The Gen's resident 'Punk rock and pint-loving American-Thai-British chick' lets loose on what it was like growing up between different cultures and finally understanding what it means to be yourself. We love her sense of humour during our Roundtables, we’d like to introduce to you all - Cheylene (Instagram: @cheylene.t)
Be yourself. We all grow up seeing it or hearing it in one form or another—slapped on posters, sung in childrens’ songs, spewed out of the mouths of teachers, counsellors, and sometimes even our parents. ‘Being yourself is the key to happiness,’ they say.
But what if it’s not that simple? What if who you are and who you’re expected to be are two different things? And what if you being yourself lets everyone around you down?
Like many of you probably reading this I come from a multicultural background. My Korean mom was adopted into an Filipino-American military family and lived in Panama with them before settling in the US. She passed away when I was young, and I was raised by my Bangkok-born-and-bred father (Yep, single Asian dad with a daughter...we’ll save that for another blog post!). Together with my brother we hopped around from Germany (where I was born), to The States in Georgia, California, and then Nevada. In my early 20s I moved back across the Atlantic, this time to the UK.
Humans are social animals. Fitting into the social groups around us is a survival mechanism. The East-West culture clash and anecdotes from the lives of 2nd generation kids are well documented. As a matter of survival we develop an innate ability to step into and out of different personas like little acting prodigies. At home we instinctively know to shutter our feelings and obey our parents completely, without question, no matter what. Outside we take on a more jovial, expressive, and carefree persona to blend into the Western culture that surrounds us.
So what happens when people like us grow up and set out on our own? Do we stop acting?
For me, the answer was no. I carried into adulthood what I knew best: being what people expected me to be. Not only was my acting switch stuck in the ‘on’ position, I didn’t even know where the damn thing was anymore, much less how to turn it off!
My personal relationships, friendships, career, and everyday life continued, without a second thought, as an extension of my childhood acting career, driven by the mortal fear of falling short of expectations and letting people down. While life wasn’t without its happy moments, I found it increasingly draining. Years of swallowing my feelings, not speaking my mind, and quite simply putting up with shit for no good reason had taken their toll.
Desperate and genuinely afraid my life would continue forever like this, I sought out therapy. As someone who grew up hearing from her father that therapy was for ‘weak’ people, this was a huge step for me. And it ended up being one of the most important steps I’ve ever taken. A few sessions in, these are the words that changed my life:
“The things that helped us survive in childhood don’t necessarily serve us well in adulthood.”
There it was plain and simple. As a kid I learned not to walk on the ground where it’s safe, but to balance across a cross-cultural tightrope where I was only one slip away from disapproval, from being outcast, from being disowned. That tightrope was exhausting and scary, but when we’re young and can’t control our environment we need it to survive.
What I didn’t realize is that the tightrope that was my lifeline growing up was hurting me as a grown-ass human. As adults we have the autonomy to change our environment and the people around us in a way we couldn’t when we were younger. There’s a point when we don’t need to (and shouldn’t) rely on old habits. We can jump off our rope and trust that the ground is right beneath our feet. It’s solid, it’s stable, and it feels oh-so-good. We have the freedom to finally take the advice we’ve heard all our lives to heart.
We can be ourselves, for real this time.
So here I am, a punk rock and pint-loving American-Thai-British chick. I cry when I hear the national anthem at the start of NBA games. I’ll take sauerbraten over som tam any day. Shoes are never allowed in my house. I feel weird using a dishwasher, but I couldn’t survive without a rice cooker. I sing country songs in the shower, paint oil portraits in my spare time, and have a tattoo of the lunar lander on my ankle. This is me being myself. This is me stepping down from the tightrope, walking firmly on the ground. And yes, I’m much happier.
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