No more "Sorry", Only Me.

I am no longer going to apologise for being exactly who I am.

There are so many facets to my identity – so many I am still exploring even now. It is a lifelong journey, it feels, and I have only very recently started opening my eyes to the possibilities of who I truly am, and not who everyone expects me to be.

I am a Eurasian woman who struggles, even still, with the identity crisis of fitting into either side of my cultures – Malaysian/Chinese, and Australian. As I grew up in Australia, a multicultural cesspool, I never found a place in school for myself – always deemed “too white” for my Asian friends, and “too Asian” for my white friends. I was nerdy and a music kid, but I wasn’t as into anime or K-Pop, and I was terrible at math. At the same time, I wasn’t allowed to believe in Santa or go out with friends on the weekend, had so many extra-curricular instruments I learnt and didn’t even own a barbecue. I grew to resent the mix, without ever finding a real clique for myself, the only “good” things I ever heard about Eurasians was that they were “beautiful” and “exotic”, and my looks, as a girl who grew up with many self-esteem issues, were not something I felt I could rely on as a source of my identity. This chapter of my journey hasn’t particularly concluded – I am still at odds with who I truly am culturally, feeling ties to many parts of my Asian heritage, but also growing up so grounded in my Australian heritage, and yet being surrounded by a melting pot of cultures, it still doesn’t help me truly understand who I am.

Realistically, this brings me to my current identity revelations. I am twenty-eight this year, reaching an age where I can safely say I’ve been an adult for a while. For the past year I have been going to therapy, and have struggled incredibly over decades with finding my sense of self. There have been so many revelations recently of things that I have deemed perfectly normal in my life, to be told by someone who looks at you with the deepest empathy in their eyes and say, “I’m so sorry you have to deal with that. I am so sorry you had to go through that. That is not okay, and your feelings and reactions are completely valid.”

I am the textbook definition of a people-pleaser. A fawn-type response to trauma that has followed me and still follows me through my life. Living with Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD) is not a fun experience and is taxing physically, emotionally, and mentally. Surviving and existing is often how my days go. However, the fact that I am able to now challenge things I have seen as “normal” for so long, things that have become so expected of me and so ingrained in me that I felt it has become a part of my personality, when in reality I am seeing now that it is not who I am and not who I want to be. I want to change that.

It takes a lot to know when you have become strong out of necessity - strong because you have never had the option to be weak, to be vulnerable, soft, and fragile. When you are finally afforded a small ounce of kindness and gentleness, only to realise that you had been so very starved of it your whole life, it really hits you in a new way. I want someone to take care of me in the ways I have taken care of countless others over the course of my life. I want someone to nurture my inner child in the way that it has never grown. I want someone to hold me and tell me I don’t need to worry or do anything because it will all be okay.

So for now, I am going to be unapologetically me. I love video games and sweatpants. I am a proud Hufflepuff. I always pick the water-type starter in Pokémon games. Sometimes I’m so sad I can’t bring myself to shower or eat, and that’s okay at times. I’m a MASSIVE nerd. I love art and music and writing. I have major issues with my body and my self-esteem, but I will get there. I’m that outlandishly weird girl that you see singing at the top of her lungs in the car, sitting at red lights acting like it’s a mosh-pit, head banging and dancing and belting like I’m up on a stage to absolutely every song on my playlist (Metalcore, Rap, Musical Theatre, Disney, Anime music, Punk, Pop, give me it all!). Overall, I am still learning who I am, and who I am changes ever so slightly every day. I just need to be present with myself, check in with myself once in a while, to stop comparing my personal journey to anyone else’s because EVERYONE is unique, to be patient and kind to myself, to nurture my inner child and not neglect any part of me; only then will I finally feel as though my identity can be fully realised.