Underneath my yellow skin

Category Archives: Personal Life

What is forgiveness, part two

Posted on by • 0 Comments

I want to talk a little (lot) bit more about forgiveness.

You know that thing when you say a word enough times in a row and it starts to sound foreign? Like table. Say it repeatedly for a minute, then see if it still has meaning to you.

I mention that because I feel that way about certain words, and not just from repeating them. I wrote yesterday’s post about it, and I want to continue unpacking what forgiveness means to me–and why it is so fraught.

As I said in that post, I was raised to believe that my emotions didn’t matter, that I didn’t matter outside of what I could do for other people. My father was cold, emotionally distant, and deeply selfish. Narcissistic, even, in the classic sense of the word. Not a diagnosis–just how I experienced him as a father. He was obnoxiously sexist–well, let me clarify. He didn’t like anyone in general, but he esppecially hated women. Or rather, put them in a very restrictive box. I’ll give you one example.

The last time he was here, my brother, my mother, my father, and I went to Costco. While we were there or shortly thereafter, my father said it must be so hard for the housewives (and, yes, he used that word) to shop there. I was confused and asked him why he said that. I was pretty sure I didn’t want to know and I should have just kept my mouth shut, but something inside me just would not let me.

This is pretty typical of our relationship, by the way. I know my father is deeply sexist. He has been all my life. I know he is going to say ignorant things about women, and sometimes, I think he does it just to get under my skin. Or at the very least, he simply does not care. I say that because he’ll often preface what he’s about to say with, “I know Minna won’t like this”–then why the fuck say it? It’s on par with, “I”m not sexist, but”–yes, yes you are. Even if you have that one female friend who totally says you’re a feminist, man.

I know my father is goading me. I know I should just let it go, especially now that he has dementia. But I can’t help myself. It’s as if something inside of me just won’t let it go. I’m sure it’s partly the neurodivergency in me, but I am a grown-ass person. I know what he’s doing. I should be better than that.


Continue Reading

Getting out of my comfort zone

Posted on by • 0 Comments

I am a creature of habit. I tend to stick to the same thing day after day. I don’t have a problem eating the same thing on the daily, and it’s comforting to have a routine. I mention this because I’ve been thinking about dating. Just thinking about it. As I’ve mused about it in past posts.

I have waxed poetic about how I envy my brother for being decisive and energetic. When he started dating again, he made his plan and followed it to a T. He signed up with several dating sites and swiped, er, right? Left? Whichever is the ‘yes’ option many times. He put hours a day into dating. In other words, he took it as seriously as a job.

I warned him that Asian men and black women got the least responses on dating apps, but it deterred him not. He did admit it got tiresome at times, but he stuck it out. He averaged a date a week, and in a year, he found the love of his life.

In the process, he went on a trip outside the country by himself for the first time. He found a new layer of confidence in himself that he did not know he had. Over two years later, he’s still with his girlfriend, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen him this happy before. Well, that’s before all the shit that has happened in Minneapolis.

Putting that aside with great difficulty, I want to focus on my brother for a bit longer. When he started dating, I was thinking I might want to try, too. I looked at my OKCupid dating app, but I just couldn’t get into it.

See, here’s the thing. My inertia is way higher than my desire to get laid. I remember how great sex was. Believe me, I love sex. But. I don’t love what I need to do to actually get it. I mean, I probably could get sex fairly easily if I wanted to. Still at my age. But I’m not motivated to actually do anything about it. That’s my problem through and through.

I’ve been reading up on autism. There are articles about how there is no such thing as lazy and how somoene with autism has to fight their own brain to get shit done. This is the hardest thing for me.

Side note: I was looking for a song/video to include in this post as I do. I Googled songs about being the best me or something like that. One was a Bad Bunny song. I had heard a few of his songs, but hadn’t gotten too deep into it. Then, I saw his skits on SNL, and I noticed that he wore dresses in many of them. Somebody said something about him being pansexual and wearing dresses. I


Continue Reading

Looking for lust in all the wrong–well, no–places

Posted on by • 0 Comments

In the last post, I was talking about the possibility of me dating again. I summed it up in the last post, kind of, but I’m going to break it down in this post, kind of.

Here’s the thing. I’ve mostly fallen into my romantic relationships in the past. Meaning, a romantic relationship sprang up out of a friendship. While I have a type (quick recap: short dark hair, nerdy glasses, warm smile, deep voice, square body (thick), a nerd in general, funny, and, weirdly enough, optimistic), it’s not something that I stick to in real life, mostly because as I said, friendship leads to romance, and I don’t restrict my friendships by appearance.

I didn’t really date, either. I started dating my first boyfriend when I was sixteen. That was probably the closest to dating I did. We lived forty minutes apart, so we only saw each other on the weekends. He was a sweet guy and extremely smart, and we dated for two years. That was the closest to a typical relationship I’ve had.

My first boyfriend in college, we were good friends who spent a lot of time together. He asked me out, and I said why not? That ended up being a really complicated relationship that turned me off dating, unfortunately. It also wasn’t typical in that we didn’t go out on dates, really. We just hung out like friends–except with romance included.

I have always been good at sex. VERY good at sex. My motto was that I’d try (almost) anything once. Unless it was truly something I could not stomach, I was good to go. And I liked most of what I experienced. Sex is amazing! Sex is awesome! Sex is life-affirming!

Romance and dating, on the other hand, were hard. The examples I had in my childhood were terrible, and I was deeply and negatively affected by them. I was brought up in a cult-like church that was heavily sexist, conservative, evangelical, and fear/shame-based. Plus, Asian culture is deeply sexist in a different way to American sexism. So I got so much sexism shoved at me on a daily basis.

It’s hard to unlearn that stuff. And I noticed in my last relationship (about fifteen years ago) that I still immediately fell into my traininng as a subservient woman whose only purpose was to please the man* within my vicinity.

I hated who I became, and I realized that dating wasn’t worth it to me. In adidtion, I like being on my own. A lot. If I’m going to be around someone for a significant amount of time, it had better be a very positive experience. I like to say that I’m the cake and the other person would be the frosting. Meaning that the would be additive and not part of the substance.


Continue Reading

Sideways to meeting my goals, part six

Posted on by • 0 Comments

I am so tired. So very tired. Not just physically, but emotionally and mentally as well. My sleep has gone to complete hell, and I don’t think it’s going to get better any time soon. It’s surreal living in a state that has been targeted by this president. I saw MS Now talking about how 50% of Americans think ICE are making things worse for the country whereas 30% think ICE is making America better. MS Now was talking about it as if it was a great thing. 50%! That’s like a twenty point swing (or something like that). Whereas I look at those numbers  and think, “What the fuck?!? Who the hell are those 30%?”

It’s a rhetorical question, though, because I know where that 30% comes from. By the way, it’s always 30%. The fucking assholes, I mean. It’s always around 30%. There’s a reason for it, but I don’t care. I can’t care any longer.

Here is my post from yesterday. And I’m going to maunder about it more.

In the Discord I’m in, when this president was declared the winner, there was a ‘this fucking guy’ who had to say his piece about how this is because the neglected white dude had been oppressed for so long. Oh, he didn’t put it that way, but that was his meaning. Not an American, by the way, I don’t think. He’s also into crypto coins and other shady bullshit.

And I want him to suffer. I want him to step on Lego every night of his life and never find a comfortable position in which to sleep. I want him to feel a fraction of the pain that my fellow Minnesotans are going through at this moment.

Here’s the thing.

My compassion is completely burned out. I am done with people talking about the high road and being the better person. Because that doesn’t make shit happen. Also, it has no benefit to the oppressed because it puts extra burden on them. Not only do you have to take the shit, you have to smile as it’s happening.

Governor Walz talked about being peaceful even through our anger. Not to give this administration what they want and the excuse to crack down even harder. I understand that, but I need them to understand that that is the same as someone being abused thinks–if I just do this, that, or the other thing, they won’t abuse me. If I just act as good as I possibly can, they won’t hit me any more. It’s my fault. I just gotta be perfect.

There is no way to avoid the abuse. Being peaceful won’t do it. Giving in won’t do it. Nothing will. I’m not saying to act up or choose violence, but I’m saying that focusing on being peaceful is a fool’s errand. Let that part go. Do what needs to be done without making preambles or excuses.


Continue Reading

Sideways to meeting my goals, part four

Posted on by • 0 Comments

In talking about my goals, I used yesterday’s post to talk more about my family. I mentioned how I have come to terms with my parents (sort of) by thinking of them as not my parents (read the post). It’s helped me smooth out a lot of the frustration I have felt towards them, which I  consider a win. Look. It’s better than what our relationship has been in the past, and I know that it’s not going to change. I talked about how neither of my parents have changed much in all the time I’ve known them, so why would they start now?

What does that have to do with my goals? The dysfunction in my family has often made me feel like what I did didn’t matter, especially as an AFAB person. My birth gender was emphasized so heavily, and I was deducted so many points  just for having the misfortune of being born a girl. My parents were both so heavy on gender essentialiism, I hated being a girl by the time I was cognizant that it was a thing.

One of my sharpest memories of my childhood is that by the time I was seven, I was praying every night to a god I didn’t really believe in that he would make me a boy. not because I felt like a boy or because I thought I was a boy (I didn’t on either), but because I had internalized that it was awful to be a girl. Every morning, I woke up deeply disappointedc that I was still a girl. Like, crushingly disappointed.

At some point in my early twenties, I became aware of gender and race. And I became a raging feminist/pro-Asian person. I also became aware that I was attracted to women as well as men (*binary at the time. This was the early nineties before nonbinary, genderqueer, agender, etc.,  became part of the social consciousness), but I put that on a shelf because I did not want to deal with that as well as race and gender.

This all comes into play when I write. When I write, all of that comes out in every word. Sometimes, those on the right will snark about how ‘woke’ those on the left are.

Side note: I never understood how that became a negative, but it’s just a well-worn path for them. Take something that is a positive (being aware of other cultures, personal identities, etc.,) and make it a flaw or something to sneer at. Even the word itself, ‘woke’, uttered an a derogatory epithet is baffling to me. Along with being called ‘PC’. Who wouldn’t want to be aware that other ways of living are out there? (That’s a rhetorical question.)


Continue Reading

Sideways to meeting my goals, part three

Posted on by • 0 Comments

Let’s talk more about the circuitous way my brain works. I talked at length about it yesterday, but I have more to say. By the way, I am garrulous, especially in writing, and I’ve just accepted that about myself. Why use one word when ten will do? And why use ten when fifty works so much better? I have to actively stop myself from going on for longer than I already do, and when I’m tired, all bets are off.

I’ve gotten better, as hard as it is to believe that. But I used to not talk at all when I was a kid because I wsa taught that what I had to say didn’t matter. Nor what I thought or believed, for that matter. I was told over and over again that good girls were not heard at all and were barely seen, either.

When I was little, I was an exuberant, loud, joyful child. I would run around, climb trees, and just in general, be an active child. By the time I wsa seven, I was severely depressed, fat (according to my mother, who made sure to remind me of it in several ways, including putting me on my first diet, and saying I had such a beautiful face; too bad I was so fat). On nearly a daily basis, I was thinking about killing myself and how the world would be better off without me.

See, that was what the emotional abuse did–it told me that I was worthless. Or worse that worthless–I was an overall negative to the world. When I was in my late teens, early twenties, I believed I woke up every day not deserving to live, and I had to earn my way back to zero. Why? Because everyone around me reinforced the idea that my life in and of itself had no value. My parents, the people at the very cult-like Evangelical Taiwanese church my parents belonged to, and my very white teachers in the 1970s and 80s.

There were a few teachers who were incredibly kind to me, but for the most part, I was ignored. I’m not blaming those teachers, mind you. I note it more to say that I never felt welcomed in school, either.

It took me studying Taiji for me to realize that I mattered as a person. Not as an emotional support person. Not as an accessory, a friend, or a listening ear. But as a person in and of myself. Me. Just being me.

It’s difficult for me to hold onto that because my mother keeps making it about her. After my serious medical crisis, she said she was glad I hadn’t died–so she would still have someone to talk to about her problems. She’s said this to me more than once, by the way. She’s also called me her therapist, and her justification is that she knows all the therapists/psychologists/psychiatrists in Taiwan on a professional basis. Which, you see, means that she can’t have a therapist of her own.


Continue Reading

Sideways to meeting my goals, part two

Posted on by • 0 Comments

I’m back with more musings about my three main goals. I caught up on my writing (as far as an hour a day), and I have decided that I’m going to move Point B to the second book. What am I talking about? Well, I mused about it in the prior post, which you can read here.

In my murder novemoir, I had the central mystery plotted out in my mind. I didn’t know who the perp would be (which is unusually for me. I usually know it from the beginning), but I had the vic and the basic plot points.

Last night, I started writing about a second major mystery that I had seeded the night before, which was much more interesting to me. My impulse was to set it aside, but my brain said, “Nope. We’re going to keep on writing about it.” I mentioned in yesterday’s post that I knew the smart thing to do would be to put it in the sequel, but I’m stubborn if nothing else.

Now, though, I think I’m going to set it aside for the second book. It’s too meaty to do it in tandem with another major mystery. I have decided that the hour a day can include the time it takes for me to research a topic or rereading what I wrote before. It includes thinking time and anyithing that is related to writing. Once I’ve done that for the month of January, then I’ll think about making it two hours.

I am very glad that I changed it from writing 2,000 words a day to writing for an hour a day–and now saying doing anything writing-related for an hour. The goal right now is to get myself back into writing fiction on a daily basis. I still have it in me; I just need to apply myself.

Side note: This is another thing that I found out about neurospicy people–it’s not just laziness. What I mean is that sometimes it feels literally impossible to force myself to do the thing I need to do. Even if it’s something I want to do.

When my bestie used to live here, we would make plans to get together once a month or so. I always looked forward to it, but I had to drag myself to get dressed and drive to her place. She would not be ready when I got there (a long running joke in our thirty-year friendship), and we used to commiserate with each other about how weird it was that we had such a hard time getting ready for something we really wanted to do.


Continue Reading

Sideways to meeting my goals

Posted on by • 0 Comments

Hello. We are a week-and-a-half into the new year, and I want to do a check in as to how I’m doing with my goals. I haven’t looked into Asian queer/genderqueer groups, so we’ll set that aside for now.

Writing: I have been doing ok with writing one hour a day except my sleeping schedule is fucked. I mean, it’s been fucked for most my life*, but it’s seriously fucked now. Plus, I fuck around too much. I need to buckle down and just get to it.

Still. I’ve managed to do the hour of writing every day but one, which isn’t bad. I’ll be honest. I thought I would struggle more with it than I have, so I’ll take it. I’m going to make up that half hour today and get back on track.

Am I happy with what I’ve been writing? Not really. It’s not great. It’s not terrible, mind. My writing is decent. It comes out decent. It then goes great or terrible, depending. Since I’m still in the explanation phase of my novemoir, it’s just fine. It’s difficult, though, because I have to go back and reread what I previously wrote to keep caught up on the main thread. My memory is shit now, and, yes, that’s something I can blame on my medical crisis.

One interesting thing is that while I had the main mystery planned before I started writing (that’s always how I do), a second murder, completely separate from the first mystery, is emerging. It’s not something I wanted to happen, but who am I to stop it?

Here’s the thing. With this novemoir, I’m in new territory. Normally, when I write, I have an outline of what I want to do. I go from beat to beat and rarely diverge from the road (less taken). Sure, the details may be emergent, but they don’t usually surprise me–much.

Plus, it’s usually follows in a chronological fashion. “Point A happens first. That leads to Point B, which trips off Point C.” In this case, Point A is tangential to Point B, but they don’t directly influence each other. Sure, I can make it so they intertwine, but I don’t want to do that for a few reasons. One, it’s too much of a coincidence. Two, it would get too messy. I’m fine with a fair bit of mess, but this would cross the line. Or rather, I don’t want to create that kind of mess.

The smart thing would be to not introduce Point B at all. It has nothing to do with Point A, and it would make things more complicated. The really smart thing to do would be to save it for the sequel. I like doing trilogies because I think it’s a shame to create a character I really like and then abandon them after one book.


Continue Reading

My country’s dangerous to me–not a land of liberty

Posted on by • 0 Comments

I am deflated, and I don’t reaally have much to say. That’s never stopped me before, though, and it will not stop me now.  I am still angry, frightened, and disgusted, and I don’t know what to do with all these negative emotions. I have never felt accepted by this country, and I don’t feel patriotic at all.

Ever since I first voted, I have been painfully aware of how there is no room in this country for me. Not only because I’m a visible minority (Asian), but also because of my other idenitity markers (areligious, bisexual, and now agender), and bceause of my neurodivergent brain. There is not one way in which I am ‘normal’, and it’s exhausting.

Here is yesterday’s post, which was basically a rant about gender. Well, not a rant so much as a utter exhaustion. I’m just so tired. So fucking tired. And heartsick.

I have been a de facto Democrat since I was eighteen. I was not able to vote the first time I was eligible because I was studying abroad, but I have voted Democrat almost every time in every election since (and independent the one time I did not vote Dem).

Look. As a lifelong Democrat, I know not to get my hopes up. I know the Dems are going to cave and give in. I know they are going to disappoint me again and again. I know they give a shit about me marginally more than Republicans do, but not much at all. In a deeply broken system, there is bad and less bad.

You know one of the reasons I voted for Obama? Because he actually mentioned Asian people and bisexual people. And later, when he was elected, he mentioned nonreligious poeple. And for the first time, I felt seen. Truly seen.

Yes, I know he’s a politician. Yes, I know he’s politically savvy and was just saying what he needed to say in order to get elected. But, you know what? I felt it. And I think he actually meant it (to a certain degree). Just the fact that he thought to say it meant it was actually on his mind–which is more than I can say for 90% of politicians.

Obama was a great president in many ways. And, something I don’t think he gets enough credit for is how great of a campaigner he was. Truly inspirational and revolutionary. One way was in how he dealt with online campaigning (thus locking down the young people’s vote), and another was how he deliberately reached out ot demographics that were typically ignored.


Continue Reading

My goals for 2026, this and that (smaller goals), part two

Posted on by • 0 Comments

In the new year, I have three big goals I want to attain. I also have a bunch of other smaller goals that I wish to do, too. Well, not smaller per se because some will be harder, but not my main goals. I talked about my mental health and finding a therapist in the last post. In this one, I want ta talk about finding a fuck buddy or three.

In early February of 2020, I decided that I wanted to start dating. Not to find ‘the one’ or to be in a lifelong relationship, but because, quite frankly, I was horny as fuck. I’ve always been good at sex, but I’m pretty bad at romantic relationship. I was not a good partner for reasons that were partly my fault and partly not. Family training is hard to break, and I have been trying for nearly fifty years.Plus, I never really wanted to be in a long-term committed monogamous realtionships. I thought I  would be married by the time I was thirty because that was drilled into my head as the only proper thing for a woman to do–and then I would squeeze out a kid or two in following God’s great plan for every wonman on earth.

Looking back, I’m appalled at how I bought it hook, line, and sinker. I mean,  I don’t really blame myself because your family is all you know as a kid. It’s the norm, and if your family is fucked up, well, then that’s your base normal.

I am so grateful that I knew I realized I did not want children before my mother started her full-court press to get me pregnant. And, no, I’m not being too harsh on her because she spent fifteen years nagging me to have children. It started when i turned twenty-six and she commented that she had my brother at that age. Every time we talked after that, she managed to work me having children into the conversation. When she came in the summer to visit for a month, she mentioned it nearly every day.

When my grandmother was diagnosed with cancer, my mother told me that my grandmother would really like to be a great-grandmother before she died. I was the oldest AFAB grandchild on that side of my family, and the fact that my mother was telling me meant that she was just using it as another cudgel to get me pregnant.

I reminded her that it took a while to meet someone, get married (they’re devout Christians), and get pregnant. Not to mention the nine months of gestating the baby. She said she was sure my grandmother would be fine if I skipped right to the having the baby part. My jaw dropped because as I noted, they are deeply Evangelical. I marveled at how a lifetime of very rigid and strict conservative morals were dropped just like that for what was ultimately a selfish desire.


Continue Reading