Sometimes first year feels like it was both yesterday and hundreds of lifetimes ago. It feels strange, then, to be able to look through articles my first-year self wrote, as I reflect on my experiences at Queen’s. One of the most notable posts I wrote was about my experience being a multiracial person of colour as a Queen’s student. (If you’re interested, you can read the original post here.)
As I step into my final semester of my undergraduate degree, I am reminded of the girl I was when I first wrote that article. I had been prompted to write about my experiences because I felt strangely isolated in my multiracial identity, and writing has always helped me feel less alone.
At the time, I was still navigating the complexities of what my cultural identity as a half-Taiwanese girl actually meant to me. My understanding of my cultural background could be summed up as ‘confusing’.
It was cathartic to process these experiences and hear from many others who shared similar experiences at Queens who reached out to me after my post. I want to reach through the words to the girl I was then and tell her that things do end up okay.
Here are some things I would say in response to my original blog post, addressed to my first-year self.
Dear First Year Me,
No one told you how much you’d miss seeing people with the same crinkle in their eyes, the same tint of melanin in their skin, until you didn’t have it anymore. It aches you, I know. It feels so complicated.
But let me tell you, you are not all alone in what feels so achingly lonely. There’s a day in third year where you’ll find yourself in the company of other women with similar cultural backgrounds to you, and you will look at their faces, and it will feel like looking in a mirror.
You’ll trade lip gloss recommendations because your skin tone looks so similar, while you trade horror stories of what it’s been like for you. It will be refreshingly cathartic. You’ll look around and for the first time, you won’t feel so singular in your experience at Queen’s. It won’t just be you, the singular mixed girl with the white dad and Asian mom, who you have to explain to everyone who meets them. It will be you, and this fleet of women who hold the complexity of racial identity in their bodies, too.
I know you can see it already; how easy it would be to minimize your non-whiteness, how easy it would be to try to fit into these monocultural norms without looking back once. But I urge you, lean into the discomfort. Look for people who also don’t fit in the same way you do. Go try out different clubs and talk to the people next to you in lecture. You don’t need to live as isolated as you think you are.
It’s okay if you never bridge the gap between delight and discomfort of being a person of colour. You don’t owe it to everyone to explain yourself.
You’ll find that it will end up okay.
Love,
Fourth Year Me