Summer 2017

The cicadas screech in tune with the hot sticky air drifting in through the bathroom window.

I push my glasses to my forehead and rub my eyes with my fists. I pull open my red drawstring bag—perched on the sink ledge—and shuffle through its contents. My notebook, pens and pencils, phone, earbuds, pink sanitary pads, a brochure for the Hakone Open Air Museum, and the sole of my right tennis shoe—are all passed through to grab my clear plastic hair clips. I should’ve brought hair ties.

In the mirror above the sink, I stare at my hair. It settles just under my ears. I push the hair clips against my scalp, gathering and readjusting thick black hair.

Growing out my pixie haircut has been awful. I was growing my hair out long at the end of last year, it was well past my shoulders and on the way to reaching my chest. Until Christmas morning.

My mom and sister burst into my room and bounced on my bed, the sun already high in the sky. (I was up all night making my gifts for them). I feigned sleep until I heard Mama gasp and shout in alarm.

“No… That’s lice! I see nits! Everywhere in your hair! Get up right now!”

Christmas transformed into a day of my mom picking nits from my scalp, soaking my hair in tee tree oil, stuffing it into a shower cap, and washing clothing and bedding and anything and everything that I had been around.

My sister and I had a tendency to get lice as kids, and like most things that we had no choice over as kids, all the responsibility was our own for getting it.

The last time I had lice, my mom, fatigued and irritated, declared that if I ever got it again she’d take me to get my hair cut short, short, short.

So.

I started 2017 with a forced lice haircut and was left to answer to classmates who questioned my sudden physical apperance change with: “Well... I just felt like it... Haha… "

It’s difficult to be confident in appearance changes that were forced upon you. As much as I’ve tried, I cannot suddenly be okay with a haircut I didn’t want. I have not cut it at all since then, which it's current length reflects.

It’s late August now. A week after my mother’s birthday, when all three of us took a plane from San Francisco International Airport to Narita International Airport to spend the following week and a half.

Now, I sulk in the bathroom at our fourth museum in the past five days, haunted by the beginning of my senior year of high school, which is set to start hours from now, without me. Yeah, I missed ID photos and the first day, and I’ll miss basically the first week of my one and only first week of senior year of high school. I’m only a little upset.

Dropping my head from my view of the mirror, I inspect my lopsided shoes. Earlier today, as we rushed to catch the Shinkansen from Tokyo to Hakone, I felt the sole of my right shoe detach almost completely.

As I fast-walked I could hear it slap against the bottom of my shoe after stepping off the ground. I shuffled my way onto the train, and let myself peek once we found our seats.

The sole of my right shoe came cleanly off and I was left to stare at it in my hand. I stuffed it in my bag.

From a distance, you can’t tell a difference between my left and right shoe. But I feel the ground differently. My right foot can feel each pebble of gravel on the ground. Off-centered and unprepared.

I’m not sure why I feel so at fault and embarrassed.

My right sole sits in my bright red drawstring bag, hanging on a metal hook and laughing at me. On my bag, the white California bear printed above “CSSSA 2017” and I have a staring contest. I lose.

CSSSA is a four-week summer program in Southern California where teenagers focus on improving an art medium of choice. I went for Creative Writing. It was the first time I’ve been away from any family for over two weeks.

My last few summers of pre-teenhood were also spent in SoCal, but under much different circumstances. This time, away from my mom and sister, I’m on my own.

Being separated from them is a familiar feeling, but in previous circumstances I was under the property of my father. I didn't have the freedom to express myself nor make choices for my body and mind.

This time, I was at a four-week intensive camp that I had applied for and gotten into for Creative Writing. It has nothing to do with my family. Nothing to do with my father. All my own expression. My own choices.

There I was, on CalArts campus in Santa Clarita, California, making decisions for myself, meeting amazing talented creative teenagers and writing. Writing.

Writing.

A painful process–much like ripping off super-glue-stuck bandaids from my most sensitive parts. A process of digging into my stomach to extricate my guts and spread them on white printer paper to share with the class.

It left me feeling lonely often. Leaving me to isolate myself in my shared dorm room and take nap after nap after nap. Rotating friends to eat lunch with each day, my roommates and our friends from the Visual Arts, Film, and Animation departments, my friends in the Poetry major in Creative Writing, and a variety of other lovely people. It was rewarding and so so overwhelming.

I was all on my own.

After those four weeks of gut-spreading and naps and socializing with horny sober teenagers, I took the bus to the airport and flew home north.

That was the beginning of August. Now, I’m in Japan with my mom and sister, exploring restaurants and museums and nature and more museums. It is just us three for the first time in a while.

My pant size has grown substantially in the past months. I’ve shot upwards and outwards. My weight gain–the consequences of eating a donut in the dining hall for every meal for four weeks–makes me feel farther away from my reflection than I am.

In a country known for smallness, accompanied by my mom constantly exclaiming that everything fits her perfectly here like it was made for her, I have begun to feel like a giant.

The nickname my mom and sister have both taken to call me since I grew taller than them, does not help.

The BFG.

Yes, as in the book, “The BFG” by Roald Dhal. Big Friendly Giant.

I can’t tell if I’m actually here. I’ve been walking around alone, exploring at my own pace while my mom and sister explore at theirs.

I feel like a ghost wandering around, unaware of my past and purpose, lost in a sea of people who look like me and speak a language that feels familiar and so far away.

I am not used to the homogeneity of this country, surrounded by light skin and Asian features. Aren’t I made of my differences from the people around me? I was raised surrounded by all cultures and skin colors. I am used to being one of few Asians, surrounded by BIPoC. I feel out of place here, without the people I find a home in.

It is comforting for my mom. She was born and raised in a nearly 100% white town as one of two Chinese families. It feels like “home” for her here. A sense of safety and familiarity being surrounded by…? Your own race…? I don’t really get it.

Despite the comfort, she finds here when my sister and I bring up our own heritage, or I try to verbalize how weird it feels to be in the country my ancestors are from my mother replied, “Eh, well you’re only a quarter.”

I flinch at the memory of her words. Something aching and raw that looks like me, halved, is staring at me in the eye and I cannot recognize it. I and halved-me speak different languages. I can’t hear what they’re trying to tell me. Will I see clearer if I take my glasses off? Can blurriness find clarity?

There are only a few more days of this 12-day trip, exploring Japan with my mom and my sister. The three of us.

What does it mean to be the three of us? There are too many unspoken conversations for me to keep track of. Each of them father-shaped and elephant-sized.

Where is it I feel out of place, really?

Is it Japan? A foreign country, language. The birthplace of my father, that I stopped seeing when I was 12, and haven’t spoken to for over three years.

Is it my body? A viewpoint several inches higher. Skin that fits a little tighter. The Big Friendly Giant.

Is it my family?

Why?

Why do I feel so out of place when they are operating as if this is all normal? Oh yeah, I definitely wasn’t forcefully taken out of their lives, court-mandated, for a little over ten years. So, there definitely isn’t anything we need to talk about.

My own mind? There are things I cant remember, words and thoughts buried deep inside. My confusion and discomfort this summer have made me look down at my hands and realize I’ve been holding excavation tools––slowly picking at and brushing away layers of dirt and debris––searching for the truth within myself.

Out-of-place, confused, stumbling, and scrabbling around within my own darkness. Navigating a foreign country I’ve never been to before with ease (Google maps); but lost in my heart and mind, the map scribbled over with crayons and locked away somewhere I haven’t explored yet.

Traversing a foreign yet familiar country like Japan, connected to me via my father’s heritage, has only highlighted how foreign I feel to myself. All the pieces of me connected to my father have been left idle for years in the depths of my heart. The “out of place” I feel in this country pales in comparison to how unfamiliar I am to myself.

I have been staring at myself in a mirror. Uncomfortable and confused. I am just beginning to realize how much I don’t know. About the world around me. About myself.

Since when have I been a stranger to myself?

Four years from now I’ll be able to reflect on this time. Write about it. I’ll know the things I’m still hiding from myself, protecting deep within.

That this time of flailing like a fish out of water upset and uncomfortable on land, was meant to be, so I could sprout legs and learn to walk.

That my confusion is worth it. I am brave to exist in discomfort and observe my surroundings above criticizing myself.

That I will grow and learn to “fit in” that no matter where I am, regardless of time zone or common language, because I’ll have the person who knows me the best on my side, holding my hand, cheering me on, loving and believing in me unconditionally. Me.

But that’s still four years away.

I still have to fix my hair clips, take the train back to the house we’re staying, fly home to California, graduate high school, move across the country to attend college, do hundreds of readings and write essays, meet friends from all over, get diagnosed and start medication, declare my English major, drop out of college, survive a global pandemic, and start sharing my writing with the world.

I have time. To live and learn from this discomfort. I’ll try my hardest.

...

...

...

Thank you for taking the time to read my writing.

You can press the grey heart near my name, or send a tip (if you have the means) to let me know you liked it.

If you enjoyed Summer 2017, you may also enjoy my short storyA Totally-Normal-Not-Special-Nor-Strange Family Dinner.

If you want to see more of my writing, check out my profile.