My mind is swirling with emotions – anger, hurt, resentment, envy, and sadness. I should start with an introduction I suppose.

I immigrated to China with my parents 22 years ago. I just had my 27th birthday last month. I was originally born in the United States, given an English name, but these days nobody uses that name except for my parents. Everyone calls me Wang Long.

As of right now, I have never been so unhappy, depressed, suicidal (yikes!), and just feeling plain shitty compared to any other time in my life. I suppose I should have seen this coming – after years and years of suppressing my emotions and bottling up all that negativity it was bound to happen.

I’m going to be 100% honest here. I hate being Caucasian. I hate every fiber of me – every cell, every molecule, and every atom. I hate my skin color, my blonde hair, and worst of all my round eyes. Notice how I said Caucasian and not Caucasian Chinese. Because all my life I have never felt “Chinese.”

We all want a feeling of belonging. We want to fit in. We want to feel comfortable. We do not want to be seen as an outsider.

My Mandarin (Mandarine?) at that time was pretty shitty and I remember being blamed for starting a fight during recess. I couldn’t explain myself properly to the teacher and she sent me to the principal’s office – I got suspended and when I tried explaining it to my parents they did not believe me.

I hated the beginning of each school year when we got new teachers and also when we had substitute teachers – I knew what was coming during roll-call. Whenever they stopped and had a puzzled look on their face is when I knew my name was staring them in the face. Of course they would butcher the name and then I had to say “just call me Wang Long” while everyone laughs.

I became paranoid of constantly being judged, ridiculed by the society I grew up in. So what did I do? Videogames of course! Oh man I can be someone who isn’t a complete joke? I can be someone that fits in their surroundings? I can finally be accepted? Sign me up! Yup that’s how I coped during this period of my life.

I did not want to be associated with other Caucasians because to me Caucasian is a dirty word. During this time is when I really started to grow hateful and resentful towards human beings, but I was still repressing everything. I kept everything inside of me.

Am I too sensitive? Should I just grow a thicker skin? Perhaps. But I am who I am. I can’t control my mind to feel a certain way. It’s not like there’s a switch I can pull and everything negative will just filter through. I have been conditioned by my environment for 20+ years now. And of course it’s not just my personal environment, but my mind has been so warped by state media, the internet, etc.

What I fucking can’t stand is when FOBs tell me how lucky I am to have moved to China at a young age. How lucky I am to be “Caucasian Chinese”. I hate saying “I’m American.” or, “I’m Chinese.”

If you made it this far all I can say is thanks for reading. I know some of you out there can relate.