Week 9: This is what home as all along

This was absolutely the toughest quarter I’ve had in school. At the end, it fits because of what was on my plate. One thing I won’t do is discount all the things that lead me to here – write them off as something I moved pass from. From issues of my health to moving in with my partner to feeling my own intergenerational trauma to feeling so affected by the content of this course. So many things grabbed at me and have both contributed to massive amounts of stress and gratitude for being able to see through the pain and turn it into action.

The bad part is though, I don’t know if my writing has improved. Because I chose something so personal I focused a lot more on the personals than how I’m writing it. And with the stress and the issues I just wasn’t able to dedicate enough time to really think about my writing.

One thing I realized with my paper was how the home I chose to write about has been with me this whole time. For like the past three years. My home are the feelings of being connected to myself and my environment (sometimes other people are involved in it too lol), it’s the feelings of appreciation and forgiveness of myself, and honesty-acceptance-love for myself. Practicing it everyday, being patient in that process. Noticing when I’m far from home and seeing how long and what needs to happen in order to get back.

The hard part was connecting it to APIA pop culture. I started with family which is a definite sore spot. Then I moved it over to representation of Asian women and then shortening the lens to include specifically Pilipina women. I wanted to connect my home with how disconnected I was to my ethnicity and WHY. With my home and all that connection, I took the time to really feel my feelings, to talk about them, and to move forward with them. Because my ethnic identity was largely erased, most of the feelings I had about it were uncomfortable feelings. And I had no place to feel or talk about them. Even when openings were available throughout these three years I didn’t dare to walk through them. It’s the power of representation and opportunity when it took a rare Asian American culture program to get me to think deeply about my own damn life.

So that is where my paper is. I have not worked in it since this past Monday night but I did that purposefully to being all dedicated tonight and tomorrow. Really that is all I need. I highly believe in my writing abilities and I know the finished product will be something I’m proud of. I just need to really take the time out and let the words and connections all come to me.

A lot of my paper is recognizing my identities and how the development of those hindered my Pilipina identity – it just wasn’t something I thought about. In my paper I wrote about why it’s important for me to bring all my selves into the work I do and in my life. So yeah yeah it’s all personal to me, and when it gets like this I know I resist getting to the personal feelings. Like it’ll take me a long time to actually write something I can use. But this is why I waited until the night before to do all the heavy lifting.

When this is done I can relax and feel good about the work I’ve done.

Week 8: Working Through the Break (inside cringing when people say “thanksgiving” but I understand why they call it that *cringe face*)

It’s sure something to be able to make it through a very tough week and be able to really see how bad things were. A couple of days removed from writing the previous Rock post, the “badness” of my feelings died down and I was able to work on my paper on and off this week. The focus shifted a little bit to better fit APIA pop culture. And it feels like I’m back in the beginning where I’m touching upon the body. I will be writing more about representations of Asian women in the media and how it affected my worldview growing up. The affect will connect with my idea of HOME and how negative and very little portrayals did not allow me to establish a strong relationship with my ethnic identity. And of course I will to include my upbringing and that crucial family stuff because that’s important in it too. The disconnection family-wise has to do with being a U.S. born child of immigrant parents, both of us navigating a world that doesn’t really want and respect us.

I worked on it this morning and wrote down a bit of commentary and more anecdotes. I started writing more intentionally rather than just writing the words straight from my mind. I think I’m over the bad feelings of the weekend and am seriously ready to just finish strong. Also, knowing that we’re just days away from a week long break helps so much too. Also knowing that I felt exactly this same way last year helps too.

I’ve never really explored my ethnicity in this way. So I understand why it was hard for me in the first place. But I think right now after working on my paper for like two hours this morning I think I’m in a good place. Thinking that if I go back tomorrow and work on it then I would be so much more closer to having a finished draft.

I met with Kris and decided to send her a finished draft around week 9 for her to read over. This works out great for me to have this extended time to work on it. I think that’s what I needed. While it would have been cool to have the whole break without any schoolwork, maybe working on the thing little by little throughout the next week would fit me better. Now that I have more written and now that I feel better about myself as a whole.

Week 7: four day weekend spent at home

I wrote a bit about what was going on with me and my… paper in my Scissors post (titled The Mountain of Stress, written Saturday night after a day of feeling awful – feeling like the stress buildup of the past couple of months has finally hit me hard) and now I guess here is where I have to put in active steps on how to move forward.

I spent most of the early afternoon crying and sunken in bed next to Jackson who was watching his show. Before that, he asked me what was wrong and I was like Idon’tknow(?)everything(?) and he asked me to lay down with him for a while. So when I got there I started crying on and off for the three or four episodes of that new show he was watching. I even took a little nap. It was hard. I don’t remember a time where I felt so down on myself and everything that I just cried. And in that crying and throughout the day where I allowed myself to think about it, I thought about home. I thought about that feeling of being self aware and connected and grounded and engaged. I thought that these past four days not doing much and getting that sleep would be good for me. I just ended up staying in that miserable stage.

So I thought of home and I avoided it because I wasn’t ready to be in a positive place yet. In my paper (in its current version) I describe a counseling session where I came in distraught and was practically yelling at my counselor. We worked through those feelings and in the end he said “you landed your own helicopter, I didn’t do it for you,” essentially telling me he didn’t tell me what to do to feel better, to move forward. I worked my way around what was wrong and he was just there to be a soundboard, to ask me the hard questions to get my real thoughts through. The home I chose for this project is not always an easy and comforting place. I understand that a lot of reflection and honesty needs to happen in order to get to those connected, engaged feelings. I understand how these feelings were not accessible to me when I was younger for many reasons. So to get there I need to burst/walk/talk/shove through the walls to get to the other side.

It’s hard to focus and I know why that is. It’s hard writing about my family, sometimes it feels like I’m trying to explain their actions when I have no idea what they were and only have my sources to try to explain them. It’s hard writing about my family in relation to my ethnic identity because there isn’t much there. It’s hard writing about my ethnicity when this is literally the first time writing about it and thinking extensively about it. So. Where do we go from here.

Like I got caught up in all the emotions I’m so missing out on the how does it connect to APIA pop culture. So I was thinking about not so much writing about my family and all that drama and instead highlighting more about being a Pilipina both as a younger and then a bit older person. Bringing up representations in media, stereotypes, expectations and a bit of history. All of which I have sources for. Plus it’s a bit embarrassing to be at this stage when it’s week 7 and I’m soooo behind. But I’m not going to feel bad about it right now because I strongly feel that I needed to go through all the emotions of this week and to do all the crying. I needed this. It gets me to really think about what has helped me move through these feelings and to be conscious of the amount of energy I put into them. Of course, I can write more about this but… we got to get mentally prepared for tomorrow.

Week 5: An often forgotten step in the writing process is hating yourself, your writing and wanting to scrap everything and start all over.

This past weekend, I tried to work on my paper. I think I’ve said this every week: how writing is HARD. Tell this to anyone and they can totally relate. It’s difficult and it’s so rewarding when we finish. If there even is a finish. There doesn’t have to be I guess. Except in this assignment, we turned in three assignments: the project proposal, the annotated bibliography and then the first draft aka the shitshow in paper. Over the weekend I tried to work on my paper… I didn’t get anything done. On Sunday I grew super frustrated and just turned out and watched two episodes of Days of our Lives at the end of the day. There’s just something about my writing… I mentally won’t want to do it until the night it’s due and even when I sat down to write Tuesday night, it was so hard to put down. I didn’t free write before writing the actual draft which made it feel inorganic. I always say bad things about the things I write and I haven’t even looked at it since Wednesday. IDK. One of these days I’m just going to have to sit down and really take the time to go through everything I want to say. I think I’m all over the place but I’ll always put myself down.

I think what I need to do next is go through the rest of my sources again, pick out what I want to use from them and then free write about the narrative pieces of my essay. Which stories should I include, which people should be in it. It’s pretty open. So like this weekend, I should like not sleep in until like 11am so I could maximize my time because I know it’s going to take a lot mentally to get in the right space.

SO…even if in the first paragraph I made two comments about how I put myself down and say bad things about myself… I feel pretty optimistic about my paper. I FEEL GOOD about it. There’s a lot of potential, a lot I can explore. I’m kind of putting a lot on it, how I describe it to people, saying how cleansing and healing it’s going to be for me because I’m writing about something I never thought deeply about before. But however it turns out, it’s going to feel good in the end, that’s just the way it goes, you know. I am a bit bummed that we aren’t going to present at the end of the quarter but that’s cool.

Right now I am home. I do feel connected (because I’m writing!), I am honest, I have great people around me who held and support me, I feel safe and welcome where I am. My mental health is not falling apart and I am grateful for being here today. So…I’m home. And the cool thing is, there’s varying degrees of it too. Like different rooms, different temperatures… some days I can be at home and warm and fully connected and other days I can be a bit cold but self-aware, frustrated and looking to feel better. *smiles* That’s cool.

Week 4: Heavy Mental Lifting

This week’s assignment towards our creative essays was the annotated bibliography. I remember skipping this assignment in my first quarter (last Fall) because I still hadn’t picked a topic yet. LOL. This time I actually turned in the assignment. I finished it Tuesday night at like 10PM and felt good about it. I thought I picked pretty good sources and was able to synthesize the ideas and relate them to my paper. I just hadn’t completely read them all word for word so maybe I’m better at skimming than I thought.

Anyways, my essay has taken an extra layer than the last time I wrote about it. I’m still sticking with my connection topic and the words that come up with it for me were: self-awareness, counseling, centered self, emotional, honest and trusting. Then I will go and write about the disconnection (and longing, I suppose) where specifically I will write about my ethnicity and that will break off into two sections. One, with my family dynamic, our relationship to each other and our cultural connection. Two, as identifying as a Pilipina, incorporating representations, stereotypes and other thing. My sources have been about mental health, immigrant parent and US-born children connections and female representations in media. One thing was for sure: Pilipinx Americans (is that even an accurate label? I know that lately using the term “American” has come under criticism because when we use that word we’re commonly talking about the United States and not South and Central America… and Canada. So like IDK) are a vastly underrepresented group in psychological literature. I’m just glad I found something specifically about us, even if the number of articles were sparse.

I’ve found that when people ask me what my topic is, I can’t just give a one word answer. Other people have easier ways to answer this question without explanation of their topics. This probably is just me, I always feel the need to explain myself. I can’t say my topic is connection or feeling connected. I got to go into the whole story, talk about all the things I wrote about in this blog lol. I could just say ready my blog hahaha but then again I don’t often get asked this question. The topic has become pretty entwined with the other parts of my paper that it wouldn’t do it justice if I just said an easy answer

“Heavy Mental Lifting” is something a previous History instructor would say. They would be like “it’s time to do some heavy mental lifting” trying to engage our brains into thinking deeply about the topic. And I’ve taken that and related it to writing in my journal and also writing papers. Writing is my thing to do, I have a journal that I do my best to write in regularly. Writing papers has always been a struggle, it takes me a long time to get my thoughts down on paper (something I also wrote about a bit on here) and this draft will take a lot out of me. So we’re just going to see where it goes, I hope that I don’t end up crying too much.

Week 3: “It’s so heavy, it’s so stressful”

Now there’s an annotated bibliography due on Tuesday. I like searching for academic articles and getting lost in what I find. I’m kind of excited but it’s 8:11PM Saturday and I still need to finish this post, the Scissors one and read some of the book due on Friday (and make dinner lol) so I can dedicate some time tomorrow to research. On Thursday I actually started and printed out some articles. I just haven’t taken them out of my backpack yet.

I decided to stick with my topic of that connected feeling (and maybe one day before I turn in the creative essay I’ll be able to word my topic better and not have to go through the whole story) because it’s so important to me. In my mini-research session on Thursday, I search for articles on mental health in the databases because that’s where one of my homes ended up being from that writing session I did last week but I didn’t end up with a lot of articles. I’m sure they’re out there (I hope so cuz it’s super important) but mental health isn’t my strong area. I don’t think it’s an area I want to write about. I’m completely open with my time in counseling as it’s been a majorly transformative experience in my life but I’d rather talk about it than write about it.

What I do want to write about is… you know something it’s so “funny” because I know what I’m going to write about next and it’s such a sore spot I can already feel my chest and face grow tight. So going along with the metaphorical home of being connected, I thought about being disconnected from my ethnic identity. This is an experience I’m not alone in but when you don’t talk about it, it sure feels like it. I’m already feeling like I’m going to cry which is amazing because I haven’t even gotten to the thick of it. Doing the blogging thing during Friday’s afternoon block really showed me this is what I should write about. I could connect all the things I wrote about last week into this too, because all connects together. On Friday, I was talking about my topic and then I talked about my life and after the convo I reflected on it because it felt good to share my life story with another person. But I also realized that when I’ve talked about my story, it feels like I’m telling it like it’s my past, rather than something I’m currently facing. Meaning: that when I talk about my childhood and growing up with my family, it feels like I’m so far removed from it on the inside. When seriously talking about my family is a super sore spot and I don’t talk about them very much. On the surface in conversation I can talk about the good and bad parts but when the convo is over, the feeling I’m left with is discomfort, heaviness and emptiness.

It’s like there’s a big hole missing in my family that would have connected us together: our Philippine identity. At least that’s what I hope! I can only speak for myself and in recognizing myself as a woman of color, as a shy student leader striving to lead with a social justice and feminist focus I can no longer push forth certain parts of my identity while hiding from my ethnicity because I feel disconnected from it. In having done that for years, I’ve shunned myself from being more open and learning from other people.

So this is why I have to write about this. It’s a personal project, it’s an important one. It’s one I hope I can find five sources for it by Tuesday night.

Bonus: here’s an excerpt from my journal, written Friday afternoon. After all the writing I did above, I hope it’s clear what IT is.

3:40PM It hurts me so much to talk about IT, I feel like I just need to let go and start crying. It’s like I’m holding so much in, it’s so heavy. It’s so stressful. I wish I want to get to a point where I’m comfortable in talking about IT, actually being in IT and not so much apart from it like how it feels. I do wish I were more connected I’m trying to find my way. I’m getting closer and closer every day to getting towards the feeling. And there’s no stopping point. That’s an important thing to remember. It’s getting me toward being authentic, I can’t deny how important it all is to me.

Week 2: I Found Home

This week we did a couple of writing exercises on our creative essay, expanding on our thoughts of what HOME means to us. I’m very uncommitted in choosing a topic for my paper and this one was no different. I’m the type of student that writes a paper the night before a draft is due and it ends up pretty great. I’m the type of writer that writes a thing and ends up hating it completely when it’s done. But that isn’t going to work with this essay. Especially with this being about something personal and I always want to get personal, it’s going to be that much harder. Of course I’d choose something difficult to write about. I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t push myself all the way into the personals and write about something so charged. But it was the only thing I was interested in. I am going to write about the body – some aspect of it, probably not the body as a whole. I thought about the eyes, which was what my Tuesday night free-write was all about. Then I thought about hair for a split second. I don’t know if it makes sense or will fit into the guidelines of the paper. Here is an excerpt from that Tuesday night free-write, taken directly from my journal, written after I thought about using eyes as a topic:

I thought about the eyes and my mind flashbacked to all the moments where I disconnected AND looked in the mirror at myself and all the things I thought I saw. And I immediately looked up from my computer, put my face in my hands and started fucking crying. But that’s so new, that’s so something I don’t even know what kind of research I can put in with that. But it’s a something and it’s a something I would like to explore. It resides in the body. It represents so much. It’s an opening. That fucking hurts me and it takes so much out of me.

The next day in class I shared this idea with a small group and even in explaining this topic more fully I felt so uncomfortable. I went back to a low period last year (my first year at Evergreen) where I felt absolutely sad and empty for a considerable stretch of time and talked about a selfie I took of myself where there was “nothing” behind my eyes. But that doesn’t represent HOME. It represents being away from home, LOST and disconnected. So if there was a continuation of the story then, how did I find my way back…I guess…I started getting better when I went back to therapy, when I prioritized self care. In that way, in remembering all those meetings and all those times spent by myself trying to be there for myself, the feelings from that were uncomfortable, I felt cared for because I wasn’t going through that stuff alone, I felt more connected to myself emotionally. In therapy we focused on healing parts of my past and I couldn’t help but be that kid again – all sad and alone, unsupported and misunderstood. Four things I felt during those empty periods last year.

So from all THAT home is that feeling of being connected – a feeling I always felt in my three years of counseling/therapy. A feeling I never felt anywhere else because I was the priority, the focal point, the main reason I was there. It was all about me in there and I don’t get that anywhere else.

And this, and this, AND THIS fits that first guideline of choosing a metaphorical feeling of home. The next part is to connect it to APIA pop culture. IDK, this is still an underdeveloped thought. I just don’t know how I’m going to nail down a topic at this point. Do I go for something personal like this? My HOME is that feeling of connection, of grounded, centered and self aware. The closest I am to myself, the more connected I am, the more “at home” I am. There’s that and I like it because I’m the only one in that “home” which I can connect that to all the times before when my “home” was violated/forced into/taken from me/claimed for me. I like it because I’m the only one in that “home” and it speaks to how I believe I am the only one that can allow myself that connected feeling. No one is going to give it to me. No one is going to take it from me.

After taking a break and then thinking about it more, I think this is what I’m going to stick with. The feeling fits with my idea of HOME and it’s applied to so many parts of my life and then I can also fit it with APIA pop culture. It’s all out there The research part is up next. Except… you know, if I change my mind again. LOL.

Here is a line straight from my project proposal that explains why I was so drawn to the EYES idea: When I was freewriting on Monday night, I thought about the eyes because there have been times in my past where I caught myself staring out the window or at the wall as a way to disengage from an uncomfortable situation or whenever I just wanted to tune out of reality for a minute. I can relate that to feeling lost from home, away from my heart, running away from reality. But then with that, reality or my heart or my total body would be what my “home” is and my eyes would be like the front door I’m running out of.

This is the selfie I took of myself back in that empty period last year. I really like this picture because it shows me how lost and disconnected I was from myself and the people around me who tried to help me. I can recognize these eyes in the mirror now and it tells me I’m not okay, cautions me to not fall into this again.

Week 1: The Beginnings of Home + APIA pop culture

In thinking about this assignment it was a bit surprising to see that I was able to come up with multiple images and feelings of home. I think it’s because I’m on better terms with my mom right now. I think it’s because Jackson and I have our own apartment that’s just ours. I think it’s because I made ginger tea for him that morning because he was sick. This time last year I would have had a much harder time because I lived on campus and this time last year my apartment was already cluttered and occupied by animals not approved with RAD. Anyway, this time around I was able to jot down ideas about my family and things about my past that I haven’t really shared.

The first thing I wrote down was writing. It’s my calm space. Writing has done wonders for my mental health. It’s the one place where I can come to a place of acceptance and forgiveness for myself. This week showed how important my journal is to me. When I came home on Wednesday I was drained and overwhelmed and that’s when I realized that I hadn’t written in a while. My journal is where I free up my thinking space so I can move on with my life. I wrote that night and was able to temporarily write myself out of a hole. As much as writing has been liberating for me, it’s also super freaking hard for me to do when it comes to academic papers. Sometimes I get this image of me tearing off my arm, throwing it on some paper, turning it in to my teacher saying “HERE IT IS HERE IS WHAT YOU ASKED FOR.” The only way I’ve been able to write my papers without scrapping the whole thing midway though was writing it in my journal. That’s where I know I’m not as judgmental and hard on myself 🙂

Not too far down the list was ginger tea. Oh that was a big thing this week. My partner Jackson was sick for two days and I made him the tea my mom used to make for me and my brother on cold nights. Ginger tea is one of the things that holds memories of being at home with my mom and my brother and life would just be calm, warm and relaxed. When Jackson and I moved into our apartment, it didn’t take me very long to ask her how she makes it. There are many recipes for ginger tea. My mom’s version uses very simple ingredients but the most important thing is the timing and how much ginger to put in. The first time I tried to make it, that distinct throat tingling feeling of ginger wasn’t there. That’s when I realized I had to put more and to balance it out with brown sugar. I don’t have my ratios right just yet but I’m getting there. The ginger feels so good on the throat too and it’s the memories attached to it that makes it so much more special.

In thinking of home, of course I thought about my partner, Jackson. He calls me Love Face and I think that is the sweetest most precious thing ever. Through the way he expresses himself to me, reassures me when I’m insecure, does his best to be there for me when I’m sad and empty, how he sings and dances for me, makes fun of me for saying LOL too much, how he works on his misogyny and toxic masculinity…there’s just so much about him that I love and that’s why he is home.  With him I know that he will do his best to be there for me like how I try to do my best for him.

An important component to this final project is incorporating Asian American pop culture into our visions of home. With me being Pilipinx there is a lot I can draw from. Some examples are written into my notes, like certain video games, food and family. One thing I didn’t write down were books. An early memory I have is being scared of the movie adaptation of The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan while my mom was watching it on TV. Years later I read the book. When I was in high school I read a couple other novels written by Asian women but there just weren’t a lot of them in my school libraries 🙁 For this project I was thinking about centering home and A-pop on my mom because I’d love to dedicate a piece of my writing to her and I think it would be healing for me to do. Other ideas I had were making connections between Asian women’s representation in the media and my physical body as home BUT that would very easily put me in a position I don’t think I’m ready for. I am excited to seriously sit down and think about what I want to do. All the writing assignments I have done at Evergreen were personal passion projects for me and this one will be no different.