Tag: writing

  • For Halloween, I Dressed Up As Myself

    For Halloween, I Dressed Up As Myself

    Growing up, I wanted to dress up as desirable. I wanted to trade in my straight eyelashes for curled ones and change my brown eyes to blue. I wanted to grow four inches in height and lose two around my waist. I yearned for wavy hair that framed my face instead of the stick-straight hair I was given. My eyes were wide enough to see, but not wide enough to be seen. I would have traded them in an instant. When I walked into a room, I wanted people to turn their heads to look at me. I wanted to hear it, the rustling of hair against shirt collars. I wanted the air to shift around me so that the music sounded a little clearer and the drinks tasted a little sweeter. All of this yearning and shapeshifting to be liked by boys. Boys who looked straight through me to get a better glimpse of my friends. Boys who made racist remarks about me as a joke, and friends who let it happen. I knew that the costume I wanted could never be bought online. In a world full of tricks, that was the biggest one of them all. 

    When Halloween rolled around, I was reminded that even on a day where anything was possible, I would never be able to be the one thing I really wanted: an equal. While I didn’t love the holiday, I knew an opportunity when I saw one. Without its quality of childlike wonder, it was a chance to flip expectations on their head. It was the one day a year when the impossible was possible. A nice girl could be a witch and a shy girl could be noticed.

    When I fell in love, things began to change. At last, I had caught the feeling I spent my whole life pursuing. The fog of self-loathing cleared, and I looked around, assessing the damage. I was alive, and other than 22 years of mental turmoil, remained mostly intact. I discovered that what made me undesirable was my environment, not me. And I discovered that the feeling I had when I looked at a pretty girl, the one I had almost convinced myself wasn’t real, was, in fact, the thing I had been wanting all along. With this newfound knowledge, I could start over as someone new, someone who dressed up as the character from their favorite childhood movie, for no reason other than for themselves. How strange and wonderful it was to put me first!

    Now, Halloween has taken on a new meaning. I no longer have to choose between pleasing others and pleasing myself, because the only person I care about is already next to me, holding my hand. Embracing my queerness helped me to accept many things, some more obvious than others, but I never imagined that a holiday that used to symbolize conformity could return to one of storybook characters and laughter.

  • Playing Dress Up

    Playing Dress Up

    I don’t remember a lot from my childhood. There’s no deeper reason like I’m trying to forget certain events or particular people–it’s not that serious; I simply have a bad memory. However, amongst the collection of things I do remember, like my old childhood best friend’s birthday and Greek alphabet song, are the consecutive Halloweens I spent dressing up as Sleeping Beauty. Everything about the holiday besides my costume is a blur and frankly unimportant. In my memory, it was all about the dress.

    Like many six-year-old girls, my favorite color was pink and this dress was my perfect shade. It had stretchy silk-like straps that looked like scrunchies attached to a tulle off-the-shoulder neckline that revealed my childish decolletage. In the middle sat a pendant with Sleeping Beauty herself. The sleeves were full length and ended at my wrists with a piping of gold stitching. The bodice held the most detail, with a v shape joining in the middle made with that same gold stitching, to create shape where there was none. Fleur de lis littered the top and bottom of the dress and shimmered in the light. I adored this dress, getting much more wear out of it than just once a year. I have a picture of me at six years old wearing it to the mall on a random Monday in August. At the time, I’m sure it was the color that lured me to it, but as I reflect now, it’s apparent that there was a part of me who loved it because I could finally be something that everyone else was. I wasn’t the adopted Asian girl with white parents, I was Sleeping Beauty. I had blond hair and fair skin and a prince who would do anything for me. I may have looked different but my dreams were the same. 

    Eventually, I grew up and the dress was passed on to someone else, and I was still chasing that feeling of belonging. Growing up in a small town meant that I was among only a handful of other Asians. As a whole, I was met with kindness, but to exist meant to stick out, and so I did my best to exist quietly. I fell in with the right crowd: friends from well-known families in the community who were popular but kind, and smart but humble. I excelled in school enough to remain in step with my friends but not enough to be noticed. I participated in student government but ran for historian instead of president, and joined the cheer team, choosing the position that faced away from the audience instead of towards it. I didn’t come out as queer until I was 16, though I knew a lot earlier than that. I couldn’t stand being even more different than I already was, so I sacrificed my love for uniformity. This became my new costume, which I wore comfortably and without hesitation. I didn’t stand out at all, and that’s exactly what I wanted. What felt like a persona at the time became synonymous with who I was. Before I knew it I was floating through life content with being 70% happy, so long as on the outside it looked like I was 100%. I didn’t find that last 30% until I was 22 years old. When I first met my now-girlfriend, I couldn’t believe that life was meant to be this good. The way our lives intertwined so seamlessly made me believe that that’s how it should have been all along. As someone who lives their life with bated breath, I didn’t think I’d ever find someone who felt like fresh air.

    The costume I had eagerly worn to survive had become my skin. It was the good things now that felt like make-believe. I would come home from a day of holding hands and writing love notes and look in the mirror and see a stranger. She looked like me, but there was a quality about her that was different. She shimmered, like how heat radiates off of the pavement on a hot day and how the air almost looks like it’s vibrating. Patches of my old self would reappear in moments of vulnerability or anxiety, but as time went on I started to shed my old skin. 

    It took my whole life to get to this point, but it doesn’t feel like I’m playing dress-up anymore. I used to have to pretend to be someone else to feel like enough, but now there’s no one I’d rather be than myself. I still experience all the hard parts of life, like everyone else, but I can find comfort in knowing that trying to suppress who I am is no longer one of them.