in a hilarious Chinese-accented voice, "What you say you don't like Asian hahh?" and then proceeds into the "yo maatha so fat" joke by Russel Peters. Basically, I'm ashamed of feeling like this. And here is my constant struggle with my racial identity. Don't call me a twinkie, or a banana or whatever. Unless deep down in that white filling there's a yellow core. Hmm...that'd be a weird twinkie.

But so far all I've said is how I've loathed my Asianness. How do I love it? Do I love it?

Of course I do. Duhhhhh. (But not really duh.) I love the food, first of all, and will never give that up for the whole world. I love having a culture that can boast over a thousand years of history, language, art, clothing, customs, etc. I love how there are so many different dialects in all the Asian countries that really all of us are "mutts". (I myself am half Hakka, quarter Taiwanese, quarter mainland Chinese) (Shit I just identified myself by race again.) I like being multilingual, and I like that I can enjoy the culture I was born into as well as the culture I am living in.

The problem lies with how much I am going to let my race identify me. What fraction of me is chopstick-using and what fraction of me rocks out to Vogue in the Movement? (my new underground rock obsession) It definitely isn't half-half. So what is it?

For a while I just let this problem sit and simmer, letting myself live a forced color-blind world. Then I realized that in all my classes so far here, there's only been one non-Asian girl that's approached me, and all the other non-Asian people sit far away from me. (Now that I think about it, she was half-Filipino. Reduce that count to zero.) le sigh. And here I realize that was my sad attempt to "blame it on the white people". I'm sorry.

--Jeff, this is where you ruined my steam.--

I think I'm completely off my train of thought now. I like squirrels. But not the ones on campus, They're scary. and fat.