hello! it has been a while since i have posted something new. i almost forgot that this website existed. i wonder why. the last time i posted was last year in november. i’m trying to remember things that might have happened around that time. maybe i stopped posting because i started being more involved in therapy. it is somewhat funny that i am not back having terminated a few months ago.
much has happened since last year. i’m bringing myself back to november last year, and what i can remember is a lot of uncertainty and unhappiness related to my work environment. it is interesting to be now have the currently knowledge now, and i wonder how knowing how the situation worked out would have changed anything. being able to suffer through such abuse in a time when i felt so vulnerable. i guess that i have grown a lot and have had a lot of self-realization about some things.
i feel a lot more settled now, despite being in more seeming uncertainty with regards to where i might be next year. i am currently apply for residencies in psychiatry. while it is a bit nerve wracking, it is also fun to travel, learn about how psychiatry is practiced in different areas of the country, meet new people that are interested in psychiatry, and be able to think about how i want to further learn. it seems like a priviledge to have this opportunity at times.
sometimes, though, i feel very caught up in specific social faux paus that i may have done, or may not have done. how i could have expressed myself better in some instances. wonder if i could have said something differently. it’s basically this anxiety of being interpreted in a way that i don’t really think is myself, or maybe it is just negatively. i think that this tends to be a bit neurotic, especially as i have .. i dunno. nevermind.
i’ve been thinking a lot recently about race/ ethnicity/ however you want to call it. i’m currently in orange county, and it bothers me how unofficially segreated things are by race or socioeconomically. i feel very aware of being asian here. i feel aware of socioeconomic status here, and it is hard for me to separate whether or not this is from my own experiences experiencing racial/ socioeconomic discrimation in this area, or if it is actually something objectively observable.
sometimes i teeter between a love and hate relationship with orange county because of this. sometimes i feel that there is a lot of diversity and more tolerance for things such as nonamerican accents, miscommunication. other times, i see microaggressions everywhere i go. i feel in the way, i feel unwelcome in a particular space, i feel that i am just a sum of all of the sterotypes of asian american women, i feel embarassed of the actions of my immigrant parents. i find myself reminding myself of my own value, and start to believe that it just doesn’t fit in this environment.
at the same time, i’m find that being a daughter to asian immigrants is challenging. i struggle between our culturally-ominscient value of codependency versus american independence. at times, i’m not sure if i should speak up for certain things as i want to maintain their nonconfrontational environment. often, i don’t say anything, i disengage; but then this resentment and sadness builds on how different i am from them and how disconnected i feel from them. when i try to share things that are meaningful to me, it is hard to communicate as it is often misinterpreted or seen as an attack. i am really sad about how i feel that i can’t share anything that is meaningful to mean with my parents. i don’t understand why.
part of this codependency is also amplified by my mom’s (unofficial) mental illness, which really. makes this a lot worse. a lot of communication is based on blaming, judging (any and every) things as either good or bad, etc.
despite this, i’ve been finding comfort in talking about this with one of my close friends who might be experiencing similar dyanamics with her family. while sometimes i feel that i completely regress when i am with my parents (haha!), i am looking forward to seeing how things will be in the future.
i guess i’m still growing! and there is so much more to grow…