Cultural crossroads: in between

Being adopted is a huge part of my life. 

I’m open about it when I meet someone new to limit the appearance-based assumptions made about me. 

At four months old, I came to the United States from South Korea to live with my mother of Irish descent, my father of Italian and Irish descent and my older brother who was also adopted from South Korea two years prior. 

There were only three other Asian kids in my kindergarten class, and my best friend was one of the many Italians in my town. 

By my fifth grade graduation, there were nine Asian kids, including myself, and when we went to middle school my class size grew from 75 to almost 300. There were so many new people, but my three best friends were all still Italian. 

Our last names all flowed together. We had plenty of similarities, as we were raised in similar families with many shared interests. But, as I got older, I started to feel that I didn’t fit in with them because I didn’t look like them. 

With all of the new faces in middle school, I befriended some Asian kids in the art club and orchestra. We were all friends, but I still felt a disconnect. They seemed to relate to one another on a deeper level — one that felt out of reach. 

They were in the same classes, spoke the same languages and had similar lives at home. They were more in touch with their culture through their families, tended to eat traditional Asian foods and were extremely disciplined in music, school and countless additional extracurriculars. They went to Mandarin school together since they were kids, and I never did. 

Even though I looked like I fit in with them, I was still an outsider. 

In between: That’s how I always felt. I was too white for the Asian kids, but too Asian for the white kids. 

This really hit me in sixth grade when I took an interest in makeup. All of the popular beauty gurus online were white, so they looked nothing like me. This was fine as I learned what things like products would work for my skin tone and the best brushes to use for a desired effect. But what got me was when I watched them doing their eye makeup. 

Not a single trending Youtuber had eyelids like mine. None of them had monolids. 

 I would stay up late at night, trying to figure out how to make the mainstream makeup tutorials look good on my eyelids — a skill I didn’t even begin to master for years. 

It sounds trivial now, but not being able to do my makeup the way I wanted to as an adolescent made me hate my monolids. It made me hate being Asian. It made me wish I was the biological kid of my parents. It made me wish  I was white. 

I kept these thoughts and feelings to myself for years, and it was a heavyweight for a middle schooler to carry all alone.

My family didn’t know I felt this way, as they always supported me and loved me for who I was. Unfortunately, it wasn’t for years that I began to love myself for that, too.

As I matured, it sunk in that it didn’t matter what I looked like. All that mattered was who I was. 

I didn’t need to be a genius or some type of prodigy. I didn’t need to make my Asian heritage my entire identity. I didn’t need to adhere to “norms” or try to be like everyone else. 

I needed to be me. 

My upbringing made me who I am today. 

I’m Korean, but Italy and Ireland are also huge parts of my identity. 

I scream-sing the Italian anthem when Scuderia Ferrari wins an F1 Grand Prix. I dream of visiting Italy, and I can even speak some Italian despite never taking a class. While I can’t do an Irish accent, I hope to visit the town where my great-grandparents lived someday.

Looking back, I wish I could tell my younger self that the differences in my DNA and that of my parents weren’t something I should stress over. It’s something I should celebrate. 

Unfortunately, I didn’t have anyone who understood what I was going through, so I had to come to these realizations by myself. 

As I continue to grow and appreciate the way I was raised and the person I am today, and I hope others experiencing what I did come to the realization sooner. I don’t want anyone else to feel in-between the way I did.