fluidity

This afternoon, I was reading over my old blog posts from France and I couldn't recognize my own writing. I was learning about a girl that no longer exists. A girl who thinks differently. Talks differently. Sees the world differently. A girl who sees her life clearly... but the world around her goes unacknowledged. It speeds by in a blur everywhere she goes. I didn't recognize her motivations. I couldn't explain her thought process.

I was reading an autobiography that I didn't write.

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Lately I have been thinking about the fluidity of identity. The fluidity of how we exist in the world. Race. Ethnicity. Gender. Age. Maturity. Experience. Religion. Morals. Hardship. They all contribute to how we see ourselves, how others see us, and how we think others see us. All of those lenses of identity change within cultures and context.

In Hanoi, I have spent hours sitting in a room listening and reflecting. Getting up for a coffee break. Sitting back down. Listening. Processing. Reflecting. In the Diversity and Inclusion orientation lecture, I jotted down:

“From this I came to understand that identity is not a set of fixed attributes, the unchanging essence of the inner self, but a constantly shifting process of positioning. We tend to think of identity as taking us back to our roots, the part of us which remains essentially the same across time. In fact, identity is always a never-completed process of becoming - a process of shifting identifications, rather than a singular, complete, finished state of being.” - Stuart Hall

I could choose to talk about being bi-racial. I could attempt to describe whatever it means to be Asian American. Both of those aspects of identity have already radically defined how I am experiencing Vietnam... but that's for another time when I understand what it is I am trying to process... if I ever do.

Instead, I would like to extend this idea of fluidity to personal growth.

It's uncomfortable. Just as our identity is malleable, the way in which we navigate the world is equally as malleable. I am looking back at a version of myself that I no longer feel ever encapsulated who 'Lauren' was. Who Lauren is. But in that discomfort, can hope be cultivated as well? I think yes. I find it equally as exciting to know that we never stop growing.

Two and a half years later and I could not recognize my writing. What does that say about the trajectory of my life? How I have reconstructed the way I interact with the world? How I have wrestled with, kneaded, and remolded my mind to think differently?

I have 9 short months. 9 long months. 9 months in a country that has specific, immeasurable implications for my identity. Who will I be the next time I step foot in the U.S.? Will I recognize the girl who's back is resting against hotel pillows, typing on her laptop at the La Sante Hotel in Hanoi?

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Today is our birthday.

"Do you feel older?"

"Do you feel different?"

As silly as those questions are, for the first time in our life, the answer is "yes."

We have lived in Vietnam for exactly one week and we feel the weight of this year's significance. We have dreamt of touching our toes in this country yet now that we're here, we are unable to escape the dream and touch reality. Maybe it's how our brain copes with stress, one-story narratives, loneliness, or trauma. Maybe it's the feeling of being exactly where we need to be. Maybe we are floating in an overstimulated bubble of joy. Whatever it is, it's heavy. It's weighty. But that weight is also exciting. It carries the symbol of growth.

Our birthday is a symbol of growth - of the unimaginable transformation about to happen in our life. We just graduated college. We are living alone for the first time. We are in a different country. That country being the motherland.

It's a weird feeling - knowing you'll be someone else by the end of the year without knowing who that someone else will be.

All I can say is

I can't wait

to meet you.