Underneath my yellow skin

Category Archives: Self Esteem

Brain, brain, go away….

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Yes, I’m writing more about my brain and how I’ve thought it was broken for most of my life. When I was talking to my autistic friend (endless gratitude to her for making me realize that I miiiiiight be on the spectrum) about my childhood, I used the phrase, “felt like an alien”. She said that was exactly how she felt as a child and so many autistic people felt the same way. I also said that I always felt as if I was never given the manual for humanning. I really thought everyone else got some kind of instruction on how to be a human being.

“Turn to page 54 for complete instructions as to how to interact with humans at a party.” “And here on page 90, we see how to make small talk when you’re picking up your medicine.”

What I really wanted was David Attenborough to guide me through human life as if he was watching a rare species of, say, wild cat and describing their daily life to people who have never seen them before. I could have really used someone telling me how to be human before I was released into the general public. I used to joke that I was raised by wolves, but it was not really a joke. What I mean is that my parents had no idea what life in America was like, so they weren’t able to guide me. More to the point, they had no desire to integrate themselves into American culture, so they had no interest in teaching me about it.

It was the perfect storm of several negative things that made it so my entry into American society (school) scarred me. 1. I wsa a weirdo. I just was. Now I know there’s a reason for it, but back then, I just thought I was a sad and broken human being who should not have been born. And I was deeply depressed by the time I was seven. 2. My parents had no interest in American society and passed that down to me. We did not watch TV or go to movies or listen to the radio. I like to the apocryphal story of how the first pop song I heard was Electric Avenue by Eddy Grant in 1983 when I was 12. That’s pretty late in life, but it was indicative of how little my family cared about such things.

My parents were very conservative/traditional, which meant I was raised with a lot of restrictive ideas. I’m talking religious rather than politically, but I would not be surprised if the latter was true as well.


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Thoughts on my birthday…on my birthday

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I have more to say about my birthday–on my birthday. Technically. It’ll be my actual birthday in roughly seven hours I’ll be…ah….fifty…..er……..five? Yeah, that’s right. I honestly had to think about it for several seconds because I don’t really think about it. Again, it’s not because I’m getting older–it’s just because my age doesn’t matter to me.

Fun fact: When I was younger, I used to say I was a year older on January 1st. No idea why I did that, but many East Asian countries start at age 1 or 2 at birth. Maybe it was osmosis. Anyway, I say I have no idea why I started doing it, but it helped me get use to my new age by the time my actual birthday rolled around. As a result, though, I don’t always know how old I am. And, more to the point, I don’t really care. As with everything else in my life, it’s just a detail that doesn’t matter. Age really is just a number, and what I can or can do isn’t defined by it.

Whatever. I find my birthday meaningless, but I’m ok with other people wanted to acknowledge it (to a certain extent). Like, I’m going to be talking to K tomorrow, just so she can wish me a happy birthday. Here’s the thing. We both have April birthdays (hers is a few weeks after mine). When she was here, we would go out sometime between our two birthdays to celebrate them together (or any time near them).

She’s one of two people I actually get a birthday present for, and she gets one for me, too. She’s my soul sister, and I have been friends with her longer than anyone else in my life. I have joked with her that when we are both old, we’re going to be in an old folks’ home together, waving our canes at other prisoners inhabitants. We will shout things at them and just let the  chaos rain down.

I love her with all my heart, and I know she feels the same way about me. A few decades ago, we were talking about the hoary conundrum of ‘your best friend and your spouse are both drowning ten feet away from each other. Who would you save first?’. I was the one who brought it up, though I don’t remember why. She got angry and heated about it (which is unlike her). She said she hated that question beacuse she loved me and her husband equally. I was skeptical, but she insisted it was true. Unlike me, she cannot lie with passion. If she said that, I knew she meant it.

She said that she really didn’t like how society portrayed romantic love as being above all other loves. I didn’t either, so it was something else we bonded over. It’s very specific to Western culture. Eastern culture had a very different view on that, obvioously.


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Patting myself on the back, part three

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When I look back on the person I was in my twenties, I want to give that person a hug. That person was so emotionally fragile that a single negative word could crush that person into a (not-so-fine) dust. To be fair to that person, the home life was very rough. I don’t like thinking about it because it still hurts. I think about how lost and utterly miserable I was. I felt like an alien, like I didn’t belong in this world–and what’s more, the world would be better without me. Oh, here’s my post from yesterday.

When I was in my early twenties, I had a break from reality. I was very lucky to make my way back without any mental health support, but I never came all the way back. Someone once said that you when you broke something, yes, you could put it back together, but it would never be as good as new again. They were using the metaphor as a way to explain how difficult it was to deal with mental health issues, and I had never felt more seen.

Yes, I have spent decades trying to fix the cracks and breaks in me. I’ve gotten good at plastering over them, but I have yet to truly fix them. And while I am much easier on myself than I was back then, I still have lingering thoughts of self-hatred that flair up now and again. While I can talk myself down most of the times, once in a while, it just runs all the way through me. And if it reaches that point, I have a hard time getting out of that dark place.

All my life, I’ve been fighting (or not) the feeling of ‘why bother?’. Why should I try when life is, in the end, worthless? Eh. That’s not the right word for it. It’s nothing like pointless or meaningless. I guess it’s more that the world is so grim, I do not know what to with it. Every time I check the news, this president is doing something else that is so terribly bad. Just awful. It was bad during his last terms, and yet, he managed to make things even worst.

Wait. Why the hell am I going down that path?

Oh, I know why. Because I have a hard time thinking that anything matters. Or more specifically that I don’t matter. And again, I don’t mean that in a negative way (this time). I really don’t matter as a person.  Believe me that this is a better mentality than thinking I was the absolute worst as a person (that I made the world a worser place just by existing). I still cringe at things I say and do on the daily, but I can get over it more easily.

I give much thanks to Taiji (and now Bagua) for helping me become mentally stronger. I once told my teacher that while I  wasrn’t expecting to get into a fight nor did I want to, I did want to be able to use Taiji to help with relationships on an emotional level.

Since I’m terrible with boundaries, that was what I was mostly hoping for–that Taiji would help me set them. Has it? Yeah. I’m still prone to being a people-pleaser and am pretty easy to push, but when it matters, I can stiffen my spine and not give in.


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Feeling pleased with myself, part two

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I grew up in a Taiwanese household (though in America), which means that I was told repeatedly that everything I did/thought/was was wrong. I know that my family was particularly dysfunctional in addition to being extremely East Asian. (The latter at that time meant never saying anything positive about your child to your child.)

“You’re too loud.” “Don’t run.” “Sit with your legs crossed.”

My mom likes to recount a story of how when I was two, I chased my brother’s bullies away (he’s three years older). By the time I was seven, I consciously wanted to die. I had lost any spark I had for life–and I was but a pale copy of myself.

I spent the next thirty years absolutely hating myself. I wanted to die–or rather, I did not want to be alive. There’s a slight, but distinctive difference between the two. I was not suicidal*, but I would not have minded if I got, say, hit by a bus. I aws fast and loose with my life, which changed when I had my medical crisis.**

For a year or two after my medical crisis, I was simply grateful to be alive. It was a miracle (as I was told over and over again), and I felt it in my heart.

But, as you know, any kind of big feeling cannot last forever. It’s inevitable that it’s going to fade over time. How do I feel now? I’m not feeling life at the moment. Partly for personal reasons, but more so because of the state of the world. Many times, I’ve felt like, “I came back for this?!!” It’s been really difficult, especially this past year, and I am just not sure I’m up for it.

I don’t want to live in this world. I know we all have to work to make it better, but I feel beaten down and why bother? Look. I’ve been a lefty since I was born, basically. In ideology, I am about as far left as you can get. I’m more pragmatic in real life, but in my dream world, I’m almost a communist. I’m definitely an anarchist at heart, if not in practice.

Well. That was not what I was going to write about.

So let me switch over with no segue because that is how I fucking roll.

I was writing yesterday about how hard it was to gauge how well I was doing with my Taiji and Bagua because I have nothing to judge it against. My teacher’s classmates have all been studying songer than I have (though maybe not by much), so it’s not really fair to me to judge by them. On the other hand, none of my classmates do weapons. Wait. There’s one person, but he’s just started, so it wouldn’t be fair to him to compare myself to him.


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More about labels and why I fucking hate them, part two

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In my last post, I was going to talk about why I didn’t like labels, but pretty much only talked about Guess vs. Ask culture and sexism. Both of those are very important and related to the topic at hand, but they weren’t what I wanted to focus on; I’m going to try again. Oh, and I wanted to include why labels are important, but I never even got close to that.

Here are the lablels I have reluctantly chosen for myself: Asian/Taiwanese American; PoC; bisexual/queer; agender; areligious; and ENM. I would also say I’m aromantic, but that’s not something I consider a necessary part of my identity. Let’s add neurospicy to that list.

I don’t like PoC. I don’t know what I would use instead, though, as I have not liked any of the other terms for minorities. Multicultural was fine, but not really an apt description. Plus, I don’t feel an alliance with other PoC because when people use that term, they usually just mean Black people. Taiwanese American is the best fit here.

Sexual identity: queer is my first choice. But, again, unfortunately most people assume it means gay. We leave in such a binary world; it’s really disheartening to me. I still call myself queer, but if I need to be more specific, I will reluctantly use bi. I’m not happy about it, and I’ve never really liked it. Especially now that there are more than two genders, it’s not the best. I and other bi people tend to use it as ‘people like me and people not like me’, but that’s a lot of explaining to do when talking with nonqueers about it. I used to joke that I would rather just call myself sexual and be done with it.

Also, when I first came out thirty years ago, there was a strong push to emphasize that bis didn’t want to fuck everyone just because we could, in theory, do so. I get it. Respectability was a big issue back then (still is, but in a different way). Queer people really wanted to emphasisze being just like straight people except for who we loved.

Which, yeah, I get it. Racial minorities also have that strong impulse. It makes sensre to a certain extent. You want to emphasize the similarities because that’s a good way to create bonds. This has always been the tension within a minority group–to try to be as like the majority as possible or outright rebel.

There are people who can pass and people who can’t. There are people who could pass, but choose not to. It’s a spectrum, really, and I fall more on the ‘can pass’ side as long as I don’t act up. Heh. This is in gender identity. People assume I’m a woman because of my big boobs and long hair. At this point because of the terrible mess that is my country, I’m just going to leave it at that.


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Trying to tame the rage inside, part two

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I’ve been writing about trying to control my temper beacuse I had an episode with my mother last night. It’s been a while beacuse normally, I’m really good at avoiding sensitive topics because normally, I just have to listen to her talk about my father for twenty minutes to a half hour and tell her I’m doing fine. I learned a long time agoo that it’s better not to talk about anything of substance with her.Most of the time, it’s easy beacuse she wants to talk obsessively about my father with an occasional complaint about her own health thrown in for good measure. Or what a tough time she is having with the live-in aide. (For helping with my father with his dementia.)

This was something my brother and I learned a long time ago. Not to tell our mother anything of real importance because one, she would worry about it; two, she would want to talk about it; and three, most likely, she would disapprove of it.

One time when my brother was traveling, he ran into a minor issue with his credentials (well, his girlfriend’s), and he had to go ahead of her. That meant that he spent one day alone in London. London, where, as you know, (most) people speak English as their first language. Where there are signs and everything in English. My mother told me she was really worried about him and prayed for him to be ok.

I told her that he would be just fine (mentioning all the English that happens there). I said I admired him for doing so much traveling and basically whatever he wanted. He’s an adventurer, and I really appreciate that about him.

Another thing my brother and I had agreed upon was that we would not tell our mother anything about each other. I have half-joked with him that I wished he hadn’t told them about my medical crisis. I wasn’t blaming him because I understand why he did it, but it would have been so much easier overall if they hadn’t been here. The only thing I really needed her for was to towel off after a shower, and I could have managed it myself if I had to.

It was really stressful, and I think I would have done better overall on my own. I told my brother he should have just told my parents I was visiting Ian for two weeks. I was joking, but I really wasn’t. I really prefer living on my own, and it was hard to hav ethem around 24/7 for three months. About a month-and-half into it, I was messaging with Ian and saying that I could not do it. I was so stressed and tense, and I was actually thinking I would rather have died than come back for this shit.

I was in a very dark place is what I’m trying to say. He had been in the army when he was younger, and he told me something I’ll never forget. When he was in basic training, he had a drill sergeant who told him, “Don’t think of how long you have to go. Just think of today. You can do one day. Anyone can do one day.”


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A freak like me

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I’ve been talking about gender for the last few posts and how I don’t get it. Now, I want to get more broad (heh) in general because that’s how I feel about so many things.

A few years ago, I started chatting with someone in a Discord I’m in out of the main forums. In private messages, in other words. She and I have a lot in common, and we clicked once we started DMing each other.

She and I got to talking about neurodivergency because I had struggled with fitting in all my life. After we messaged back and forth for a length of time, she asked if I had ever thought that I might be autistic. That never occurred to me because I had the stereotypical image of autism in my mind. My brother? Yeah, he was on the spectrum. Me? Hell, no!

It was only after talking with her and simultanuously watching a few videos on autism that I slowly realized the stereotypes weren’t right. Or rather, they only depicted a very narrow kind of autism, which, not coincidentally, centered on young white boys.

(Lengthy rant on sexism in health issues inserted here.)

The biggest thing that shocked me to learn was that it’s not true that autistic people are not empathetic/don’t feel emotions. I mean, there are autistic people like this, true (like my brother), but there are also plenty of autistic people who feel too much emotions. Or, they feel other people’s emotions, but don’t know what to do with them or misinterpret what those emotions are.

There’s a saying when it comes to autism–if you’ve met one person with autism, you’ve met one person with autism. There are throughlines and shared traits, yes, but every autistic person is diferent. In my case, I had to deconstruct the image of a person with autism because it was getting in the way.

There are some common traits, of course, such as hyperfocus on certain interests, stimming, and  uncomfortableness in social situations, to name a few. The problem is that for non-male people (women and others), those traits are liable to get overlooked, chalked up to something else like anxiety, or used against said people more harshly than they are against autistic men (which is already harsh).

How often do you now hear about men acting badly, “Oh, maybe he’s on the spectrum” as a way of excusing his appalling behavior? And yet, you don’t hear it about women and other non-male people hardly at all if ever. They don’t get the same grace and/or amused tolerance.

Side note: By the way, you want to know if someone is acting badly on purpose or if he’s ignorant about it? Look to see if he’s acting the same way with people who have power over him or with men in general. If he’s trulyy autistic, then he’ll be awkward around everyone–not just grossly so around the women he wants to fuck.


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Sideways to meeting my goals, part four

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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.)


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The way my brain works

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My brain is weird. I’ve known this ever since I wsa a kid, but back then, I just thought it was that my brain was broken. My mom was a psychologist, but she also had very traditional Taiwanese ideas about, well, everything. She had definite ideas of what a girl child should be, and I failed miserably in every aspect. A girl should be demure, quiet, acquiescent, nurturing, always thinking of others, docile, and most importantly, she should never ever EVER be noticed. Ever!

It’s ironic because she was everything she told me not to be. Opinionated, athletic, sporty, and more masculine than not. She was just continuing the dysfunction that she learned in her own home, from her own mother who was also a raging hypocrite when it came to what she espoused girls/women should do and what she actually did.

If my mother had been able to break away from the idea that she had to be a wife and a mother, her life would have been so much better. Instead, she bought it hook, line, and sinker, and did her level best to make me as miserable as she was. I’m grateful that I realized at a fairly early age that I did not have to get married and/or have children. I’ve never wavered from that, and I’m profoundly glad that I, the most indecisisve and pushover of people, stood firm for once in my life.

What does this have to do with today’s post? Not much, but I just wanted to muse about it for a bit. Also, part of what I consider my broken brain is that I can’t for the life of me go from point A to point B in a straight line. I like to joke that I don’t do anything straight, but it’s true. Everything is interconnected in my brain, so I can’t just focus on one thing or the other.

I started teaching myself the Bagua Knife Form yesterday. I wasn’t going to do it until I finished teaching myself the left side of the Swimming Dragon Form, but, well, my brain said, “Here me out. What about now?”

I have taught myself roughhly three-fourths of the left side of the Swimming Dragon Form. I am pleased with how fast I’m learning it, but not entirely surprised. This is one of my favorite forms, and it was fairly easy for me to learn.

It’s the same as the Sword Form. That was the first weapon form I learned, and I stormed through it. I was so eager to learn the whole thing, and once I was done, I taught myself the left side in short order. I do need to do a bit of clean up on it, though.


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Looking for ways to make my life better

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I was talking in yesterday’s post about my writing. I would dearly love to be able to write fiction again, but it’s a struggle. The words still come fairly easily, but they are not catching fire like they used to. I have mentioned before how if my writing is going well, then there’s a sparkle to the words. A lightness that I can tangibly feel–and see. when it’s not going well, the words are flat and lifeless. Sometimes, I can find ways to spice it up, but oftentimes, I just have to trash it and start over.

I don’t know what to do with my writing, honestly. I know what I want to write. I know what I feel compelled to write. These are not the same thing, though I might be able to meld the two together.

I have to say that it’s time to sort my family shit out. It’s a bit crude to point out that my parents are in the last stage of their life/lives, but it’s true. And it’s wrought/fraught because of my father’s dementia. But, that’s not the only reason. There’s also the fact that my parents are broken people. They have been my whole life, and they’ve only gotten worse as the years have gone by.

I clearly remember having an argument with my mother about social justice issues. This was since my medical crisis. We’ve had plenty of arguments about all the ‘isms’ beforehand, but this was after, I think. My mother said she was a traditional/old-fashioned person and tried to justify it by saying she had been born in 1942.

This argument drives me batshit insane. It’s always given as an excuse for attitudes/beliefs that are frankly horrible. In addition, though, it’s the laziest, most contemptible excuse one can give. Yes, she was born over eighty years ago. But you know what? She was not cryogenically sealed for the ensuing eighty years, only to be defrosted in the last three years. She lived in America during the Civil Rights years. She saw the ERA movement in America, and got to witness marriage equality in both Taiwan and America. Well, she wasn’t here (America)when it happened, but she got to see it happen. She got to experience Taiwan elect its first female president (something America hasn’t managhed to do), and many more progressive things in her eighty years on this earth.


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