Category: 🌸 Identity & In-Between
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Between Labels: Growing Up With a Mixed Identity
On being understood in fragments. 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…
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The Checklist: Burnout from Overachieving
When doing everything right feels wrong. I used to love checklists.I loved the certainty of them.The way a tick could turn effort into proof. I’d been trained for this long before spreadsheets, learning silence as a performer. Master’s degree: done.Job title: presentable.Promotion: done.Visas in different countries: approved.LinkedIn summary: glowing. On paper, I was doing everything…
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California Sun: Cultural Whiplash After Moving Countries
The strange ache of starting over in a place that looks perfect. When I think of California, I think of people who don’t apologize for existing.Confidence. Volume. Space.Freedom like it’s their middle name.After all, isn’t that what America sells?Volume. Expansion. No shrinking. Growing up, we had satellite TV, a whopping twenty channels to choose from.And…
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Offstage: Identity Loss After Social Media Performance
The quiet right before I meet myself. The shift began quietly.A slow withdrawal I barely noticed. For years, my life lived on a screen,curated for an audience I couldn’t see,but never stopped performing for. Every moment became a potential post.Every joy, something to polish.Every version of me… a performance I knew by heart. I was…
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Drift: Expat Grief and the Search for Belonging
Somewhere between where I came from and where I’m going. I left home nearly a decade ago, carrying something I didn’t have language for yet. First stop: the capital.I told my mom it was just for my undergrad.She wasn’t thrilled, but I promised I’d be back after graduating.(Spoiler: I did not.) The capital was exactly…