Category: 🌸 Identity & In-Between
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The Loneliness of Becoming Whoever the Room Needed
Why social masking started feeling like personality The music is loud enough that everyone has to lean slightly closer to talk. A girl near me is halfway through a dating story everyone else seems instantly invested in. Everyone laughs. I laugh too. Half a second behind everyone else. Just enough time to make sure my…
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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
Everything looked right. My body said otherwise. 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. Growing up, we had satellite TV.A whopping twenty channels to choose from. And with that, a choice between cultures. I went to a Chinese primary school,but my…
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Offstage: When I Stopped Performing My Life on Social Media
I didn’t know who I was without it. I just thought I was living it. For years, it lived on a screen, Photos. Captions. Stories shaped just enough to land a certain way. I posted everything. Dinners.Trips.Night out before they even ended. I was the one with updates.The one tagging everyone.The one making sure it was all…
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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.I promised I’d be back after graduating. I wasn’t. The capital was loud.Fast. I learned quickly.…