Good news and bad news

So, after the disastrous week I had, I have some good news and bad news. The bad news is that I will have to move soon and unless I find somebody to take over my lease (soon) or I have to pay a huge fee to break the lease. The thing is that I don’t feel safe and another is that the law enforcement officers want me to catch physically catch the guy in order for them to really press charges and getting a good look at him won’t count. (I don’t think this would be a good time to practice my football/rugby tackles although the last time I did scare him off with a knife.) I filed a miscellaneous report but that’s all I can do. The resulting effect is that I feel so let down because crimes of a sexual nature don’t just stop. They tend to escalate and I doubt I would be able to contain my anger if I did catch the guy.

I do, however; got some good news. Well, partial good news. My dad claims to have found my passport! (Yays, if I can actually get my hands on it! He also claims to have found his.) The thing is that I have to get it renewed since it expired. There have, also, been some changes about my “citizen” status since then as well, and I’ll have to talk to HK and UK immigration about it. (The only other person in my family that was born in Hong Kong was born to a Chinese father and holds Chinese citizenship.)

It seems so strange that all my life I had no clue what my nationality was. What was my flag and banner? What was my national anthem?

The flag when I was born.

Now.

I knew my ethnicity because that is pretty easy. I could just look in the mirror for that, but nationality was harder since I was born overseas to Vietnamese refugee parents. I always felt so lost because even though I was raised in America, I didn’t feel like an American. I was constantly reminded of that everyday because of the jeers I got from people. “Go back to your country,” they would say. It always broke my heart and because of my rootless existence, I felt like I had no place to call home. (I attended seven schools by the time I graduated.) No place to hang my hat or rest my head.

Despite all the years I have lived in the US, I still feel like a stranger stranded on distance shores. Yes, I speak English like a native with no accent, but even still I feel disadvantaged. It’s like I’m listening to a different tongue somedays. When I visiting my parents, I speak Vietnamese or French, but those languages also felt foreign to me. When I speak in either language, it’s always hesitantly , like my tongue is stuck in a barb.

My relatives like to tease me about it. I’m neither American nor Vietnamese to them, and as a result, I’m not very close to them.

My mother wants me to apply for US but my dad wants me to talk to the HK and UK consults first. So, I’m gathering up paperwork for it. My dad is a little more supportive of me going to school overseas since he’s seen how hard it has been for some of my friends to get jobs after they have graduated.