Okay this is going to be difficult but I feel like I finally have the words and the knowledge to put this into writing, especially with Australia Day coming up. This is a long one, but I feel like this is important to say as a creative, an Asian, an Australian, an Asian-Australian, a woman, a 1st generation migrant, a tomboy and having struggled immensely with identity, discrimination, depression, and anxiety, and substance abuse.

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Moving to Sydney in 2006 from Shanghai was incredibly hard, especially when you have a name that is practically a racial slur.

The fact that I landed in a predominantly Anglo primary school in a predominantly Anglo suburb was not too much of a culture-shock really, being privileged enough to come straight from an American International School. But it was the racial discrimination – both passively and actively, I faced as an ethnic minority that created the hardships that I would struggle with for the next 10 years.

Experiences such as, but not limited to...

▪Passive and direct comments that my mum’s amazing Chinese home cooking I brought to school/uni was “weird” or that it “stinks like shit"

▪Having phrases such as "5 dolla sucky sucky" and "luv U long time" said directly to my face. Asian women are ''''''concubines''''''

▪Passive aggressive comments such as being told that my “English is perfect!”, despite speaking it since I could remember

▪Passive aggressive comments such as being asked where I come from, despite practically growing up here.

▪Having people on the street mutter (loudly) “ching chong”, “ni hao ma” to me as they walk past.

▪Being a bystander to friends who were told to “go back to China”, who've gotten into fights for standing up for their culture.

▪Pressure from 0/1st Generation migrant parents to achieve and live to elitist, upper class and perfectionist Confucian or """Asian"""" standards of academia and outward appearance.

▪Hatred towards own our Asian race. Don't talk to people from Japan, they did the Nan-King massacre.

being lumped into """"Angry"""" Asian girls.

… these experiences had jaded me.

🀄

Why couldn't I be the perfect Asian and the -perfect-, popular, happy Anglo-Australian girls I saw on social media? Why couldn't my parents tell me that I'm smart, pretty, I'm loved? Why couldn't I be more Chinese, and studious? Why didn't they spoil me? Why couldn't I party, and have all these cool, fucked up, dangerous, exciting, alluring experiences I saw on the media?

I hated not fitting in, because I felt so boxed into being another bookish, perfect Asian stereotype, that I tried so hard to run away from. Why couldn't I focus in school? Why couldn't I achieve? Why did all other Asians do so well in school?

Why can't I be perfect?

Why can't I have a connect and be open without feeling self-conscious here?

This manifested as anger, isolation, anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts. I am ashamed to say that at one point I -hated- my culture, and what it represented for me. Why couldn’t I be perfect and Anglo and happy like everyone else? Why didn't my parents show love to me like Anglo parents? Why couldn't I be perfect and studious and have loving parents. I had an embarrassing Anglo alias, I hated my name that much. I took my frustration out on people that were close to me, but most of all I came to hate everything about myself.

I took to numbing myself with self harm, alcohol, cigarettes, then other substances in complete isolation in a quest for self-destruction. This only worsened my relationship with myself and people close to me, of who I would push away unknowingly out of fear. I didn't want to be 'angry', or 'cold', or 'rich and snobby'

x

My social anxiety was through the roof when I started uni, now that I didn't have friends from high school to fall back on. I felt so compelled to change myself, to hide who I really am, just so people could like me and think I'm cool. All the cool people I knew were boys, so I wanted to be tough and cold and unfeeling like the lonely and angry, racist misogynistic boys I knew from American media. I wanted to steal, fuck around, skateboard, fight, mosh, get completely shitfaced. I'm pretty sure I have ADD. Dexamphetamine allowed me to focus at last. Shitty indicas, downers, numbed me. All my role models were men - Kurt Cobain, Sid Vicious, FIDLAR. Depression memes are the fucking shit. Depression memes are relatable.

All my idols have suffered to try and have a connection with depressants - baby boomers took to coming to terms with war with cannabis, heroin and punks, disassociatives like ketamine with the clubkids of the 90s. Alcohol is a drug as well.

All of them wanted to connect to each other, with the elite and those who had money and privilege. Excess and cocaine of the 80s, MDMA and the ravers of the 00s.

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Yet, this pain is not my cross or my burden to carry.

Art and music and self-expression was (and still is) my solace. I'm not being brave, I'm being honest. The right strain of medical grade Cannabis and a terrible habit of 雙囍/Shuang Xi/Double Happiness ciggies helped immensely.

And with Asian female artists such as Rina Sawayama, Yaeji, Awkwafina, and the amazing platform that is 88rising, I have finally found a voice, from finally someone like me who I can finally relate to. I am so privileged to live in Sydney, a city where I hear Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Vietnamese, Hindi, Russian, German, Arabic, Spanish, and so, so, SO many more languages being spoken on the streets.

This is the best I’ve felt in years, and I owe it to the last 10 years of struggle, music, art, the last 3 years of journalling, counselling, meeting new people, pushing myself to have amazing experiences, the last month of psychiatry, mindfulness, gratitude*, and lastly Rina Sawayama, who I discovered -literally- yesterday.

Empathy, tolerance and honesty is the key.

x

Thank you 媽媽, thank you 爸爸 for pushing me so hard, even if it hurt so much at the time. Thank you for making me take piano, for pushing me to do ballet, for letting me take ceramics. They've had to struggle to make it this far to make it to afford to live somewhere as brilliant as Australia. 多謝 to my Cantonese School 老師 for encouraging me despite me dropping out 3 years in. Thank you so much Dr. Abeya. Thank you Mr. Henry, Ms.Burroughs, Mrs. Donoghue, Mr. Felton and all the tutors and teachers who've shaped me into who I am.

And a special thank you to my elder sister. I looked up to you in a so much more than I ever realised. You were my only role model when I had none. I wish you were around more often, but then I couldn't have stolen your awesome wardrobe, music taste, stalked your diaries, artistic inclination, and all that from the 90s/early 00s, your experience of having lived and visited Australia, the UK.

And then 9/11 happened, and hatred seeped into media.

Then emo kids, then indie heads, then now weed and xanax and anti-anxiety drugs. No wonder why I couldn't fucking cope.

x

I've struggled.

No, I didn't want my parent's money. No, I wanted to live on my own. I want to make my own fucking money. I have to work so fucking hard. I want to meet people, and have meaningful relationships, empathise, meet more people, try and understand them.

I'm not proud, or brave, or smart.

I am being blunt, honest, tolerant. I am strong. I am independant.

Depression and the search for is a black dog that would keep coming back. I am not 'normal' and will never be fucking normal. There is no 'normal'. There is no one identity. Medical cannabis, education and drug education. I am not perfect. I've been editing this piece of writing for the last 4 days, see my edit history.

Thank you to everyone I’ve met over the last 12 years in Australia, and online. You’ve helped, believe me. Yes, you. I've gotten to know people of all cultures, backgrounds.

In less than a month, I will spend a year in Germany for International Studies^, and I am not afraid.

I am not afraid to be a girl. I am not afraid to be Australian. I am not afraid to be Asian. I am not afraid of my struggle.

I am not afraid to be 何靖寧.

It gets better. Immer besser.

“Some are born with knowledge, some derive it from study, and some acquire it only after a painful realization of their ignorance. But the knowledge being possessed, it comes to the same thing. Some study with a natural ease, some from a desire for advantages, and some by strenuous effort. But the achievement being made, it comes to the same thing.”

- Confucius

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🔗Relevant links🔗

www.headspace.org.au

www.batyr.com.au

www.thenib.com/what-would-yellow-ranger-do

‘What Would Yellow Ranger Do?’ by Shing Yin Khor, a Malaysian-Californian artist.

Talk to me! I don't bite.

Please be kind to each other. Tolerance, mindfulness, and honesty, openness.