I feel like I don't belong here.

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Thank you to anyone that takes the time to read this.

Let me give you a little background on myself. I'm 35 years old and I live with my parents. I was born a half asian half white child. My life has been fairly privileged. At least that is what you would think from the outside looking in. I live in a relatively middle class New England town. Growing up, i was raised basically the same as every other regular kid you would see around town. This is a Christian town with Christian values. I was raised around Christians my whole life basically. The Asian side of me was pretty much ignored. My mother, who is bilingual, rarely spoke Chinese around me, and never made much of an effort to teach me any Chinese, or foster this side of my identity. She always talked bad about her family, especially her father who she claims abused my grandmother when she was growing up. So I grew up, raised like, and I mean nothing offensive here at all, a regular white kid who was born in this pretty nondescript town. And now on to the good part. My life has been pretty much a disaster from start to finish. Everything I have ever attempted turns to a pile of s**t every time. I honestly feel like I've been cursed. I've been cursed by the way I was raised, which was basically, with blind ignorance. I was bascially taught to ignore the fact that I am in fact, an Asian man. The result of this is every contact I have with someone almost feels like it is just off for some reason. I look into the faces of my friends and family and they look confused. They don't understand me and I don't blame them, because I can't understand myself at all either. It's like I don't fit in. I've never had a relationship lasting longer than a few weeks at best. I always end up doing something that the other person just doesn't t understand and it's like I always ending up being powerless to fix it. I go to work every day and do this job that I find so meaningless and un-fulfilling. I can't stand it and I come home stressed out and exhausted. In this state, I have no desire to reach out and connect with anybody. Even if I did, based on my past experiences, it would all turn to s**t anyway. My father, who I love very much, looks at me and he doesn't understand why I can't get it together. When I try to explain to him how I feel, he basically doesn't listen at all. He thinks I should of tried harder in school. He thinks I made all the wrong decisions and that is why I am where I am. When I try to explain to him that my life is a lot different than his was growing up, he doesn't seem to understand. Some might say my father is Autistic. He is a very smart man. He is an engineer and had a really good job he worked at for 40 years and is now retired. Anyways, whenever I try to tell him my aspirations or whatever, the look on his face is one that kind of mocks me. It's like he doesn't' think anything I would ever want to do for myself would ever work out. I dunno, that's just how it feels. It's weird it comes off feeling this way like every time I talk to him. When I go about my day to day business in white suburbia, I feel like I stick out like a sore thumb. Like when Im at a restaurant and placing my order, it's almost like the cashier is expecting me to speak Chinese or something. She's surprised I sound like the last white guy she talked to in line. I do have friends and they are mostly all very good people. But i've never quite fit in with them. After all they all look like alike and I don't, to put it simply. In the end it almost always ends up being they feel sorry for me in a way and that is why they continue to invite me places and they get to watch me fail again and again for their own amusement. They don't do this on purpose, but it is a social dynamic that is working here. The outcome of this interaction is always that I fail to fit in with them and I am doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over again. Thank you again for listening, and I welcome any thoughts or reactions.

Welcome to WP!

Welcome! I get the sense from reading your post this might be a good place for you to explore.

Welcome to WP.
I'm an Asian as you can see in my avatar. I like being an Asian. I am agnostic but I had been raised in a faithful christian family for most of my life as well, which I believe gave me many positive benefits as well as negative things ...

Warm welcome

Seems you could get a lot out of studying other religions. Christianity in the U.S. can be really stifling without at least a little perspective. Despite being raised pretty secularly (Unitarian) I still had to construct my own national identity around my Norsk side as well as retrospectively learn about my other roots. Music helps a lot but there's no substitute for folklore & mythos. It's all real - myths followed the human diaspora as it went, to some degree they're all connected. Christianity is amalgamated from the faiths it obliterated, or in some cases the ones it didn't. Of course there are ample perfectly valid philosophies throughout the bible but it can also be pretty crazy, particularly if someone's trying to interpret it for you. IMO it's best to take from it what you actually need. I'm not saying drop the rest since that's of course also a part of your identity but it's your right to be selective about what you actually believe.

I'm more comfortable with the idea of pantheism because while I'm capable of going along with the more modern Christian traditions, it's not as if I can silence the majority of my psyche knowing I'm a Viking first, something of a druid and a Christian in canon alone. I feel that Jesus was a righteously industrious Jewish zombie-to-be. To me it feels arrogant to suggest I could possibly know anything about the reproductive habits of God.

Seems like a major part of what is causing your unhappiness is the way your ethnicity was dealt with. You are biracial but were not given a chance to experience the Chinese part of your background.

I think I would feel detached from my roots and as if I were missing something important about myself.

If there aren't really any Asian people in your town, I can understand why you may feel weird. Some people are very ignorant about other races and cultures.

I can tell you that I can nearly always tell if someone is mixed race and I wouldn't assume you were foreign because you have Asian characteristics. That's just silly. And the Asians in my area that are foreign are completely different in appearance (clothing, hair style, mannerisms, the way they walk, etc) than American-born Asians. Those people in your town must be quite ignorant.

I can't understand why anyone would care whether or not you look Asian. As a white person it really makes no difference to me.

I think you could really benefit from studying your mother's native language and Chinese culture to feel a connection to your heritage. I'm studying Mandarin and it's not difficult, but if she speaks another language (like Cantonese) you may have more difficulty.

Also if you are on the spectrum, connecting with others like you will hopefully make you feel better.

Sorry to pry, but I would like to hear about your aspirations.
I am sorry I cant identify with your feelings about missing your Asian heritage, but if you took that out of the equation, I think I can identify. I am sorry if that is offensive, I know sometime I feel like no one can understand what I go thru and when people say they do understand but they don't it hurts.

I really hope that you find help and understanding here.

Hey YellowStar welcome.

Welcome to Wrong Planet!

"It's like he doesn't think anything I would ever want to do for myself would ever work out."

My parents were totally the same way to me before I left home. I thought I had all the advantages growing up - a middle class upbringing, relatively wealthier than my classmates at school, summer vacations and "quality" time with my parents. Yet, I can't remember them every supporting a single independent decision I made. For example, the punk rocker costume I made for myself in 4th grade had to be covered up because it was too cold to wear short sleeves outside. The varying shades of red I wanted to wear to school didn't draw a second look from either one of them. If I didn't want to go to a holiday tea party with them, I was being stubborn and difficult. I can't remember a time during my childhood or adolescence that they saw or enjoyed my crazy, chaotic rock n roller self.

I'm glad you are here.

In the religion that I practice, genealogy work is a key component. One of the many benefits of being able to do genealogy work is to find out where we come from, what our ethnic and cultural background is, and where we get some of our unique traits. You may not have heard anything about this in the religion your parents practice, but I say, give it a try. Genealogy work may resolve this desire you have to know more about who you are and where you come from.