To my Chinese heritage,
I want to be you, but I can’t seem to be enough.
I want to learn your language I’ve forgone, but I can’t seem to get myself to take that first step.
I want to experience more of you, to be identified as you, to feel like you, but it’s so, so hard.
You have always been there. You’re within my parents. You’re within me, but I don’t feel like you much these days. You were such a comfort to me throughout my childhood and early teens. I remember celebrating the Mid-Autumn Festival, holding lanterns, and devouring mooncakes. Those moments made me feel like I belonged to something timeless and beautiful. You shaped my self-identity, gave me another accepting community besides my Vietnamese family, show me the ways of your beliefs and such important celebrations—I look up to you. Very much. I was so proud to be you at one point.
But as the days go by, you become more distant. I didn’t notice at first, so absorbed in enjoying my new life—making friends from different backgrounds, exploring new traditions, and finding my place in a world so different from what I’d known. I didn’t realize that I neglected you. My distance made me lose you, and I’m sorry it took me so long to realize that until you were already gone.
It’s funny how, when people are lacking something, they tend to not acknowledge it at all. They push it away further, deny it, or even hide this side of themself. I think that’s what I did with you. I lost you, so I began to tell people that I’m fully Vietnamese. I laugh awkwardly every time a relative expresses their regrets to my dad at family gatherings that neither of his daughters know how to speak you. I celebrate Tet when I should’ve also celebrated your ideologies because you deserve to be celebrated too. I deny your existence in me and in my life for so long and I’m sorry. I’m sorry I lost you because I didn’t try enough to care for you. I was so ashamed of my lacking for so long now that I fully embraced the Vietnamese side while pushing you fully out of my life.
I should’ve realized that there’s always enough space for the both of you in my soul and in my life.
I want to try again. I want to hold space for you again in my life. You’ve always been there for me in the past, so now it’s my turn to be there for you. I know it’ll be hard to have you fully back. I’ve hurt you, I’ve hurt myself. But I really want you back—I want to be able to proudly declare myself both Vietnamese and Chinese at every gathering. I promise to never be ashamed of you again, so I will try again to win you back. Because you deserve that at least, to be with me for the rest of my life. I’m so afraid of how much it will cost me to try again and then fail—the vulnerability of confronting my shortcomings and the time and energy it will take to relearn what I’ve forgotten. But if it’s you, then it’ll be worth it.
Love always,
Hilary