On being understood in fragments.

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Humans love labels.
They make things easier.
To know where a person begins and ends.
To decide what to expect.

I’ve always complicated the categories.
Whether that was imposed on me,
or a shape I learned to take,
I’m not entirely sure.
It just kept happening.

One of my earliest memories: primary school.
My Chinese teacher studies my face, then asks for my surname.
I point to my bag. My mum’s handwriting.
“Rice,” I say. (米)

The pause.
A literal pinyin translation isn’t enough when your face doesn’t match.
I was expected to carry a proper Chinese surname.
I still remember her confusion.

It doesn’t stop there.

Years later, university:
“It took me so long to find you on Facebook.”
Again, the name doesn’t match the face.

My first job.
I mention Eid in passing.
My coworker freezes.
Then smiles, fingers linking together like a chain.

“Oh. Now I can relate to you.”

We’ve been working together for a year.

My identity never lands cleanly.
There are always follow-up questions.
Curiosity that feels less like interest and more like an audit.

Where are you from?
No, where are you really from?
What languages do you speak?
What religion do you practice?

Each question, harmless on its own.
Together, they gather weight.
Not aimed at me, but at my origin.

Somewhere along the way,
I start answering before I’m asked.
I start believing confusion is something I owe clarity for.

So I learn to brace.
To compress my life into something efficient.
A version that won’t invite curiosity that feels like audit.

I’d learned early that silence was safer.

It isn’t just my name.
It’s a mixed identity that refuses neat borders or singular cultures.

Overlapping calendars.
Red packets of Chinese New Year bleeding into green packets of Eid.

Decades in Southeast Asia.
Another in London.

I carry accents and habits
like borrowed things that became mine.

I learn to read a room in milliseconds.
What version of me will land here?
What should stay tucked away?

This teaches me fluency.
It also teaches me how to dilute myself.

I catch myself
softening a word, an accent,
swallowing a detail.

My mind moves ahead of me,
choosing the version that ruffles the fewest feathers.

The rest stays unsaid.