Identity Crisis #3: Am I White?

This is a better written off shoot of one of my other identity crises. Despite being Chinese/having an "Eastern" background sometimes I still feel like I'm an Orientalist/appropriating other cultures.

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When I look in the mirror I don't see a Chinese person. I don't see a Jewish person or a lesbian. I don't see a boy or a girl. I don't know what I see. I think I see someone who is just scared of being anything.

I was born in Canada to immigrant parents but to immigrant parents who themselves had been raised in Canada. My dad's family moved to Toronto when he was around 10 and my mother's family moved to Montreal when she was around 5. They were educated in Canada and have not lived outside of Canada in over 20 years or maybe ever (since they moved here)?

I was raised in the suburbs in a fairly white neighbourhood in a middle-class family. There was enough money for me to play sports and have toys and have food everyday and also pay medical bills because my mother was ill (though I didn't think of these things when I was a kid). I went to high school and there were, like, 3 black kids. I think there was one other Chinese kid in my grade. The "biggest" minority were the Jewish kids, about 5 or 6 in the sports program my dad had enough money to pay for. Everyone else was white. This is not to say "I'M SO OPPRESSED" this is actually to say I grew up in an extremely white setting -- so much so that I accidentally let slip "other white people" in reference to myself to Laura in February and she asked me if I considered myself white. And I've thought a lot about it since then.

This is the opposite of "I'm oppressed". When I fill out job applications and they ask me if I'm part of a minority group and list a bunch of options, I feel like I'm exploiting something when I mark off "Chinese" (I don't, however, feel bad about marking off "woman"). Being Chinese has, luckily, never limited my options, at least not that I know of. I don't think I've ever not gotten a job for being Chinese, though once I didn't get a job because I don't speak Cantonese.

I've lived my life in white neighbourhoods, gone to school with white kids, played sports with white kids, had as much money as the average white person, have been taught mostly the same values as non-religious white kids. If you went into my house without knowing who it belonged to, you would probably never guess "Chinese". You might guess "Jewish" if you search really hard and find our menorah, but then you would probably be confused by my step-mom's Christmas decorations. The Chinese food we usually eat is take-out. Just like other white people and Jews on New Year's eve (JKKK).

I have had the opportunities that white, middle-class people my age have had. If asked who I identify most with, between a Chinese person from China and a white person from North America, I would choose a white person from North America. But in some situations among non-asians I can't help but feel extremely Chinese. I've gotten weird questions like "Do you have statues of Buddha in your home?", or people will say something about China and might add in a "no offense" in there (what even?) or ask me if I know the answer (I don't). Someone once told my friend that she thought I was "pretty for an Asian". It used to bother me that people assumed I knew things about China because in my mind I was so clearly not Chinese that I just couldn't understand why people would think I would know. I understand better now (but that doesn't make it right). When the subject of China comes up I suddenly feel extremely conscious of looking like a Chinese person.

But I feel like an impostor in a half-Chinese person's body. I know very little about China. Before I took a class on China last semester pretty much all I knew about Chinese culture was that General Tao chicken is not an authentic Chinese dish. I didn't even know which city my family was from or which dialect of Chinese they spoke.

When I look in the mirror I don't see a Chinese person. I definitely don't look Jewish. I don't even consider myself a real Jew, in fact, my half-assed attempts to celebrate major holidays are probably an insult to real religious people. I consider myself more "queer" than "gay" or "bisexual" because I'm still trying to figure myself out, but queer people can look like anyone.

I don't see a white person either though. I know I'm not white, I just have white privileges, for the most part, right now. What does that make me? (Answer: confused).

when you wait for the dawn to crawl through the screen like a burglar to take your life away*

I am a 20 year old getting my BA in Creative Writing with a minor in Political Science and yeah, I know those are two completely different things.

My therapist told me there are steps to becoming [x]. Like there are steps to becoming anything. Like if I want to be a writer then I have to do this this this this this this and this and this like everybody else and then I will be a writer. And if I want to be something else then I will have to do all the steps to become that. I said I feel like I should be doing more things right now. I said my life feels boring and like a habit. My therapist said what did I expect I am an undergrad I am doing all that I am supposed to be doing right now.

I grew up thinking there was a world of possibilities for me. I could be anything. Anything! Anything in the whole world! When I was 12 we had to present a project to our class of what we wanted to be when we grew up. I wanted to be a hockey player. I told my teacher I didn't need to learn math because I would be a hockey player and I could pay someone to be my agent and do that shit for me. I wanted to go to the olympics.

Then I learned that women cannot (yet) be professional hockey players (unless you're Hayley Wickenheiser (but you're not)); they have to pay to play and have jobs on the side. Or, really, have a job and play hockey on the side. And there are 80 trillion people in Canada who play hockey, and ~23 players on the olympic hockey team, so, yeah, you do the math. I can't.

Anyways, the moral of that little story is that I learned I can't be just anything. So in high school I decided I wanted to be a writer, which was the other thing I was good at. I liked to write fiction but I really wanted to be a poet because I loved to read and write it. Cool, but you know where this is going right. The moral of this story is that I can write poetry but I can't be T.S Eliot (toilets) and I had good ending for this sentence but I can't remember it.

Blah, blah. That's depressing, yada, yada. But I'm still doing what I like to do, which is nice. Only now, instead of being confident that YES I WILL BE A MOTHERFUCKING WRITER LIKE JK ROWLING i am terrified by the statistics and the idea that I will have to work a part-time job at American Eagle to make rent because only 5 people will read my poems and only 1 person will buy it because everything is available online for free. And I am terrified that I'm only average. That my writing is mediocre. That I am good, but just "good", and not like, Irving Layton Award Finalist good. You know? Ever felt like you were just "average"?

I was wondering, as I left my therapists office, when adults lose their sense of possibility. When is this shift from thinking there's more than one way to do things, to being convinced that everyone who doesn't walk in a straight line is lost? I feel like I am on the cusp of maybe realizing that I do need to do this this this this this this and this and this to "become" a "writer". And I'm doing it? I am totally following this nice little path that's been paved for me. Is a BA is the new high school diploma? What is life?

Part of me is trying to cling to this idealistic rebellious free-thinker hopeful defy-all-odds mover shaker dreamer achiever view of the world. Is the 'real world' a box that, once you go inside of, you can never get out of?

Katrina dropped out of college but she's one of the smartest people I know. And when she writes, she has 10 times more stories to tell than I do. See, I want to be a writer, but I don't have much to say, which might be a weird thing for me to say as I've had this blog for over 2 years now.

It all just sounds average to me. Like everyone else feels the same way as me and we are all going to write the same thing.

*bukowski wrote this

Tomorrow Never Knows What It Doesn't Know Too Soon

Today is the last day of 2009. Tomorrow is going to be an entirely new decade. I don't know what to think. I guess a lot of people are doing year end reviews and whatever. I don't really have the energy to do that because I can't remember things because I'm old now. Jk! Next year I turn 20, so this is my last year as a teenager. Kind of a scary thought.

Yesterday I was going over in my mind every month of 2009 to think of eventful .. events and I couldn't remember what I did for march break. I did nothing.

Significant events of 2009 in chronological order: meeting katrina, losing the hockey finals, working for autostraddle, getting a "real" job, going to new york for the autostraddle rodeo disco, going to new york for the second time, quitting hockey, being back at school and being happy, going to dc for the march on washington.

It's unlikely that I will ever link to the first 3 months of this blog ever again.

Significant events that I expect will occur in 2010:

January 8-13: NYC

January 11: it will be this blog's 1 year anniversary. weird, huh?

January 17: T&S concert

January 20: back to school ("significant"?)

Everything after that is up in the air. I expect to receive a letter or something from UBC either accepting or rejecting my application and from there I guess I'll have to make some decisions. I want to move into an apartment in the spring/summer. I want to make more trips to NY. I want to still have a job to pay for said trips. Maybe I'll go to Europe. Maybe I'll be in love. I don't know what's going to happen. It's kind of exciting. Hopefully my friends still like me in 2010. Maybe some a really good movie will come out. Maybe a really good book will come out, though I feel that's unlikely. Maybe I'll write a really good book.

Anyways. 2009 was a pretty good year and 2010 looks pretty good too. I mean, I think I'm finally growing up, or whatever. And I'm glad I spent 2009 with the people I did. Because I love love. And disobeying everything my eighth grade teacher taught me about starting sentences with "and", "but", and "because". (I'm JKing about that. Grammar lesson to follow in 2010). Happy New Year!

If I Murdered A Senior Citizen Would It Still Be The Same

I had a few ideas for tonight's post, the first being Authority capital A and really just an excuse for me to rip into my boss at whose hands I've had two really crappy days at work because he both infuriated and humiliated me two days in a row. The second being the irony that someone whose friendship I once sought 5 years ago is now requesting my friendship on facebook. The third is that I almost caught the dreaded swine flu.

None of these topics are really suitable for a whole blog post; I don't want to publically ("publically" - who reads this?) bash my boss (though I'm trying really hard not to write some swear words right now nannyfucking motherfucker oops) because it's something private, and while the irony of this facebook request is interesting to me I would probably be so vague about it no one would understand anyway (though I do have the distinct pleasure in saying that I have so far not responded to it...). I don't have anything to say about the swine flu except that I almost thought I almost had it and then I didn't.

Instead I've decided to do a post about things that have almost happened to me or things that I almost did -- which is a bit uncharacteristic considering that I hate dwelling on the past because it only serves to confuse me and I am already very confused (why? I don't know). I actually find it kind of fascinating to think about how different my life would be if things had gone the other way. Fascinating, but if I think about it too much I would probably kill myself because there's no way to find out and that would drive me mad. Unless someone figured out how to time travel, etc., where's Albus Dumbledore? No wait he's dead, like MJ and Farrah Fawcett about whom everyone forgot. Harry Potter the movie is coming out soon. What am I talking about? Oh yeah.

5 Things That Almost Happened To Me But Didn't
(in no real order, numbering is just because I feel like they need to be numbered)

5. I almost didn't make the Dawson hockey team

See, this would've most certainly have changed my first year in CEGEP quite a bit. For one thing, I probably would've been happier but I never would have met up with Katrina in DC. I also probably would never have seen a "councellor" who looks like Sandra Bernhard or that other therapist I saw twice but stopped because she was terrible/TERRIBLE and swallowed weirdly, which you may think trivial but you never met her, so.

4. I almost didn't switch programs in grade 9

The only reason I switched was because my schedule on the first day of grade 9 was so scary and crappy that I didn't want to stay. I probably would have been happier had I not switched programs -- the last 3 years of high school were the worst of my life. However I wouldn't have met That Person Who Moved to Iowa nor that other person whose name I am also too embarassed to put here. I probably wouldn't have felt as alienated, depressed, stupid, confused, or rejected as I did but I guess it's a good thing (what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, y'know, whatever).

3. I almost did something that one night at that one party

zomg life would have been so different wouldn't it. No point in explaining this one; I like to be vague and mysterious, keep people on their toes.... jk.

2. I almost didn't go to New York

I had to work like 15 days in a row so I could go to New York but it was soo worth it. Best decision ever. Canadian border security people thought I was crazy (they're obvs wrong) and searched my bag (#1 is I almost got arrested for smuggling the marijuana over the border. jk again. see? not crazy).

1. I almost murdered a senior citizen at a bank

JK that was Riese Michael Jackson Someone Else. Er... I mean there are lots of other things that Almost Happened but like really, I can't dwell on them/think about them it sucks too much. I could say I Almost Didn't Punch A Hole In My Wall but that would be a lie. Oh I know! When I was little I almost mailed an envelope of about $10 in change (my life's savings) to scholastic so I could be part of the Mary-Kate and Ashley fanclub or whatevs.

We Are Dawson: Dream Big (Day 30)

I'm pretty sure the people this is written for are not going to read this, but then again I'm not really sure who I'm writing this for.

Montreal, I'm starting to like you. East Coast, you're showing me a better side. Maybe it was Washington, it must've been Washington, it must've been the spring weather, the buildings and streets which were so concrete and so cold but so refreshing. Maybe it's the Montreal night life, maybe it's someone I met, maybe it's Dawson, maybe it's mememe, or the weather, or the start of something new. Montreal, I'm starting to appreciate you [unintentional rhyme].

I think I love and hate that I didn't play the final game of the tournament. I think the people that need to read this are not going to read it, then again I'm not sure who those people are. I think I managed to hold it all together, I know I cheered a lot, I know I was positive, I know that it tore me up inside. When Rougeau sat next to me and said that This was it, we need a big shift from you, Choo, come on, I nodded and didn't say anything cause I knew there was no next shift for me. And she went on and she came back and I was still sitting there, the same place I sat all game.

I guess I should've seen it coming, right, not like I didn't work hard or played badly, no, this is what I signed up for, being a rookie and all. This is what I agreed to and I knew it, I'm surprised it came so late in the year and I wish it had been any other game and I wish so many things about this but it's over now. We won. I did my part, the best that I could, 'cause it's no use crying, and I won my own battle by overcoming that. I fought my own battle on our own side and I won in my own way.

And it's not a question of deserving or punishment, no, there are people who deserved it more than I did at other times than these. There are times when I should've been benched and I wasn't. Those things don't matter, it's a small step on a larger scale. I know that I am one of many, or one of a privileged group, and this was not a defeat on my part but a victory for all of us.

Only one person has said something to me about it, and I appreciate it more than anything. The tournament was a challenge, for us as a team and for each of us as individuals. It's nice that mine was acknowledge, if only by one person. It means something because others have failed in my position. So, thank you, you know who you are. And I don't think you'll read this, but at least this time I know who this is for.

Montreal, I'm happy to be back. It felt like a long time, five days. I know I'll want to leave again soon, but for now, for now.. you're alright, Montreal.

"Here is where loveliness can live with failure, and nothing's complete.
I love how we go on."
-Stephen Dunn "Loves"