Our "messed up" identities
I had a chance to talk to several people with very culturally mixed people one weekend, and heard stories of their struggle to fit in, as well as brilliant metaphors on how their identity has been affected by their intercultural experiences.
One of the metaphors that has stuck with me is the metaphor of “the lost toys,” just like Woody and his gang in Toy Story 3. We have no sense of belonging to a particular place or culture, maybe except for this group of “lost toys.” The people in this group are all very different and come from multiple backgrounds, but the fact that we don’t have a home binds us. A little sad as a metaphor, but yet still comforting to know that there are people who feel the same way as me!
Another metaphor was “a square peg that reshaped into a round one, but still trying to fit into the square peg-hole.” (Later I found that there actually is a phrase “square peg in a round hole” to describe someone who cannot fit in to a community or society.) I found this metaphor a little different from how I feel, because I see myself more as a peg that can be either round or square, or even any shape I choose to be. However, because I can be any shape, I sometimes don’t know what shape I really am. I think this is probably why I become a little anxious when I start thinking about my identity (and have avoided thinking about it for decades!).
As demonstrated (quite remarkably) in the term “Third Culture Kids,” the cultural identity that intercultural people hold do not belong to any particular place or culture, and this can cause a feeling of rootlessness; a feeling of being lost or just floating in thin air. When I think about my own self, I see myself as a floating balloon, not wanting to be tied down to anything and enjoying the freedom, yet feeling a little unstable and lost at times.
Although I have come to embrace my flexible and unfixed identity on the whole, I still struggle at times to fully accept it and just be ok with it. Identity is a fluid concept, and I know it is ok to experience this loss of stability, but I still think that the degree to which kikokushijo (= Japanese “returnees” who were brought up overseas and came back to Japan) like me are “messed-up” is on a different level, especially because most of them are struggling to “fit in” to a very homogeneous culture and society. This is what I hope to explore more of and share through my blog!
