I often make up characters that I could write, and the male character would always talk about how it would not be okay to be themselves.
Was this the masculine energy or was I just used to a certain patriarchal lineage, that was particularly Chinese in nature?
I also feel like the masculine energy is far too developed in my home. Developed as in over-used. It predicated on the idea that we were somehow, bad people. Bad people meant that, at least in my house, that you had to have done something wrong, and therefore you had to somehow be rectified. That you had to rectify it yourself, and therefore you were something bad, and of course that you had also done something bad. It was this mentality of “getting things over with” in preparation for something else – for what, though?
We’re not even Catholic.
I guess the question I’ve been grappling with all my life has been the transition from East to West, and the decision of those who put me there. Am I a white girl inside a Chinese body or a Chinese girl inside a changed body? I never figured it out and still have not figured it out.