Of Two Worlds

‘But how could you live and have no story to tell?’

- Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Someone called me a foreigner the other day.

It was a work misunderstanding, nothing particularly major. The sting faded before long. But I found myself shaken at the reminder that some people will always judge you based on what you look like, where you were born or the colour of your skin. People who think you don’t belong.

Today I’m talking about fitting in - because I never have. 

My parents come from opposite sides of the world.

I was born in the United States of America. I have vague memories of playing in snow, walking through autumn leaves and saying the Pledge of Allegiance in school every morning. As a child, I thought of myself as an American.

We moved to Malaysia when I was eight. I’d been here on holidays, but this was distressingly permanent. I didn’t know the language, then spoke it with an accent once I did. I was homeschooled and too afraid to mix with the local kids anyway. People called me the white kid. It slowly sank in that this was my life now. The United States was a dream of my childhood. And one of the most bittersweet things I can tell you is that dreams rarely line up with reality. 

I didn't always think of this city as home.

For the longest time, I wanted to go back.

Instead I read endless books, watched too much television, lost myself in video games. I dived headfirst into the ocean of the internet. I didn’t know what to think about my life, about myself. So I avoided both.

Then I started working in my twenties. By degrees, I realized that I had to separate myself from the fantasies that had sustained me for so long. I had to start figuring myself out. Some people think of college as the turning point in their lives. For me, it was getting a job.

Admittedly, mine is different from most. I work with animals. I’ve played with hornbills, been bitten by pythons, held an orangutan’s hand. Apart from that, my job has taught me so many valuable lessons. About responsibility, time management and social interaction. About how to work as a team. I’ve gained friends, had disagreements, gotten in relationships. I met the person I would later fall in love with.

If my teenage years were a long, lonely limbo, I can safely say my twenties have been some of the best years of my life.

Which leads me to today. Somehow, I’ve grown into a man. Yet I still feel the pull of the child I once was.

***

I saw the musical biopic Rocketman in August without many expectations. (The only Elton John song I knew was from The Lion King.) I was blown away. It's a great movie, and a poignant one. Underneath all the fame and fortune, the drugs and booze and orgies, the man born as Reginald Dwight spent half his life running away from the lonely, unloved little boy he used to be. 

Image credit: Swarovski

I can relate.

I don’t think about the past very much. I don’t see the point. The pains of growing up make us who we are. Sometimes I wonder, though, if I’m simply folding logic over an emotional core. Maybe I don’t like looking back because there are things I don’t want to see. There are pains that haven’t healed, that are with me even now.

So much of my life has been spent waiting for things I have no control over. I can only do my best in the meantime. I have steady work, friends and colleagues, someone to love. But sometimes it all feels like a castle in the air, just waiting to collapse into the yawning void beneath.

That’s when I fall back on old patterns. I lose myself in the mindless pursuit of novelty and pleasure. Over the years I’ve sought to quit my bad habits, but I still struggle with the feelings that cause them. The fear that this is as good as it gets. That what I’m waiting for will never come. That I will never be the man I could have been.

This is when I get depressed.

***

And then I bounce back, because life is short and we’re all going to die.

I’m twenty-eight years old now. If I look back on my life, I can honestly say that I’m proud of how far I’ve come. But there’s so much further to go. I’m still waiting to see what happens next.

The dream of the US has soured over the years. I look at the country and see mass shooters and active shooting drills, guns and racism and soaring inequality. A nation with bitterly divided views of its own future. I see a symbol of liberty and progress struggling under the weight of the American Dream. I hope things will get better, I really do. Only time will tell.

Whereas I’ll have lived in Malaysia for twenty years this December. Though tensions exist, I’m proud of this country’s backbone of tolerance and multiculturalism, where different races and religions live and let live. I’m proud of the place I call home. Yet I worry that I will never truly belong.

But here's the thing: I will always be Eurasian. There will always be two sides to my heritage.

I've long been fascinated by stories of duality. Light and darkness, ice and fire, sanity and madness, life and death. Fantasy and reality, and the boundaries that blur the line between the two. Former heroes, reformed villains. Characters who stand in two worlds.

Light above and dark below.

Sounds familiar, don't you think.

I accept that about myself. Indeed, I embrace it. I will never be purely anything. Diversity is a part of who I am. If some people don’t like that, so be it. 

I talk a lot about growing up on here. About life lessons, mindsets, changing the way we think. But I’ve learned that change is a funny thing. It creeps up on you unawares. Sometimes, change isn’t about becoming someone different.

It’s about embracing who you were all along.