A Lost Identity

Image by 0.00mari

By Kistina

I never knew I had a lost identity until someone told me I had a lost identity. I never knew I looked different from other kids until an adult told me I looked different. I didn’t think it mattered that my hair was straight and my skin was pale until someone told me to keep it like that. I never had to question my identity until someone assumed I did. 

The first distinct memory I had of someone telling me I was different was when I was 7. I was sitting at the bus stop waiting to be picked up, my feet swinging off the side of the bench, toes barely touching the ground. I don’t remember how the conversation started but I remember the conversation so vividly. 

"Your skin is so pale! And your hair is so straight! Do you straighten your hair? What soap do you wash with?"

None of these questions made sense to me. You can straighten your hair? "I use Johnson & Johnsons No More Tears, it smells like fruits and it comes out a bright green". She laughed at me and said, "Must be Chinese". But it felt like she wasn’t directing the statement to me but to herself. Did it matter, I thought, my whole life up to that point was spent living carelessly and oblivious to any differences in race but I remembered that from that day on I tried my hardest to fit into the box of the race I had to tick. It was weird for me, it felt like the world I thought I knew was turned upside down and I had to navigate it alone –  of course I wasn’t alone but I only learned that years later as an adult. 

I wanted tanner skin that glowed in the sunlight instead of my pale skin that would bubble-up freckles when the sun would hit. I wanted curly, thick, wavy nusantara locks that would bounce when you ran. Instead, I had dark, straight hair that resembled steeped rice vermicelli and that lost all volume when I began to sweat. 

It wasn’t that there weren’t any kids that looked like me, I had plenty of Chinese peers. But I felt the pressure to look and behave like what was written on my passport, the identity that the government recognised me for, the way the people categorised themselves. It frustrated me that I didn’t and all throughout primary school it would constantly be at the back of my mind, reminding me to do things a certain way or say a certain phrase that would let the other kids think: she’s Malay.

But it’s true what they say, with age comes wisdom. I have learned that my identity is not based on societal norms that categorise a certain race. I have learned that the box is just a box and it does not reproduce my whole story to someone. I have learned that it has done more harm than good to create your identity based on other people’s identity. I don’t have a lost identity, I never had a lost identity, people were lost as to how to decipher my identity from years of social training that ticks boxes of a to-do list to decide if you fit into a certain identity. I look different from other people that tick the same square “race” box in government forms, but I’m not the only one. The only time it matters that my hair is straight and my skin is pale is when the sun beats down on my skin and I forget to wear a layer to protect it.