Read on Twitter
I just want people to understand how painfully lonely it is to be at odds with every part of your identity, your culture, and the land you live on. Being a NB, first-gen Hong Kong Chinese-Canadian who doesn’t speak Cantonese and can’t communicate with my elders isn’t easy.
You feel like you don’t fit in anywhere. Too white to be Chinese, too Chinese to be white, too light-skinned to be oppressed, too educated to have problems, too femme to be queer. I’m always having to prove my identity to other people. I’m tired. I just want to be alive & happy.
If you have a relationship with your grandparents, I will never have that. Because I can’t speak to them. I’ll never know my family’s history beyond what I hear in whispers from my mother. We just smile politely and (used to) give hugs where we barely touch. It hurts.
So, I’m a floater. An observer. Invisible. And when I speak up, I get barked at by oppressors to shut up and just be something to look at, fetishized and objectified. Sexualized even though I’ve never wanted that for myself. I don’t get a choice. I’m a male fantasy. I know that.
Every interaction I have with men, I see how they look at me. As a sexual object first, a checklist of things that they think I am, that they want to conquer. That’s the thing about being Asian and a femme or a woman. You’re here to be conquered. Didn’t you know?
I’m just tired. No one ever asks about my experience because they don’t see all the layers. I’ve hidden it for decades because it was safer, but I’m done. If you want to know me, truly know me, you have to consider all those experiences and how they’ve shaped me.
I don’t get to separate myself from the fact that I have no concept of home. My soul was uprooted from my ancestral land and placed here, on stolen land. I reckon with that every minute of every day.
Where is this thread going? Not sure. I guess I just want people to know that I am more than twitter and Instagram. I’m tired of feeding into a persona where everything is surface level and just kind of ok. Anyway...happy Thursday. Be nice to each other & donate to bail funds
