Identity: In Crisis

Culture. Let's talk about it (and by "let's" I mean me, rambling to myself). What is it? What does it mean?

Frankly, I have no idea.

Very helpful. I guess I'll try to make some sense of it.

Culture, to me, is feeling the labor and traditions of your ancestors thrumming - no, thundering - positively beating, banging, and battering, it's way through your veins. It's a complete crash wave and thunderclap of the love, joy, hope, pain, anguish, longing, and just overall complete confusion that encompassed the life of all your long-dead blood relatives accumulating in the fleshy squish that is you. It's the gentle breeze moving over your neck, through your fingertips, and across your skin, and with it, it carries the breath that your relatives once inhaled and exhaled. It's pausing outside, and suddenly feeling like you're in the middle of a field, butt-ass naked, baring your soul to whatever god you believe in, and knowing your family members are looking at you with pride, admiration, and hope that you, yes, you, will hold the both crushing and enlightening weight of all your kin and carry their memory forward. It's singing a song that's native to your homeland (or even just one of your various homelands!) and having the split second feeling that a thousand other people are singing it alongside you, uplifting your voice and soul; that even though you're alone, singing in your bedroom, still in your l̶e̶a̶s̶t most glamorous pajamas, you're heard.

And yet, even though I can describe culture to this extent, I know nothing of it. Why? Because, for the life of me, it's like my family has never been documented. Ever.

And it's pretty darn soul crushing, to be honest. From the few snippets of things I've been able to find, my family name is expletive-inducingly extensive.

I long, at least once a week, to know who my ancestors were, where they came from, what they did, what they didn't, how they lived, what they believed in, what they dreamed about, just, everything. And sometimes I wonder if that longing is misplaced, and I only want to know because I think it will absolve the perpetual existential + identity crisis combo I'm in, but that's not the point.

I want to feel like I belong. I want to feel like my quirks and features and habits and thought processes aren't atypical of me, that maybe my ancestors did it, too. I want to have a tradition that is sentimental to the people who contributed to me being alive, and not just continue to blindly follow the traditions set out by simply being in a country that my ancestors weren't even from, they just happen to be all that I know. I want to have relatives that accomplished things that I can be proud of, and I want to have relatives that didn't accomplish things, and be proud of them, too, because, gosh, relatable right now.

I want to understand and comprehend the reason why, sometimes, when I'm alone and sad, I suddenly feel so empowered, like I've been wrapped up in a hug and filled with a feeling of love that only a parental figure can provide.

I don't think I'll ever stop looking. Even when I'm downtrodden and tired and just so, so defeated by the thousandth fruitless result, I'll always feel the pull, and the desperation, to simply know. And even if I die one day without ever knowing, I can count on two things - instilling the need to know in any of my future children (or just theirs, if they're adopted!), and greeting all those faceless ancestors that I longed so much for on the other side, and that thought alone is comfort enough, that even if I never know in this life, I'll know in the next. After all, death's domain ensures that everything that ever leaves this life is never forgotten in theirs.