Issue 054 (from the archive) | I'm in an interracial relationship...
Issue 054 (from the archive)
Dear Cosmos Community,
"I didn’t know you felt that way."My partner and I are sitting in our apartment’s colorful, sunlit study that the two of us share when working from home. Seated across the table from him with my laptop between us, I’m showing him a digital sketch I’d created of a design for a malong, a traditional tubular garment worn by indigenous communities in the Philippines, where my mother grew up.
I’d been sitting in on a class about Filipina/x/o identity at San Francisco State University, and our midterm assignment was to create a malong reflecting our own individual story. For mine, I’d made a pattern of two ambiguous shapes—one a warm tan and the other a light mustard shade—circling each other, as if about to merge. It represents the feeling I’m having of learning about my Filipina roots for the first time in my life, I tell him. It’s the feeling of meeting yourself—a version of yourself—for the first time, in your late twenties. Or perhaps like having a mother I’d never known all my life, only to meet her at 27, and realizing so much of her has been inside me all along. I don’t know her yet, but I know her. I am her.
My partner doesn’t understand.
He’s a white man with family roots in North Carolina spanning generations. He cannot relate whatsoever to the experience of a mixed Asian American daughter of immigrants suddenly realizing the ways in which historical amnesia and assimilation have fractured her sense of self. How could he?
Being in an interracial relationship as an Asian woman (and I suspect this is true for any person of color) often involves accepting that my partner will never be able to fully understand me. I can never be fully seen or wholly, intuitively understood when I am in a relationship with a white person, no matter how close or in love we are.
As we look at my malong together, this truth comes into clarity for my partner and me.
And yet, I feel safe.
He’s squeezing my hand, listening intently as I speak, trying to understand. He’s tearing up as I tear up. He’s asking thoughtful questions, to which I have no coherent responses, because this is all new to me too, and I don’t have the language to describe what I’m going through yet. So we just hold space for that. He cannot know me, but he’s with me. I may not be fully seen, but I am fully held.
The truth is, even another mixed Asian American person would not be able to fully understand me. No one can. No two people can ever really know each other completely. After all, we’re all individuals constantly in flux, growing and changing and discovering ourselves again and again and again anew.
It’s okay to crave the comfort and ease of a shared racial or ethnic identity in a romantic partnership. It’s also okay to be in partnerships where that type of connection isn’t there. Those partnerships can be just as healthy and just as close, albeit in different ways.
My partner doesn’t need to understand everything about me. I don’t even understand everything about me. I just appreciate that he’s here, ready and willing to listen. To learn as I learn. To be curious and humble. To reflect things back to me. To hold my hand as I process. To be someone to come home to after a long day of experiencing, and hurting, and evolving.
With love,
Kelly
P.S. Did anything here resonate with you? DM me your thoughts on interracial relationships or whatever else is coming up for you @kellyagonsalves
Culture Corner
watching
A ton of makeup YouTube videos.
Specifically, fellow brown girls and other AAPI rocking a rosy cheek or a bold cat eye, my personal go-to look. (Chessie Domrongchai and Rachel Tee Tyler are two current faves.)
I’ll never get over how good it feels to see people who look like me celebrating their skin and features and bodies! There are still so few examples of AAPI girls (and brown girls, specifically) getting celebrated as hot babes in mainstream American pop culture, so consciously seeking out this type of content from women who look like me has been transformative for my own self-image. Nothing like a little routine media cleanse to get all that white supremacy out of your system, you know?
reading
The Shadow of Kyoshi by F.C. Lee, the second book exploring the story of Avatar Kyoshi from the Avatar: The Last Airbender universe. It’s been a delight reading this series for the first time in a book club with my two childhood besties. The themes of what it means to pursue justice day in and day out feel very timely. (Kyoshi’s catchphrase: "Only justice will bring peace.")
listening
Relevant to the subject of this newsletter, I recently dropped into a Clubhouse conversation titled "Are interracial relationships dangerous for Black folks?" I have a lot of gratitude for all the Black women and men who shared their perspectives on this question (basically everyone was like yes, absolutely fucking yes) and for all the personal experiences they shared. And as the Atlanta shootings brought to light last month, relationships with white folks can also be very dangerous for Asian women too.
questioning
… the idea that "instant gratification" is a bad thing. A client of mine recently told me she was starting to rethink her stance on "instant gratification" ever since we started talking about the idea of using pleasure as a personal compass for making decisions. I love that she drew that connection. Many people smack-talk the idea of seeking out what feels good in the moment. But personally, I think feeling good (a.k.a. pleasure) should be a central force in our lives.
Everything we do in our lives is to feel good, right? Make enough money to live comfortably, do well at work because it feels good to achieve things, make cool art because it feels good to express ourselves, fight for our communities because every single person has the right to be physically and emotionally and spiritually well.
Working toward feeling good tomorrow ought to be paired with prioritizing feeling good today. Because that’s the whole point of all this, right?