We were put on a one way flight to Japan with no plan of when to return. Since then, I had always felt a sense of longing for home, silently brewing like a long term search for self, hoping circumstances would get better as my “horizons” grew and I would settle in my new life. My early childhood was full of wonderful memories of play, joy, laughter, community, and success. Life just seemed to be full of wonderful opportunities and surprises year after year. Holiday after holiday. From the very day we moved to Japan, all that magic was gone. Every year felt more restricted and heavier than the last. It was almost as if a wall was built between where I came from and where I was headed, and I would never be able to see the other side again.
THE Other Side.
Life gave me a pendulum that was swinging between “us" and “them.” East and West. Local and gaijin. We may see growing up multicultural as an opportunity for growth, for expansion, for cultural broadening, and all of the potentials the unfolding of a new horizon can be. Growing up as a teenager is hard enough to begin with and with additional variations around new cultural norms and values - it can be pretty rough.
When you do not know what is right and wrong at a young age and are given a wider range of choices, it starts to confuse you as to who you think you are, where you fit in, and who you try to be. While growing up as a multicultural offers you a wider perspective, builds your tolerance towards differences, and exposes you to a vast range of choices, on the downside of growing up as a multicultural, there is confusion of your own self identity, cultural clashes with the mainstream culture, loss of friends back in the former country (in the days without internet), and uncertainty amidst changes in the new world that can be life defining.
To draw a balance, life seems to have a way of bringing you back to those familiar places and memories which you can always revisit year after year despite distance and time. We hang onto them for a sense of identity and peace - to feel a sense of home within oneself. It was between this comparison with my former life and the present one I was in that I always searched for a similar if not a better circumstance to put myself in.
I longed for guidance to deal with my unique cultural as well as personal situation.
Life has its contradictions and strange ways of flowing.
I never went back to live in the US, despite years of trying to plan a move. If it were not for the fact that I were multicultural, I don’t think I would have become the person whom I am now, met the people whom I met, and lived such an eclectic life. From small town to city girl, would I be willing to go through the same cultural pains again back to a country I love only to be disappointed it’s not what it used to be. I’m obviously no longer who I was back then. Now being totally on my own as an adult minority, would I be able to handle it?
They all made me realize that we don’t fit into cultural norms.
Even as a returnee we don’t have to. Returnee was starting to mean permission to rebel. It still did not offer the alternative life I was searching and only permitted negative space.
Regardless of which culture or country we grow up in, we all have our unique growing pains. Mine was about developing a universal sense of values that would function in any culture so I could be free of this anguish and finally be me.
There is a saying in Japanese that translates "to renounce oneself” - meant in a positive way. To change multiculturally, you have to be willing to change your habitual ways. It’s not as easy as it seems especially when it trespasses where you place your personal dignity and your sense of moral well being. Sometimes you have to be willing to let go of who you are to succeed.
My life is a story of a foreigner in a foreign land who was able to integrate like a local where she went because of how she acted and looked. I was viewing life through "twinkie" eyes. Eventually, writing helped me discover my true story and let free all the burdens I carried over the years. I pulled out stories that defined the inner transformation from one culture to another. Few know what it means to grow up multicultural - a really intense inner journey when it crosses with personhood. It is an expression to find who it is we really are that is beyond what we are conditioned and treated based on how we look. It was to open up that dialogue around universal themes about being a multicultural, a unique experience like no other.