The main reason that I feel like I'm a "bastard" is this. I have no strong ties to any one country growing up. If it were easy I would of been just Chinese/Japanese. But I'm Chinese/Japanese, with Thai influence because of my father, with a strong Japanese influence from my mother, and born and raised in the USA. There is no one strong identity, but multiple. Celebrating Christmas, New Years, Lunar New Years, Songkran, Easter, 4th of July, and Thanksgiving. All these holidays, all these intersections of culture and identity make it near impossible to really identify myself to anything. I know just being Asian American can be difficult, but for me I'm Asian and pretty much Asian. I'm not Japanese, I'm not Chinese, I'm not American. I'm this weird hybrid of cultures and ethnic identities that has no anchor or foundation in anything other than myself. In my youth, and even now, I've always tried to identity who I am, what I am, and how does that lived out?
I do wonder if Japan is in some way trying to find that. I wonder if the drive to be here is like a Salmon trying to swim back home. I really don't have an answer for that. Mostly because I'm not Japanese, I won't be Japanese, and I can't be Japanese. Because Japan won't ever receive me to be Japanese, but a foreigner who is Japanese-like. I mean it's the same feeling I had in the US. Where I was born and raised American, acted American, and spoke American English. Yet it wasn't enough, I was still "other". The question of, "so where are you really from?". Part of me didn't fully want to be American. I tried being a Christian in America and that was worse, because a part of me never felt like I could be me. I wasn't white enough, I wasn't Asian docile enough, and above all I wasn't like everyone else (both in act, thought, and appearance). This isn't bashing against an idea or culture, but it is something I've been dealing with. Something I've been unraveling in my own life and to be honest, it won't ever go away. For the rest of my life, I am a ethnic vagrant, a culture less hobo if that is a good metaphor.
I feel like a sheep in wolf's clothing and it was fairly obvious. Yet, I've thrived under these clothes and somehow have made friends with wolves. I've made friends from different cultures, background, and identities. The main reason that I did was because that is how I survived. There is really no other way around it. Navigating through the waters of people as we flow in and out of each other's lives. It's hard, it's tiring, and above all it won't stop.As tiring and exhausting as it sounds, that is what life is made up to be. A constant struggle that we try to figure out life. Trying to find the easiest path, the simplest path, the path that gives me (and you) joy in life. I have learned to embrace my multiethnic cultures, my multiethnic friends, and my multiethnic self. If I can't, then maybe I'll just float downstream instead of upstream, it's tiring.
