# 6 ..

++ 6. Now i'm proud of my heritage.
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i now am proud to be asian. i take offense when people make ethnic remarks which are counter-productive to society. i embrace my ethnicity and strive to know as much as i can about where i come from. i go so far as to do an architecture thesis where i can do research to 'find myself'. i'm not sure after a full year of research that i know myself any better, but at the very least i know more about how i have come to be, where i have come from, the things and events and people which make up my life and have allowed me to become the person i am, and my family, some of who i never met. its awesome to me to be able to devote so much time and effort into finding my roots. it has allowed me to talk with my parents and grandparents about their lives and their childhoods and their parents and grandparents. it has given me the opportunity to ask questions i would otherwise never of been in the situation to ask them. they have told me stories about my relatives which seem to be fairytales and stories which you only read in books and mystery novels. and yet they are true. they are me. they are my history and my past. they embrace me. they are me. my life is one of a strand of lonliness which comes from not being to relate to anyone. i'm not saying i'm lonly. i'm not saying that at all. i am saying that i have had to carve out my own path, break my own trail, and experience everything for the first time, because i have no one who has led the same path and am in the same situation as i am. (not that this isn't true for everyone else.) i know no other person who is a first generation born half chinese - half caucasion first born child who hails from another country and has moved to the states at a very young age. i know people who fit half that bill. i know people who fit the other half ofthat bill. sometimes even 2/3 or 3/4, but i have yet to meet someone who has done it before me. someone i can look to for advice and someone who i can relate to completely. this void in my life has led me to make my own decisions with the foresight of only my own thoughts and dreams. i'm not asking for a pity friend. thats certainly not the point of this. i'm not asking for any sort of special treatment. i'm just saying, i'm proud of where i am and who i am today and i don't care what anybody else says to me or about me. its not that i'm stuck up or that i'm an ass (which to be fair sometimes i am) or that i'm a jerk. its just that i am who i am because of the decisions and experiences i have gone through and i know its because i have made them all on my own. i am the decision maker of my life and i am proud. and its because of that, that i don't care what you think about me. i'm going to continue to do the things i do and if you like them, then good. lets be friends. if you don't like them, i'm sorry. have a nice life. maybe in the next chapter of our lives we will make ammends. i am jay. i am asian. and i'm proud of it. ++