Learning to accept who you are is difficult
The past couple years of my life have been spent in, for lack of a better word, crisis. Pedalling back on the dramatics, just to clarify, it is my cultural identity that has been in crisis. Now, I know that I am not the first to admit to having issues with self-acceptance, but I also know that I certainly won’t be the last. I am sure that many of you, whomever you may be and whatever life you have lived, can relate to this at some level. As children, the world seemed a lot simpler than it is today. When I was younger, I had a near unbridled sense of acceptance for who I was as an individual. As I grew older, however, somewhere along the way this self-awareness wavered.
Before I go any farther, to provide you with some background information: My parents are immigrants, and they both migrated to Canada from the Philippines over 20 years ago. I won’t delve into too much detail, but it is important to note that, like most immigrants, they came to Canada in search of a life that was better than what their home country could offer them.
Although I was born and raised in Canada, as the child of immigrants, there are certain things about growing up with a dual-membership to the culture club, however, that made life more difficult than need be. For one, the cultural norms that my friends learned from their parents were very different from the cultural norms that my parents tried to pass on to my brother and I.
From an early school age, because I was embarrassed by my parents lack of understanding of western socio-cultural norms, I spent an unnecessarily large amount of my time and energy trying to keep my unmistakably Asian home life underwraps. There was a distinct separation of culture. In essence, by day I forcibly assimilated mainstream western ideals, and by night I switched from English to the tongues of my forefathers.
I grew up in a predominantly white city and lived in a predominantly white neighbourhood. From senior kindergarten up until grade four when I moved schools, I was the only visibly Southeast Asian student in my grade. While I never experienced the brunt of blatant racism, kids can be mean and there was always a sense of being “other.” This was especially so during lunch time, when my mother packed me rice and left over ulam in a thermos, and the rest of the class ate ham sandwiches. I got picked on a lot for not eating something acceptable (lunchables), and eventually asked my mom to stop packing me “weird things” for lunch.
In high school, like most adolescents trying to make it through the quarter-life crisis known as puberty, I drifted. The friends I had weren’t the best influences, and we fed off of each other’s personal problems until we were so engorged with teenage toxicity and self-loathing that I’m surprised my parents didn’t ship me off. In spite of my textbook teenage dirtbag descent into puberty blues, my lack of self-acceptance—and thus, by extension, lack of self-love—was a long time coming.
Looking back at it now, I realize just how stupid and pointless my lack reconciliation between either culture was. It’s ridiculous. Why should I have to change who I am in order to feel like I belong? Being a first-generation Filipina-Canadian is great, and I feel that I can now fully appreciate having a foot in the doorway of two cultures. It provides me with a different perspective on life, and I am able to wholeheartedly acknowledge that I am incredibly privileged to live the way I have and continue to live to this day.
Whenever I ask my parents what they hope for me and my future, they will generally say the same thing: “Anak, we just want you to be happy.”
The problem I had growing up, however, was that from the age of eight onwards, more often than not, I wasn’t ever truly happy. I was busy trying to find a place to fit, and for someone so young, I was tired. Although I am a Canadian citizen and always have been, I felt more out of place in the country I was born in than I rightfully should. Roots are important. Everyone has them, I just had difficulties figuring out where exactly I was supposed to place them.
I cannot begin to fathom the depth of discomfort and feelings of displacement or unease that anyone who has moved from their country of birth have felt—whether they are seeking refuge from war, are in search of a better future, or simply chose to move for the sake of moving. If there is one thing I want to be taken from my long-winded explanation for one of the sources of childhood and teenage discomfort, it is this: Acknowledge your cultural history.
Be unapologetically ethnic. Don’t sell yourself short, being culturally aware of who you are and who other people are, while having respect for both your and their respective cultures, is equivalent to being schooled in cool. It makes you unique. Don’t sacrifice a part of who you are in order to “fit in,” especially if that is what is keeping you from feeling wholly safe in your skin. Wherever your ancestors hail from, and whether or not you are first-generation or seventh-generation—to make things a little more clear and applicable in a broader sense—if you are struggling with feelings of displacement (of any sort, cultural or otherwise) please know that you don’t have to love yourself right off the bat, but the first and most important step towards that self-love is self-acceptance.
Well done, very interesting. However, it’s easy to give advice (such as love and accept yourself) as an adult, but very difficult to follow. The harm has been done and, for some, a lifetime is not long enough to remove the emotional scars.