Month: February 2015

I hate making mistakes. I know it’s how we learn and grow, but to me, it has felt like I was failing, and if there’s something I hate more than mistakes, it’s failing.

To me, my own mistakes, not other’s, were a sign I was failing and I was, am, very self critical of myself when I do make mistakes.

I wish I could say I feel so different now then I used to, but I don’t really. I still feel like I do disappoint myself.

And I guess that’s the crux of it all, disappointment. I hate to disappoint, whether it’s my friends or my family, I don’t like that.

Funnily enough, growing up it was never a big deal to make mistakes or disappoint my parents (which I don’t know if that would have been possible, they’re pretty great). When I did make mistakes, even pretty large ones, it was never a big deal. But maybe I created it to be more so in my own head. Like knowing I would be accepted and what not, maybe, definitely, became my own worst critic.

I’m not sure if in my head it was that these people might secretly be disappointed in me, or but that the fear of potential disappointment was even greater so I hyped myself up more about it? This seems like one of those paranoid dreams you have at night.

I’m not exactly sure why I have such a firm connection to disappointment and self disappointment, but I do.

Maybe my biggest fear is to disappoint people? And maybe the people I am concerned about is me? But that just doesn’t feel right. So I guess this isn’t a very satisfying post since I have literally no answers….I’ll think about it and get back to it then!

I have been experiencing this for a while. It’s sometimes difficult for people I meet to acknowledge both me being American and Asian. And so one of those gets erased through the process and it’s usually my Asian identity. I don’t know if it’s because I was adopted and so ‘not really Asian’, but whatever it is, it really bothers me.

I can’t ignore that part of me, and I wouldn’t want to, it’s a part of me. Whether or not I spend time, or spent time living in China, that doesn’t change where I was born or my history.

It bothers me when people ignore it because it doesn’t seem authentic to them. Yes I could have done more to ‘assert my Asian identity’, but should I have to? I don’t think so. I don’t like feeling like I have to ‘prove’ I’m Asian.

I don’t feel like I make people ‘prove’ their identity to me. So why should it mean that I should have to?

It makes me feel quite insulted and disrespected.

But maybe it also reflects something I felt as a kid, not knowing how to accept another identity I didn’t feel like I could belong to, or wasn’t accepted into. Maybe it comes from a reflection of how I felt when I didn’t want to acknowledge that identity of mine. When I was younger, I felt like I couldn’t win because if I tried to ‘act’ Asian, then there would be people, or I felt there would be people, who would call my bluff.

So perhaps it reflects my own fears as a child/teenager, but I’m past that now. I’m ready to start accepting both parts/words in my self identity.