Heartbreak

My heart has been breaking these past few weeks. Slowly, little bits splintering, fracturing, bleeding out. With each new executive order that comes out, ICE surrounding grocery stores or entering our schools and hospitals, the cessation of funding for humanitarian aid across the world, insensitive comments from colleagues or the media, my heart aches in places that feel different than the last time. I am not OK.

My college essay 25+ years ago was about the difficulty of toeing the line between two cultures, American and Indian. It was difficult to grow up in a suburb in Connecticut, with little diversity, in a fully Indian household. Inside our home, the smells of pakoras, dosas and sambar wafted through the air to the sounds of Indian classical music and Indian accents. Outside our home, it was the typical suburban school environment ripe with teenage independence, high school football games, American pop culture, Nirvana, Dave Mathews Band, and Pearl Jam, proms and dances, dating and teenage romance. Those of us who were first-generation, children of immigrants tried to navigate these waters arriving with our own calculations of balance, some assimilating more than others to the dominant American culture. The game for many of us was how best to fit in while retaining a smidgeon of what made us different. Throughout it all, I had understood the balancing act as one that was squarely within my agency to choose.

Until now. What has been the most painful realization in these past few weeks (of which there have been many) is now understanding that I was under a guise this whole time that I had agency over navigating these two cultures. I mistakenly understood and took at face value the words within the Constitution that being American meant the very freedom of choosing who I wanted to be, how I wanted to fit in, and how I would be accepted. Clouded by my naïveté, perhaps the rules have always been there but I am seeing them for the first time.

I will forever get the question, “no, but where are you really from?” because I could never really be from the United States. That’s what that question implies and the purpose it was always meant to serve. My ethnicity, my skin color, my heritage all make it such that I will always be seen as “other” in a deeply profound way. That reality hurts. My children and I will always be seen as “other” despite only having lived in the United States and only known this country. It hits hard that we may never belong in the land of our birth. Ever.

Our brown skin will relegate us behind our white counterparts, always. I know many of my fellow brown and black folk have known this reality for generations. They have known that the game was rigged against them. I feel dumb and numb that I am discovering this now for myself. I thought I was exceptional, immune to this sentiment. Shame on me for believing the model minority myth. However much I understand or adopt the American culture, I will never be a normal, typical American. Ever.

Now, I may be considered a “DEI hire” despite my intelligence, education, talent and skills. The Obamas knew the game- they knew they had to be exceptional in all manners to survive. Just look at who occupies the White House currently and tell me this isn’t true. We are being held to such high standards simply to prove our worth to be, to exist, and to belong.

Mostly, I ache about the discovery of the reality that my younger self didn’t quite get. I grieve for the loss of hope of belonging and understanding in a country that may never be mine. While I know that in time I will pick up the pieces of my broken heart and tape them back together for the sake of my children, for now, I will stay right here, in this pain, a little while longer assessing the damage and feeling the destruction of both an identity and a dream shattered.