Underneath my yellow skin

Category Archives: Self Esteem

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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What else I need to do with my life

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With difficulty, I’m going to wrench myself away from talking about weapons, at least for one post. The reason is because I need to talk about something else important in my life–my mental health. It’s in the shitter, and I’m really struggling. There are many reasons for it, but I want to focus on a few. And what I want to do to combat the depression/anxiety.

My sleep has been so bad since–well  for over a year, but even more intensely since the time change. Today, I was going to get up at 11 a.m. so I could do my Taiji/Bagua routine before watching RKG (or RG in this case) stream the latest It Takes Two joint, Split Fiction, at noon. Instead, I set my alarm for noon, and was unpleasantly surprised when I looked at the clock.

I blame the time change, but it’s also that my brain is really unhappy right now. There are reasons for it, including not going out much. I mean, I never went out that much, but it’s been cut down even more since my medical crisis because I don’t feel comfortable driving. Just in general, but even more so at night and on the freeway. Obviously, this makes it hard to get out and do things, and I don’t feel comfortabel having people at my house.

That’s another thing. I need to fix things around the house. But every time I think of it, I feel discouraged and ashamed. I am so bad at cleaning. Even with someone who cleans every other week, the house is a mess. I need to make a list of things that need to be fixed, and then I have to tackle them one by one. I just don’t know if I can do it without feeling a ton of shame. In addition, I have to do several steps before I can get to the point of actually doing what I need to do.

Then, there’s the fact that  Ifeel isolated emotionally. I don’t feel like I am being a good friend, and I don’t feel that I’m maintaining my relationships well. In addition, I want to expand my community, whether online or off. I want to find other queer PoC, which isn’t easy to find. Throw in genderfluid, and it’s like looking for a unicorn. Also, when I say PoC, I mean Asian. That, of course, makes it even more difficult.

That’s the story of my life, though. I always have to be different, even when I really, really don’t want to be. And I don’t know how to find people who are similar to me in more ways than one. That might be a folly–looking for camaraderie where there is possibly none.


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Looking at it from my point of view

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As I was running errands this afternoon, I had MPR on. There was a program about social awkwardness and how to deal with it. The snippet I heard seemed to be focused on how awkwardness has increased since the pandemic. The guests were varied with one of them being a philosophy professor. I think another was some kind of therapist, and I don’t remember the third. This is a rebroadcast, probably because it’s the day before Thanksgiving. I looked it up, obviously. The program is 1A, and the guests are Ty Tashiro (social psychologist/author), Alexandra Pakias (associate professor/author), and Alexandra Solomon (licensed clinical psychologist).

The part that I heard was from one of the women,  Alexandra Solomon, and the question did reference the pandemic. It was how can we deal with people who are awkward? Especially in this day of constant technology and the tendency for some people (*waves hand*) who are more online that off. Also, in part because of the pandeemic, there seems to be less of a tolerance for being uncomfortable in interacting with others.

I want to be clear that personally, I think there are good reasons to ice people out. Given the state of my country now, I absolutely would not have any qualms about cutting off people with unsavory viewpoints. I don’t care if they are considered awkward in their delivery, if they are saying anything in the veins of people like me should not be allowed to exist, I don’t care how they say it–I have no interest in trying to find common grounds or giving them the benefit of the doubt. In general, though, I do think  it’s good to go into situations with an open mind.

A listener wrote in with a question about those on the spectrum and awkwardness. Alexandra Solomon brought up that she had a child who was neurodivergent, and she thought in some ways his outlook and the way he interacted with people was something neurotypical people could learn from. She hastened to add that she was not trying to glorify autism, but that it brought something to the table when it came to interactions.

It’s interesting because my immediate reaction was that she was doing the ‘oh, noble people with disabilities’ thing, but then I thought about it a bit more. She’s not wrong. Ty Tashiro pointed out that we had to be very careful about conflating awkwardness and autism, which I agree with. Back to Alexandra Solomon’s point–the more I thought about it, the more I agreed.


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I can’t NOT be weird

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I’m weird. This is my third post about it. I have plenty to say, so I’m going to keep going until I am done. I ended the last post by asking whether I would be normal if I could. My short answer was, “I don’t know.”

For the most part, I like who I am. Well, let me phrase that a bit differently. I like the components of myself that are usually problematic to other people or ‘not normal’. Asian, bisexual, agender, nonmonogamous, aromantic, etc. I love my hobbies of writing, From games (well, that’s love-hate, but more love than hate. Just), and Taiji/Bagua.

My immediate thought was that I would change things about myself if I could in order to be normal. After a second thought, though, I changed my mind. When I thought about each individual aspect of my being, I couldn’t think of any that I would change. I’m not talking about my flaws, by the way. I have plennty of those that I would give up in a heartbeat. The different aspects of my personality, though? Let’s go through them one by one.

Taiwanese American? I like being Taiwanese American. It’s a unique perspective that not many people share–especially since my parents are pro-independent Taiwan. It does get irritating when Chinese people want to say we’re the same–we are not. And, no one knows anything about Taiwan, but I ain’t mad about that. It’s such a tiny island, and I don’t know much myself. I will say I appreciate that my Taiwanese genes are keeping me looking young. I look at least ten years younger than my age–if not more. no one thinks I’m in my fifties, which is funny because everyone thought I was older when I was a kid.

Bisexual? I’m not keen on the term, but I love being one. I also don’t like pansexual or omnisexual. They both are just a bit too precious to me. I would prefer just to say sexual, but that’s precious in and of itself. Plus, it gives out the wrong message. I prefer queer, but most people think that just means gay. So until I can find something that feels better, I’ll stick with bisexual. Some bis have taken it to mean, “I’m attracted to people like me and people not like me”, which will do for now. I like having the choices, though. I like that I can be attracted to anyone. What can I say? I like having my choices.

Agender? This one is iffy. I would be fine with being a woman if it didn’t feel so restrictive. Gender roles are still so rigid in this society. You would think in 2024, we would have moved forward in this aspect–and we have! But just, sadly, not that far. Or rather, not far enough for me. If I were twenty years old, I probably would have chosen nonbinary, but it doesn’t feel right to me.


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New year, new me, who dis?, part two

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And we’re back. Let’s talk current family situation and what I want to do about it. In the last post, I talked about the history of my family dysfunction. That was not the point of my post, but it’s what was apparently on my mind.

My father has dementia. He’s had it for roughly twenty years. He’s nearly 85 now, so it was early-onset back then, but it’s just dementia now. Since I only see him once a year or so, it’s easy to see the decline from year to year. In addition, they could not come the summer of 2020 or 2021 for obvious reasons, so when they came in the autumn/winter of 2021, the decline was stark.

To be clear,he still had most of his faculties most of the time. By the way, I always mix up faculties and facilities. Every time. But, even when he was in his right mind, he was still…just a bit…off. It’s like a Vaseline smear on a lens. Not all his synapses were firing, and you could not assume he knew what you were saying/doing.

Here’s the thing, though. He was still himself, even when he was deep in his dementia. That made it difficult to tell when he was being a jerk because of his dementia and when he was being a jerk because, well, he’s a jerk.

I know you’re not supposed to say that about someone with dementia, but it’s true. My father has always been a self-absorbed, bitter, calculating man who cared not a whit about anyone else around him. Or rather, he only cared about other people as it pertained to himself.

Related: it’s really difficult to be honest with people about my parents. The Great American Myth is that families are everything and that parents will do anything for their children. Well, that’s what people give lip service to, but don’t actually support. Still, the belief that parents LOVE THEIR CHILDREN AND WILL DO ANYTHING FOR THEM runs deeeeeeeep.

It’s not true, by the way. I mean, most parents love their children, I presume, as best theey can. Most parents will do what they can for their children. But to say that every parent loves their kid more than anything in the world? Nah, I don’t believe that. In fact, in the United States,  roughly 600,000 cases of child abuse were reported in 2021 (I’m sure that’s vastly underreported), and that was the lowest number of reported cases in five years (prior). This was according to the  Children’s Bureau at the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Administration for Children and Families (ACF), which is a governmental agency.


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New year, new me, who dis?

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We are back with another post about my goals for the new year. In my last post, I was talking about Taiji and how much it’s helped me in my life. It’s not hyperbole to say that it’s saved my life, both during the medical crisis (literally) and before it (emotionally).

My family dysfunction runs deep. Of course, as a kid, I did not realize how dysfunctional it was. That’s the thing about being a kid–you think your life is normal because you have no touchstones to anchor yourself to. In addition, my father was a Taiwanese nationalist and did not want to be in America. I did not realize this until maybe two years ago.

He went back to Taiwan when I was twenty-two or twenty-three. I have a feeling that he resented not being able to go back earlier. This is what I figured out. My parents both came to America for grad school (individually)–in Tennessee. My moather for her MA in psychology and my father for his MA in economics. They went to different schools, but met…not exactly sure. Probably at a Taiwanese event? (More likely, called Chinese something or other. I am not going to get into tho complicated politics of Taiwan.) My father did the hard press on my mother, and she fell for his charms.

After a year, my mother was done with her program. That meant she had to go back to Taiwan because her visa ran out. My father wasn’t done with his degree yet. Much gnashing of teeth was had. My father’s housemother told them that in America, people just got married in their situation.

I really wish she hadn’t told them that. My parents should never have gotten married, and they most certainly should not have had children. Sometimes, I wonder how different their lives would have been (individually) if they hadn’t married. My mother was engaged to someone in Taiwan when she met my father (long, misogynistic, archaic story), and she might have gone back to him if she hadn’t become besotted with my father.

My father got his degree after another year. They moved to Minnesota so he could go to the U of M to get his PhD, and my brother was born soon after. I was born 2 1/2 years later.

I think this was the point when my father got really bitter. I’m working with the assumption that he wanted to return to Taiwan. With that knowledge, everything afterwards makes sense. Well, not all of it, but it at least puts things into perspective.


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Gender is a social construct, part two

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I don’t like thinking about gender because I genuinely get fucked up when I think about it too hard. My mother has been an unrpentant sexist all her life. But in a very weird way. Why weird? Because she did everything she did to cater to my father, and one of his firm ideas was that she had to work outside the house. Not because he was a feminist, but because he was obsessed with money. Or rather, obsessed with the fear of not having enough. Here was my last post about it.

Quick background: My father was from a poor farm family. His father (and I’m hearing this third hand from a heavily biased point of view) got mad because my father’s mother wouldn’t do something or the other, can’t quite remember what, and refused to work on the farm for a decade or so. According to my father, my grandmother had to take over the day-to-day running of the farm.

My father was my grandmother’s favorite (out of five children). He was the youngest boy. He was excused from helping out, apparently, and he was the only one sent to America to get his graduate degree. He was a Fulbright Scholar, full, I think, which is probably the only way he was able to come to the States to study.

The reason I mention that is because it shows how my father’s narcissism was indulged throughout his life. His mother worshiped the ground he walked on and made it quite clear that he was the golden child. Then he married my mother who treated him the same way. When he was the president at the company where he worked, he had a secretary who also did everything for him, including printing out his emails and putting them on his desk for him to read. He would read them, answer in writing, and then give to her to type up and send out for him.

I’m saying all this to point out how reliant my father was on the women in his life. Or rather, how much they catered to him.

In tandem with this, my father has spouted noxious (and toxic) sexist beliefs all his life. When I was fifteen or so and didn’t have a boyfriend yet, he told me unprompted that in order to get a boyfriend, I needed to raise my voice a few octaves (I have a very low voice), ask a boy to teach me something, and let him beat me in a game (pool, ping-pong, whatever). I looked at him and said, “If that’s what it takes to get a boyfriend, I’d rather be single for the rest of my life. I still stand by that.

He’s also said things like this: After seeing a castle in Banff that did weddings, “I would pay for your wedding to be in a castle.” After one of my cousin’s weddings: “I don’t know if I could give you away.” While talking about doing chores at home: “I know Minna will not like this, but I worked full-time.” (As an excuse for not doing chores at home.) “Women like gifts.” (Holding out a wrapped gift he was given to me, in response to me asking what that was for.)


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New birthday, new life, who dis?

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I was musing in the last post about my rebirthday and how it’s coming up. Well, that’s what I meant the post to be about, but I meandered into family dysfunction once again. Which isn’t as far a stretch as you might think, actually. I have spent decades unlearning the toxic things I’ve been taught by my mother.

I’ve talked about this before, but I gave up on my father very early on. I knew from the time I was eight or nine that he did not like being a father. At all. He never interacted with my brother and me willingly other than to tell us to do something. I can’t remember him ever smiling or being happy about anything. He only ate Taiwanese food and was very radical pro-independent Taiwan. I have no issue with the latter, but I had a hunch that he only felt that way beacuse it personally benefited him. Again, I’m not saying that’s a bad thing because no one wants to be oppressed. I’m just saying that he did nothing that didn’t have a personal benefit.

When I went to college, I became a psychology major. I learned about narcissism as a disorder (which no longer exists), and it clicked in my brain. I knew that was my father to a T even if I didn’t have the word for it. With him, it really is as simple as he never thought about anyone other than himself.

Because of this, it was actually easy to understand him. He was consistently self-centered and as long as I kept that in mind, I knew what to expect from him. Oh, and he was a raging misogynist as well. Plus racist/nationalistic, and every other kind of ist. I knew better than to tell him anything of importance. Also, my mother would often tell me not to tell him something or the other because he could not handle it–according to her.

This is classic triangulation, and she was queen of it. Did she honestly think he could not handle the fact that I was bi or that I got a tattoo? Probably. Was she right? Probably. However, in a functional family, it would be up to him to decide how he would react to that information. And to be honest, my mother did not react well to either. At all. So it was ironic that she displaced her discomfort on my father.

How uncomfortable was she? When I got my tat, she mostly pulled a long face and let it stay that way for the whole talk. She commanded me not to tell my father, but I can’t remember if she said anything else. It was clear that she was very displeased, though. I was twenty-two, and I still hadn’t grasped yet just how dysfunctional my family was. In a functional family, she would have  voiced her displeasure, but then realize that it was my body and shrugged it off. She never had to actually accept it, but she could have at least been neutral.


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But I’m not the only one

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When I was in my twenties, I started writing mysteries. I took a class from an author I really admired. We brought in our work and had it critiqued. She said that I could not have an ‘I’ protagonist and then have scenes without that protagonist. I asked why not. She said it just wasn’t done.

Fast-forward to three or four years later when it became all the rage in mystery novels. I was kicking myself for not beleiving in me, but she was so certain that it could not be done. That did not stop me from doing it, but I stopped talking about it in class.

It’s a small thing, but it’s indicative of the way my brain thinks. I didn’t undrestand why I could not do it, and nothing she said changed my mind. When people tell me I can’t do something, I always want to know why. If the reason doesn’t make sense to me, then I ignore it.

That’s how I am in general, by the way. When I was a teenager and going to a very restrictive, sexist, Evangelical Taiwanes church (under protest. The only thing I liked was going to a fast food restaurant afterwards. It was the only time we were allowed fast food). The youth pastor was a white guy who had no cultural sensitivity and what’s worse, no capability for independent thinking.

We were talking about dating in high school, and he disclosed that he had had a wild youth. He put it aside once he became a Christian, and he espoused not having sex before marriage. Which, fine. Whatever. That’s standard for Christianity. I don’t agree with it, but it’s to be expected.

Side note: When I thought about it more, it made no sense at all to me. It’s the same act whether you do it in marriage or outside of it. It’s not as if there was something magical about that piece of paper saying you were married. I realize that it’s a philosophical matter as to whether ‘marriage’ is a different state in and of itself, so much so that it can transform sex from ‘your soul will be eternally damned in hell’ to ‘angels approve and choirs sing’.


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Unmasking and taking off the bra

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I don’t wear a bra. Ever.

I think I might have autism.

Bear with me because I think these two things are related. Tenuously, maybe, but related, nonetheless.

I also think I have OCD traits. This, too, is related.

Let’s start with the bra thing. I hate clothing in general. It all feels so restrictive and I am allergic to manydifferent kinds of fabrics. Hell, I’m allergic to so many things in general. Let’s go over them, shall we?

Almost every fucking flower/weed under the sun. So many of the manmade scents–almost all of them, too. The last time I had the allergy test where they infect you, I mean inject you with all the different allergens in your thigh, like thirty diffreent allergens, my entire thigh blew the fuck up. It became one giant boil, basically.

I also didn’t know when I used to get allergy shots as a kid that they were injecting me with poison. It was so utterly miserable. My arm would swell up every time, and I would be hot and miserable. And, again, I had no idea what was happening. If someone had actually told me why they were poisoning me, I would have been able to deal with it better.

And did it work? No. I still have allergies. I used to envy my brother for not getting the shots. I found out a few years ago it was because his allergies were too far gone for the shots to be considered effective. Ironically, his allergies are pretty much gone now while mine are just worse.

I’m allergic to mosquito bites. To gluten. To lactose. So many allergies (none life-threatening) to so many things.

Let’s get back to bras. I hate them. I have always hated them. I had a traumatic fitting incidence that left me in tears. It also made me hate my body even more than I did. I found that fitters telling women* to wear really fucking tight bras that crushed your ribs was common, which was what I went through. I wore 38 D. They told me I should wear 34 DD. It hurt like fuck. When I said I ended up in tears, I meant it literally. And I will never, ever, EVER allow a bra fitter near me again. Even if I were to go back towearing a bra. Which I won’t.

Ranodm fact: There was a study that showed people who did not wear bras had perkier boobs than those who did, but that was not conclusive. On the other side, there is no conclusive evidence that wearing a bra keeps the boobs perkier, too. And because there is so much push for women to wear them, I always feel compelled to stand up for the other side.

Even if boobs sag, so the fuck what? If there is no medical problem with it, then who the uck cares? Also, if there is no pain. Look. If someone wants to wear a bra, I am most emphatically not going to stop them or lecture them about how they should free the boobs. I would just appreciate the same courtesy in return. But the fear that they project as they frantically defend the bra is amazing. And tiring. Just chill the fuck out, ok?


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