<selflathing> a thread about race and culture and internalizing funny things, inspired by @offadare
so i was born in Egypt but moved to the UK when i was 4 and didn’t have further contact with my Egyptian family. i was effectively raised British with a little sprinkling of homegrown Islam but nothing rooted in community
but i have an obviously Arab name and a distinctly nonwhite skin colour, so i had kids telling me “your skin’s a funny colour” from the first day of school. all my life i’ve been very aware that my name and appearance seem Arab but then i open my mouth and British comes out
this felt higher stakes when i moved to the US - knowing that border control, cops etc would regard me with suspicion bc of my name, being annoyed about that, then being afraid that my annoyance would be considered additional threat - which caused more annoyance
i’ve been mis-ID’d as greek, turkish, syrian, iraqi, iranian, basically anywhere east of italy and west of india. i feel kinship not with Egypt but with anyone seen as “brown?? Arab?? maybe dangerous??”, regardless of nationality
for so long i carried around this hole in my identity. others assumed “Arab stuff” was there - desert, camels, etc. if i’d lived in Egypt long enough to develop cultural pride, there might’ve been, and i could’ve used it to fight the alienation. but there was nothing
earlier this year in a workshop i took that hole out of me and let it go. instead of my me-ness being interrupted by & having to flow around this obstacle, i could just be myself, unhindered by other people’s perceptions of me and my feelings about them
now instead of trying to minimize my Arab-ness or make something of it, it’s just one thing about me. but i do correct people’s pronunciation of my name, because it matters and i’m unwilling to let it slide. my identity is the thing it is, which is important in its own right :)
<Offadare> @selflathing thank you for sharing this ♥️was very worried id be judged for my thread but im happy to read a similar story 🫂
im also finding that leaning into my me-ness lets me feel whole again. i still find the hole is there and i need to find the courage to let it close
@selflathing i think a lot of these patterns get worse from hiding it and letting it be seen has been so scary but i literally feel my heart unclenching 😭
thank you for witnessing me
<selflathing> @Offadare i really appreciated your thread too so back atcha 🫂
just going “oh, i’m the thing that’s sitting here” - as opposed to the bundle of projections i’d been neurotically nurturing - was a big relief. felt like something had become unblocked and my self could flow smoothly
@Offadare you’re you. the person you are, the things you do. you’re not things other people think about you!
in this case, the answer to “who am i?” is “this”, and no more :)
<Offadare> @selflathing Yes, im really the thing that’s sitting here and nothing else 🧑🚀
i’ve felt that i’ve needed to manage the perceptions of me to protect myself but that’s not my job and comes at the cost of how i feel about myself
<selflathing> @Offadare much as it would be nice we can’t always act “naturally” (cops, job interviews), so some perception management is necessary
but other people’s perceptions exist out there, no need to carry them with you. it’s freeing to leave them behind when you’re done engaging
@Offadare every now and then i realize “oh, this is in THEIR head, it’s not MY problem”, and the interpersonal squirming evaporates
<Offadare> @selflathing easier said than done. ive probably swung to the other side since my mind doesnt trust me to drop some lines of thought yet
<selflathing> @Offadare much love. you’ll get there ♥