The Metaphorical Transformation from Advanced Organism to Amoeba

You must be thinking it is impossible to regress in such a drastic manner, but I can tell you from experience it is possible. In fact, my experience is shared by countless individuals around the globe. But first, I have to explain a little bit of life before America in order to develop the rest of the story properly. My memory of the time I lived in China seems like the old scratch and sniff stickers when a sensory memory is reanimated, but you know it paled in comparison to the real thing. I will do my best to recount my encapsulated life as child-Rui that was made-in-China. I am inserting song titles into the text to help show my feelings at the moment.

I started school early and was one of the youngest in my class. My reading and Chinese language skills were above average with average math skills. There are many stories of my antics in school because I was so young, therefore hard to control. Nonetheless, I had a sense of belonging, I knew my way around, and my life was reflected in the micro, meso, and macro environments that surrounded me. In China, I had an anchor for getting back to equilibrium when I became unbalanced. I was nine and a half years old and in fourth grade when I moved to America (Somewhere over the rainbow). The strangeness of immigrating to America sent me back to square one, or my metaphorical amoeba stage of development. I went from a relatively self-sufficient kid with well-developed and self-evolving daily living navigational skills and educational background to being fully ambulatory and consciously aware but completely incapacitated. It sounds confusing, I know, but it was a lot worse in practice (The Rolling Stones – Paint It, Black).

Zigzagging Timelines Will Make Sense in the End

None of my skills or knowledge applied to school or American life in general. Nothing I knew about life made sense in my new country. Not being able to read or understand the language was devastatingly stunting for me. I was the caged bird, trapped with my feet glued to the cage, but I also became mute, unable to sing my inarticulate song. I remember being thrown into school with zero comprehension of what was going on. My first American elementary school was located in a Chicago inner-city neighborhood. The student and faculty population were predominantly African American with two or three White kids, and there was me and my brother, the poor Chinese kids from Inner Mongolia. At the time, my dad earned around 800 USD a month to support a family of four. We had nothing, but the-nothing here in America was riches compared to the average life in China.

In America, we had a television, refrigerator, indoor plumbing, separate bedrooms, electric stove, a bathtub, all types of ready-made food, etc. We did not have any of these things in China. In fact, I studied by candlelight up until I was around six or seven years old. We had at the most two or three changes of clothes and one pair of shoes to wear until they were worn out. Going to school wearing the same clothes every day in China was typical, but in America, I became acutely aware of the looks of disgust. I sat in class, trying to be as small as possible and wanting to crawl into the ground. I did not even know how to ask to go to the bathroom, so for a while, I would just run out of the classroom. I came back to shocked looks and laughing ridicule. I wanted to cry.

The kids made fun of me. Even though I could not understand what they were saying, I knew they were laughing at me, which crushed me. I had no solace. My memory of those days only come in flashes because I had no English language skills for contextual attachment. I used my love of music to express emotions, so my memories are tied to the music of the time. When I come across Chinese or American oldies from my first few years in America, I can become very emotional. My educational circumstances took another drastic turn when my parents moved us from Chicago to the suburbs of Pittsburgh.

Get Up and Keep Moving, Maybe I Will Get Use to the Torture

Not speaking English and not progressing in school due to the lack of English as a second language (ESL) assistance rendered me useless. I was dropped back to second grade in Pittsburgh. I am sure it had something to do with the placement tests I took in Chicago. I had my own Chinese to English dictionary and answered only one question on the entire test. I am not even sure I wrote my name correctly. This time around, my elementary school population was almost all White, except for a handful of African American students and me and my brother. I was tormented, ridiculed, pushed, shoved, called names, shunned, and isolated. I do not talk about my brother because he abused me with my parents’ awareness which compounded the stress, pressure, and desperation (The beautiful people – Marilyn Manson).

I do not know how I made it into middle school because it took me up to sixth grade to be able to have the average daily conversation. I spent my time fearing school and even more scared to come home because I was the punching bag, among other things. Those were very dark days for me. I remember a few incidences which confirmed my aloneness in the world. For example, I was walking to class one day, and three large football-playing boys came barreling down the hallway, knocking me unconscious and laying on the ground. I remember waking up and hearing voices accompanied by some snickering and wanting to cry. I could not see and searched for my glasses with the lump in my throat begging me to cry. I had to swallow hard to stop myself because I knew at the precise moment no one cared because no one helped me. I was sent back to class. I think the boys made some insincere apologies. No one bothered to check or monitor me for a concussion. The incident was never discussed again by the school or my parents.

Read the Lyrics for Runaway Train – Soul Asylum

My life from elementary through high school reflected this way of life. I would get tortured at school and get abused at home. The icing on the cake of all this torture was the poem they made about me. I can only recall the first couple of lines. It goes, “Rui, Rui, the refugee, came to us from across the sea.” The following line was something about me smelling like rice patties. I was irritated by the rice patty line because I hated rice and could not understand the inference. Even one or two American-born Asian kids tortured me. I seem to remember one of them calling me a chink, which left me scratching my head. I had average grades in high school and was an awkward and depressed girl looking to be loved. I was starved of love. Sadly, people saw my desperation and often tried to take advantage of me. I was often sexualized as the exotic being from the orient. I was lonely. I hated myself. I hated my Chinese heritage because it brought endless torment and abuse. No one gave a rat’s ass about me.

My outsider persona was complete in high school. I was either the focus of torment, completely ignored, treated as a nuisance, or objectified as the embodiment of the Asian fetish characterized by unworthiness. I had good enough grades to be able to skip copious amounts of school. Having the opportunity to escape may have saved my life on many occasions. The hidden grace for being the proxy for my English illiterate parents meant I wrote the excuses for being absent. I was sick a lot. On my sick days, I smoked, drank, and did other crazy stuff. I also tried to find ways to escape my life in general.

While I was a delinquent, my strict Chinese upbringing kept me from becoming a criminal. I still wanted to be honorable and searched for ways to prove to everyone my life was worthy. Worthy of what I am not certain. I wanted approval for my life. The Army came into my life as I looked for a way out. I took the ASVAB in eleventh grade and somehow scored extremely high, which resulted in the Army calling me. By this point, I did not think academics were in my future. I was told and treated as having inferior intelligence by my family and passively by teachers. I learned to smile to hide the pain, but if anyone took the time to look into my eyes, they would have been able to see my struggle for heaven in hell (Vincent (Starry, Starry Night) – Don McLean).

I joined the Army reserves against my parents’ wishes. I told them I joined for the G.I. bill, which was partially true, but my real intention was to go on active duty once I completed all of my training. I was the only female in my class to join the military in high school. Everyone said I would not survive and predicted I would commit suicide in Army boot camp. But I loved boot camp because the training was heaven for me. No one tortured me or beat me relentlessly. I did not know it then, but I was apparently a unicorn in the military environment. At that point in America, I was one of the minute percentages of Chinese people to join the military. Being female added an additional dimension of me becoming the focus for men with Asian fetishes, but that is another long story. If I had to choose a song that characterized what I was to military men and men in general, 2 Live Crew’s song, Me so horny would be it.

Read the Lyrics for I Miss the Misery – Halestorm

I thought I had escaped my horrible life and family. I was trying to go on active duty as planned. Being the tragically tortured people they are, my parents had other plans and said they would disown me if I went on active duty. I relented because I feared losing the only people I knew in America. I remained as a reservist and attended college. A miracle must have occurred for me to get into the University of Pittsburgh. By this point, I was so envious and hateful towards other college students because they had the intelligence, I did not think I possessed. My first college roommate recalled being very frightened by my swearing and loudly talking about other horrible things. She ended up being a great roommate for my first two years at Pitt. This White girl from a loving home never encountered anyone like me, so I am sure it was jarring for her.

I spent my four years in college testing out various potential career paths and hating most or not being smart enough for some. My professional level of being a functioning alcoholic and not attending classes while working sixty-plus hours a week did not help either. My grades for the first two years of college were rather abysmal because I was aimless. My parents interceded once again to dictate my major because I was not smart enough to be the medical doctor of every Chinese parent’s dream. They were pretty hateful in their lamentations about my birth and life being a colossal disappointment and waste of their time. I once again yielded and majored in computer/information science, which I hated with a vengeance.

The Entire Album of Mental Jewelry – Live

At the time, Pitt’s student body was bland at best for all four years. I was a minority on campus, and I did not see many people who looked like me back then. I never belonged to any specific groups except for required groups like ROTC and tried to make friends with a wide range of people (Beauty of Gray – Live). However, I did notice the looks I got when my former friend, who is African American, and I walked together on campus. He tried to explain the reasons to me, but I was busily occupying myself in self-hatred and thought people were just repulsed by me. My awareness concerning my Chinese heritage and being fetishized grew in the military and college. To tell the truth, I was a mess. I walked around as the little girl starved of love, feeling insecure, dumb, and worthless. A lot of terrible things happened because of my internal struggle.

Despite my self-sabotaging behaviors, I remained on the Dean’s list once I started studying the major I hated. Having a goal that I hated was better than aimlessly searching and failing at everything. I joined the Marine Corps during my last year at Pitt and left for active duty twenty-three days after graduation. I told my parents I was leaving three months before I graduated. They were not amused, but they knew I would never physically return to living at home this time, so the cold war tactics were employed. My need to find an escape without knowing what I was running from and why I needed to run led to more failures and suffering through most of my life. All the things I experienced being an outsider, the Asian fetish, and worthless-being followed me into the Marines. Interestingly enough, passive and overt racist, sexist, and discriminatory behaviors were all around me, but I was in denial. I had already developed Stockholm syndrome at epic levels, and I increasingly leaned on alcohol to keep the pain at bay. I lived in a haze for many years. I am still contending with its aftereffects of Stockholm syndrome (This Little Light of Mine – Sam Cooke).