Internalized Invisibility

I've been struggling alot with the effects of many years worth of messages of internalized invisibility of my identities as a person of color, an adoptee, a Korean, and an Asian. My language and culture were never a part of my life growing up. For so many years, even into my adult life, without even thinking about it, I was a white person. I had many privileges in areas around culture, class, ability, access, religion, age, etc. I was 27 years old sitting in a class in my Master's program when my switch was flipped. I was a person of color who had always had an enormous amount of privilege, including white privilege, but I wasn't white. My world was flipped upside down.

I had blogged before about how the only time I really was aware of my identities as a person of color, an adoptee, a Korean, and an Asian was in situations of being tokenized, oppressed, objectified and eroticized, or because it was more comfortable for the other person/people to not examine their own privileged identities and to only see my identities that were like theirs and dismiss, I have to believe without harmful intention but more from ignorance, the rest of who I was. We spend too much time whittling down that which is different from us to somehow make that person, that situation, more comfortable for us. It's how we've been conditioned. We can't socially interact with that which we cannot understand. Here's the problem. When it comes to identities, at no time are any one of us just one identity in any given space at any given time. We all have rich histories full of unique, painful, challenging, enriching, etc. experiences. We all have come from different places, times, people and have led different lives. Yet, in interactions, too often, we are pegged into boxes, boxes that are uniform with exact definitions and we only get to be in one box at a time. We only see what's on the surface.

After my experiences in Korea - especially those around culture and race, coming back to the US was difficult. I feel like, for the first time in my life, I am so much more acutely aware of how racism and oppression affect my life on a daily basis. I am feeling the effects of those years worth of messages of invisibility to my identities. It seems like there is no one I can talk to who gets it in the same ways that I do. Other adoptees that I have talk to get it and I am slowly creating and finding community there, but for so long, because I wasnt in touch with my adoptee identity, this was a group with which I didnt feel like I had any community. It was a group I didnt even think about. My heart is sad to know that, yet I am a product of my upbringing. I am a product of this culture. And while I am angry at no one in particular, I am angry with everyone - especially those who have so many privileged identities and are not aware of them and how they influence their ability to move through the world and how they impact the interactions with others who do not have many privileges in life. It shouldn't take the person of color, the person with a disability, the queer person, etc. to become aware of their own identities around race and culture, ability, gender and sexuality, etc. first before others see those identities. We all should be seeing each person for the whole and complete self that they are and never assume, judge, silence, or avoid.

Part of my life process as I continue to move through the experiences I had pre-Korea, in Korea, and now post-Korea will be a constant barrage of fluidity in terms of sensing, feeling, becoming aware of, embracing, mourning, celebrating, recognizing, etc. everything in my life. The things I am experiencing, thinking and feeling since being back are brand new to me. I have no idea how to navigate them. I don't always know what's coming. What I do know is that I will continue to feel my feelings and do my life in the ways that I need to to feel whole and complete here too. I felt it in Korea. I am confident I can feel a version of it here or at least come to terms with the constant work in progress that it and I will be as I, with all my identities, claim my space and place in the world and continue to find my voice.

But I will never be something that anyone gets to mold and shape into what is more comfortable for them. I will never stop using my voice and various means of communication and expression. And I will never ever censor myself. This is me, a constant work in progress, an imperfect being, a traveler making my journey full of curves and bumps through life. And I will claim my life the way I want and need it to be. I only hope you'll join me on the ride because if you don't, you better move aside or I'm running you over!