a jigsaw puzzle that can never be completed

[unnecessary sidebar or pre-amble or whatever this is considered, i have tried beginning this blog post like 3 times already but the connection in my room is so bad that i had to migrate to the bathroom, and i am embarrassed and ashamed to admit that some of my best writing is done while smoking a cigarette. i'm trying to quit and wrote "last pack" on the most recent pack of spirits i purchased, and i'm down to my lucky three…well, two and a third now because i just clipped the third of those three]

recently i've been trying to do some healing of the deeply internalized racism i didn't know existed within me. it's interesting, that two of my closest friends (friends is not the right word, they're family at this point) are both half filipino and half white. it's because to a certain extent i believe they could relate to the feelings that we'd share in spaces of such overwhelming whiteness (one i met through youth group…which is a white, wealthy, jewish space). anyway the internalized racism was a residual effect of being raised "colorblind" and not being brought into spaces where i was racially the majority. growing up i never fit in with the asians, because my upbringing was intrinsically different (they all played instruments and were in test prep and lived organized, structured, disciplined lives while i desperately tried to appease whoever the authority figure was in the space. i was indeed that kid who accidentally called their teacher "mom" from time to time which is highkey a red flag if you work with kids but hey, i'm not a licensed professional - just speaking from experience). and in jewish spaces, the chinese facet of my identity was rarely acknowledged, just being grouped in along with all the other ashkenazi jews. i've always had three names, my government name, my hebrew name, and my chinese name.

my government name was the most commonly used, with some variation depending on your proximity (my family called me julie, friends would eventually start to call me jules), my hebrew name invoked by religious folks, most often my rabbi or wheover was gabbi-ing services, and my chinese name used very rarely (only one friend semi-used it, calling me ling-ling sometmes. funnily enough they were one of my mixed filipino-white friends but they were deeply problematic in their own regard, and had a lot of healing of their own that needed to be done.) people will talk about having borderline personality disorder or split personalities, but what do you call it when you exist so differently in each space that you're in because only certain aspects of who you are, are acknowledged, uplifted, and celebrated in each space? what do you call such a fragmented experience, and it's effects?

i think about my librarian's question more often than i expected to, she being the first to introduce the term "identity crisis" and then this year feeling like a never-ending one.

as i lean in to my chinese/east asian roots, my relationship with my mother has improved which is a comforting and heartening gauge of progress.

ironically enough, it's through absorbing the east asian culture that i am learning the beauty of filial piety which is something so foreign in western or european culture, funnily enough. the comparison between the west and the east is stark, and speaks volumes about cultural values and norms.

i am currently entrenched in my first kdrama, it's okay not to be okay, and it's really helping address some of the convoluted mess that is my understanding of family and love and trauma interlocking. the themes of parental abuse/loss, responsibility, PTSD, and mental health are all broached and explored in very artful ways. there's a scene where gang-tae's repressed memories are unlocked and he realizes that memories that he'd been replaying over and over for the ways in which they hurt him and villainized his late mother were not the whole memory, and that there were really beautiful loving moments to follow up the painful parts. talk about a SEEN (scene haha get it? it was funnier in my head but i'm gonna leave this here anyway). i felt something inside me shift, as the tears ran down my face and i really empathized with the character - and was especially appreciative of the nuance employed by the producers of this.

funnily enough though, cigarettes feel like such a part of EA culture too that i feel a little connected to my heritage when i smoke but maybe that's the addiction talking, trying to justify this nasty, especially destructive habit in the name of self-discovery/explanation.

either way the point of this was that i'm on the journey and it feels good. right now i've kind of paused everything else to try and collect as many pieces of myself i dropped along the way that i can find, and make sure my foundation is steady, before i enter or try to tackle anything else. if my basic needs aren't met, then i don't think anything else will prosper or grow from my involvement.

all my posts feel like unstructured spewing of my stream of consciousness but i like it that way and i'm tired of feeling like i can't express myself - though i am also trying to reconnect with previous forms of expression (more artistic ones to be precise).

we'll see. i gotta go to sleep because that's what self-care be but thanks for tuning in.

till next time! <3 (i appreciate you for reading ! please feel free to engage/provide feedback or thoughts!)