#and ughhh yeah i love indulging in it. idc whether anyone finds it cringe or whatever man like. im past that.

[usertoxicyaoi]

anyway i love being asian and i love saying that out loud with my whole chest out. there's so much tradition and history in our culture and when you're in the west sometimes you fail to understand or you miss the sentiment, the reasoning, the point, of certain practices within the culture. either that, or you feel ashamed of them. until you start seeing, for example, white people doing and taking up practices belonging to the asian culture and you, as an asian, are like .... uh ............ what the fuck am /i/ doing being ashamed about it then .......

like. for example, oiling your hair. when i was a kid, my ammi would oil my hair every single time a day before i was going to wash my hair. that act, yes, held so much meaning for the both of us. it was something my naani did to her, so she did it with me. generational. it was our bonding time. it was her teaching me how we look after our hair. and then ... as i grew up, i didn't get my hair oiled by my ammi anymore. when she asked me why, i had said to her back then that i looked greasy and it was so embarrassing because i'd smell of oil when i would go to school and. yeah. she stopped doing it. and my hair got damaged. and its been years and today, i saw my ammi oiling her hair, and she just called me over, and i sat on the floor and she oiled my hair. and it just felt. like a lot. and i felt ... heavy.

and then i realised that despite being in my late twenties, there's still so much left in me to unpack and unlearn and relearn wrt me being asian. i thought i'd gone past that phase. but i haven't. and thats okay!

which is why its so important for me to have ... this space ... i guess ... where i can validate myself. where i can watch things that are asian, made by asians, doing asian things and following the culture so that i too feel comfortable in my own skin. in the people who look like me. in the food i eat. in the clothes i wear. in the languages i speak. in the art and media i enjoy. in all the big and little things i do.

but anyway. i love being asian. i wish i could talk about it more and how much it means to me when i make a deep dive and indulge within my culture and how rooted that makes me feel. i often feel like i've neglected so much of what it means to be asian, but its still not too late. and there's a deep comfort in that.