Who Am I?

I hate to attach descriptions to people. Whenever we talk about a particular person, certain adjectives always seem to spring in our minds.

“Do you remember Greg?” “Who?” “You know… the tall and loud one?”

Hypocrite is the word to describe me because I’m guilty of doing that, even though I’ve just confessed that describing people in this way makes me feel as if I’m talking about an object, rather than a human being.

“Do you know Lindsey?” “Who?” “The small Asian girl.”

So, let’s start off with that. Small. Standing at 5'1, I am definitely small. With this height, there are a lot of problems.

1.) You can’t see over tall and really tall people. 2.) You can’t reach anything above 5'2. 3.) You require the assistance of chairs to help you reach above 5'2. 4.) Your friends can lose you in a crowd (and even if you put your hand up, they still won’t be able to see you…). 5.) You’re used as a ‘pole’ for people’s elbows to relax on.

But with this height, there are also a lot of blessings…

1.) You get frequent compliments of you being cute just because you’re small. 2.) You have better balance (because you’re closer to the ground). 3.) You can fit into tiny spaces when playing hide and seek. 4.) You’re pushed to the front of every picture due to your height. 5.) You get mistaken for a 15-year-old girl rather than a 19-year-old girl (which is a blessing for me because that means I look young height-wise).

“I don’t think I know a Lindsey.” “I’m pretty sure you know her… that Asian girl.”

Asian. Whenever I hear that word, I wonder if I actually am. There’s no doubt that I am, but I sometimes find myself having an identity crisis.

The 6-year-old me revelled in the idea of a plane ride across the blue sky whilst looking at the world below me, so when my dad revealed that we were moving from the Philippines to England, I was overjoyed.

Philippines is a weird country — it’s made up of 7,000 islands rather than a whole block of land, and although it’s located in Southeast Asia, there’s an argument about whether Filipinos are Asian or Pacific Islanders.

The country used to proudly announce that they were the ‘Philippine Islands of the Pacific’ before settling on just ‘the Philippines’, but even with this information, it doesn’t change the fact that I still don’t know who I am. Perhaps, I’m Asian and a Pacific Islander — a mixture of both. But, I guess, that means I’d have to have an intense history lesson to know what that truly means.

My hobbies circle around me like a buffet table — one day I’m an artist who juggles between painting and sketching; another day I’m a musician trying to learn a new song on my guitar; the next day I’m a dancer trying to memorise the steps to a routine…

Although all of these aspects of my individuality wrap around me like a physical version of my DNA, it doesn’t convey that I’m still learning about myself and who I actually am.

Check out the original post: https://medium.com/clippings-autumn-2018/who-am-i-a95e9c61011a

{#FindingYourself #thoughts #Filipino}