“Do you feel more white or Asian?”

I hate this seemingly innocuous question.

Everytime I hear it, a sort of inferno gurgles in the depths of my soul as I am reminded of the days when my white friends would insult my Asian friends and my Asian friends would insult my white friends and how I was entrusted with the hasty “Oh wait, please don’t tell them I said that.”

Following these heart wrenching memories of the burden of being a secret keeper for years is a certain query, which without fail always seems to worm itself into my head: “Why can't I feel both equally? Why must one trump the other?”

Sometimes, when I was faced with this question in the past, I answered with a simple “I don’t know”. Other times, I responded with the answer a friend expected.

Truth is, I feel neither and both all the time. 

No matter who I am with, our identities-- defined by how we were brought up, what food we eat, what language we speak, what holidays we celebrate, what stories we have-- connect. But not enough for satisfaction.

My friends often compare me to an electron because I have fallen into a pattern of switching between groups of friends. When I reach a point in which one group of friends and I connect very little, I move to another group seeking the original magnitude in connection and when that ends, I seek another and another and another. 

I see myself as a chain between two worlds of rich histories and beautiful cultures and it is an incredible privilege yet an agonizing pain as I am cast aside from both worlds, that seem to invite me, in ways both sides don’t understand. 

I must make my own world.

So I lend myself to this question and confidently answer upon the epiphany that I am my own world. 

“Yes,” I say every time.