I am kind of confused when people ask me anything concerning my identity or anything I do, specifically. I think, because I live in my own world- like everybody lives in his own- I rarely take the time or make the effort to analyze anything about myself. By labels- I am a sophomore student in college, Asian-American and by definition culturally mixed. I believe in a bunch of different things that draw fire from both sides of the camp- a political liberal v fundamentalist Christian, an American-educated not-quite-Chinese.I’ve spent all of my time at college trying to reconcile the contradictory parts of myself, and trying to understand who I am. I am a dependent social being (like when they say, individualism is a social construct, it’s because we need other people to define who we are as selves). I learn languages to feel less left out, I join groups to be part of something, I go to events and have fun because that’s how life works, I think, and soon it’s going to end. Life is short.I notice the divisions the most when I have to switch from English to Chinese or vice-versa. Both languages feel so different that sometimes I wonder if I’m the same person saying the same things, or if people who only speak one languages are never going to see the other language-side of me. But it’s really just an exaggeration of the divides we all feel- someone once told me that they don’t feel like they have a personality- that it changes, person to person. So if the self is a social construct, what is it beneath that triggers people to expect this but not that of me?What do I do? I live- as well as I can, as best as I can. I feel the pressures all around me- the social network and its expectations of who I am and what I can and cannot do, the social relationships I have with people who want me to do other things, my own beliefs, which obligate me to do in turn yet more things. All of me is a long fight towards an end- it’s always the fight.
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