Bentime Stories began as a YouTube Channel where I could share my life stories with friends, especially during my year of travels where I escaped to Neverland. #BennVoyage
Like all things in life, my first #BennVoyage was not what I expected. It began as an exciting journey to explore various urban communities, capture adventure travel moments, meet new people, and learn about other (non-U.S.) Western societies. Sounds simple enough... a stereotypical millennial wanderlust journey with a joyful disposition, right? Wrong. At the time, I was under the popular impression that travel destinations and vacations made people "happy," but I began to discover that you can't run away from your problems; they will always come with you. I had been disillusioned the whole time, viewing travel as a "wanderlust experience" of collecting "bucket-list moments" for happiness, and especially getting rid of loneliness. I quickly became fatigued by wanderlust culture, and being "young, wild, and free." These things weren't bad, but my indulgences in them began to make me feel empty... as if there was something I was missing, as if there was something I was running away from. I thought I was doing something healthy, transforming my pessimistic attitudes by embracing youth, freedom, wanderlust, and curiosity; but now realize that I was actually using wanderlust as a cover-up for deeply internalized psyche challenges with happiness, loneliness, attachment and relationships that I did not want to deal with, especially after convincing myself that they were trivial, frivolous, and overrated.
My happiness was compromised with complex dissatisfaction for my identity and sense of belonging which were largely influenced by culture & society.
loneliness | negative emotions
I knew I was on a serious struggle boat with loneliness, but it was (and is) a social taboo to talk about or dwell on; something we are socialized to overlook, ignore, and trivialize, something we need to simply "get over" by toughening up, becoming more independent, and being self-reliant. So, I did what my community and culture taught me. I organized my life around this emotion, avoiding it by all means, but it turns out I ended up repressing it, foolishly leaving a "small" leak on my mental ship unattended for. We all know that:
"A small leak can sink a great ship." - Benjamin Franklin
but for some reason, we overlook loneliness and negative emotions. Recently, I watched a great video exercise about depression and I think it sums up things up very nicely: Imagine that water is like distress, negative emotions, and perceived adversities. You are holding a glass of water out in front of you. Imagine doing this for years; it won't matter who holds "more water," (i.e. who has more intense problems or adversities), the glass of water will take its toll on everyone holding it out, becoming equally distressing. If we don't take care of our internal problems because our "water" is not as significant as society thinks it is in comparison to other individuals or issues, we enable more strain, damage, pain, and disorder. It is important to become stronger from adverse events and darker times in the psyche and mind, and I believe this requires facing and understanding our fears, challenges and dark emotions as opposed to hiding and running from them. Intimacy seemed to trouble me so much, but I didn't want to admit it because I didn't want people to think I was obsessed with it, even though it was a major psychosocial developmental dilemma within an Eriksonian model for young adulthood. Nevertheless, I ran away from my problems and avoided developing a deeper appreciation for and understanding of my loneliness and dissatisfaction.
double minority identity experience | internalized racial lookism
I was particularly disappointed and dissatisfied from not fitting into the heteronormative social environment of adulthood intimacy as a millennial situated within a digital social environment and culture of hyperconnectivity, surrounded by social media, apps for dating, hook-ups, and relationship games). This dissatisfaction was further exacerbated in the oversexed gay community with enhanced notions of racial lookism that placed "femmes and Asians" among the lower ends of the socially constructed attractiveness spectrum, and as a fetish. As a child raised on Disney and American popular media in the late 1990s and early 2000s with limited diversity and representation (especially for asian americans), I also unconsciously internalized this ugly hierarchy of racial lookism, where acceptance, value, and worth became strongly dominated by and centered around eurocentricity, whiteness, and masculinity. At the same time, I also hated myself for feeling this deeply internalized need for external validation and affirmation of my identity and relationships through a greater congruence and alignment with eurocentric, white, and masculine aesthetic ideals; because I was trained as an anthropologist with strong understandings of social constructionism, the illusion of western cultural supremacy, colorism, and the need for greater advocacy and pride for invisible minority groups. It was a subtle conflict every time I would try to enter the relational dimension of social connectedness. Through white ideals for masculinity emerged an implicit association between whiteness and Americanness as well as desireability; along with additional messaging about Asian American men being less attractive than other men who appear more consistent with eurocentric and white ideals of masculinity. It was a recipe for disaster! I would try to put myself out there, but eventually became very upset for being attracted to white ideals of masculinity because I felt like I was betraying my Asian community, abandoning my Asian-American pride, promoting western cultural supremacy, and feeding into the stereotype of Asians (especially Asian women, but also feminine gay asian men) as fetishized objects of desire, especially for American (and especially White) men. Further reinforcing the colonization of this romantic desire for and attraction towards white ideals of masculinity was something I understood to be a culturally-influenced family-reinforced value for attaining a relationship and intimacy with a member of the dominant race because it validated more of a Western and American identity and symbolized an ultimate act of assimilation as written about in Kevin Kwan’s book Crazy Rich Asians or Ali Wong’s Baby cobra Stand Up Act.
“...Growing up as a racial minority in America, you feel that the ultimate act of assimilation is to marry into the dominant race. Which is why you only ever date WASPs … or Eurotrash.” --Kevin Kwan, Crazy Rich, Asians
“My husband is Asian. Which a lot of people are shocked by, because, usually, Asian-American women who, like, you know, wear these kinda glasses and have a lot of opinions, they like to date white dudes. You go to any hipster neighborhood in a major city in America and that shit is turning into a Yoko Ono factory. It’s… too much. I don’t know what’s wrong with these bitches. I get it, you know, because being with a white dude you feel very… You feel very picturesque when you’re with a white dude, you know. You feel like you’re in a Wes Anderson movie or something.” — Ali Wong, Baby Cobra
I hated racial lookism, but also deeply internalized it through childhood, adolescence and young adulthood. I began to discover that I could never truly love or be intimate with someone the way I had been led to believe, especially because of the complexities that stemmed from the conflict from socialized (and colonized) desire (situated within racial lookism) versus cultural identity pride and acceptance. Would my desire and attraction to the other person be authentic? Would it be fueled by lookism? Would my intimacy be genuine with the other person and would the other person’s attraction and desire towards me be authentic? OR was I just a fetish? How much of my attraction is influenced by an attraction to the privilege, power, and assimilation that my relationship with them could promise, symbolize and represent? Would I be willing to sacrifice a deeper layer of cultural intimacy for the illusion of assimilation, acculturation, and power? Did my “love” and attraction for the dominant cultural “other” conflict and compromise my acceptance for myself? Do I hate my Asian identity in the process of this desire for the masculine other which is situated within racial lookism (biased and skewed towards White and eurocentric ideals of masculinity and poor representation of Asian American males in the media? What comes to mind is a scene from the Tyra Show on interracial dating and two narratives from different gay Asian Men.
LGBT (SOCIAL) | ASIAN (CULTURAL)
My social identity in young adulthood craved to be "normal" so I could talk about relationships, sex, and romance like everyone else. In particular, my inner adolescent was the driving force for seeking normalcy after having been trapped in the closet for so long; I always saw these activities and discussions as rites of passage into normal adolescence and emerging adulthood. As I watched more of my friends enter this stage of their lives with their own sexual, romantic, and relationship stories, I became more and more dissatisfied with an increasing desire to have my own. I felt like there was something wrong with me for not being able to experience these normative and popular aspects of social life. Happiness as normalcy seemed to be trapped in these experiences and I had wanted them for so long. Unfortunately, this social pressure for normalcy as a homosexual male blurred my vision on love and compassion such that I saw potential partners moreso as extensions of myself to attain normalcy within relational, sexual, and romantic dimensions of social life.
Furthermore, as an Asian American, I wanted to be like the white Disney stars and Hollywood Celebrities I had been exposed to on television. My desire ends up being socialized, colonized and conditioned towards a dominant group that was not culturally conditioned or socialized to see me equally in that desirable light. Asian males are presented as nerdy and uncool in mainstream media, and Asian females are presented as subservient, passive, and only regarded for sexual prowess. In short, popular Western culture gives white males the upper hand in physical attractiveness and desirability. A gaysian femme interested in white males (also known as potato-queen) must therefore compete with other potato queens to gain attention from a limited pool of rice queens (White males who are attracted to Asian males). Due to the stronger cultural selection for whites over Asians, rice queens can therefore treat potato queens as somewhat of a disposable commodity that can be more easily replaced. Cultural selection played a large role in this relationship/romantic distress because I deeply desired to assimilate and belong in Western culture (like I strongly did throughout childhood, adolescence and young adulthood). In other words, happiness as belonging was trapped in this cultural selection for whiteness (a proxy for Americanness), and I saw a romantic partner as a means to fulfill my own needs for cultural identity and belonging (something I had to eventually find on my own, because belonging and acceptance start with you).
On top of racial lookism and the desire to be "normal," especially like the people I saw on television, I was also burying deep attachment challenges and predisposed addictive relationship behaviors, rooted from psychodynamic experiences in early childhood and family environments.
the forests of morois | family transgenerational refugee trauma and mutual violent control | relationship addiction
I never talked about this aspect of my life because I was always afraid people would look down on me for having a family and home environment that was persistently and pervasively impacted by transgenerational refugee trauma and residual psychosocial wounds from the Vietnam war and diaspora. I didn't want this experience to precede and overshadow my own social and personal identity as well as professional, romantic, and academic potentials for "success." I also wanted to be proud of my upbringings and parents like my other friends. I didn't want transgenerational family trauma and related mutual violent control interpersonal marital dynamics to be another source of abnormal deviance on top of my homosexuality, Asian American identity, feminine personality, and working class socioeconomic status. I was already ashamed of all of these personal identity pieces; a struggling family environment impacted by intersecting and compounded transgenerational refugee traumas which ultimately created more vulnerability and susceptibility to pronounced behavioral patterns of mutual violent control would only further create more shame and stigma. I never wanted to admit it because I desperately wanted to be normal, but the reality was that I did not know how to love which led me to more quickly adopt fantasies and unrealistic expectations for romance and relationships with the hopes that they would magically repair and replace the ruptures identified and experienced in my formative years; the avoidance and shame only led to more unaddressed dissatisfaction and unfounded desires— fueling for the flames of my imagination and romantic fantasies. Healthy relationship roles were more difficult to access and model in my nuclear family because my parents’ marriage was significantly plagued by transgenerational war refugee trauma and the psychosocial and socioeconomic demands of assimilation from a diaspora and global relocation; and the subsequent exposure to torrential family environments led me to repress fears, emotional needs, and safety concerns which I would channel and express in my own desires for relationships in adulthood, seeking partners as further extensions of myself to fix the fears and emotional needs that were unmet in childhood. In other words, on top of my normalcy being trapped in the dominance of white ideals for masculinity on a large-scale culturally conditioned level; my happiness, safety, and comfort were also further trapped in disillusioned notions of relationships, seeking, wishing, and hoping for a masculine male savior who was more consistent with Western (White) ideals for masculinity (partly cultural (Disney & Western Media)), as well as psychodynamic (family transgenerational trauma and less positive interactions with male figures). I was unconsciously seeking a partner to heal the wounds of childhood and adolescence, when I had to find that healing myself.
retroactive analysis
It is important to note that I've conceptualized and contextualized the distress and dissatisfaction retroactively. In the actual moment, I only felt a cold and uncomfortable chill from a complex pool of unfounded emotions. I simply wanted to be happy, and forget about suffering and unhappiness. They remained misunderstood and unsorted until I developed Bentime Stories many months later to serve as space for me to extract and make sense of my emotions and thoughts in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood (requiring a great deal of reflection and analysis). I realized that I felt: unhappiness for not reaching my childhood and adolescent dreams, jealousy for individuals who had romantic experiences, bitterness towards couples, disappointment at my current adult self for not attaining (popular) normative and socially constructed notions of intimacy, anger at myself for feeling these emotions, annoyance for having these deep and strong desires, confusion for what I wanted in life and why I wanted these things, frustration for who I wanted to be, and loneliness for not knowing anyone who I could inter-relate to, especially in regards to the complex experiences growing up homosexual, feminine, Asian-American, only child, working class with shame from pervasive family transgenerational refugee trauma from the Vietnam War, Disapora and global relocation. I would later discover that I had to find myself and cultivate the most meaningful and deepest intra-relationship with my self to begin my journey of healing and wholeness. But at the time, I was unhappy and did not want to deal with it. I just couldn't even...
I decided to travel and wanderlust to try to escape the darker, unsorted, messy, unfounded and confusing emotions, foolishly thinking that they would disappear in new environments.
distress avoidance
I did not want to dwell on loneliness and dissatisfaction, so I tried to re-arrange my life around these feelings so I could focus on the positives and "find" happiness. It felt like a good idea at the time; I thought this strategy would help me escape the toxic "thoughts and desires" circle of disappointment, dissatisfaction, and confusion. I reasoned and rationalized that I didn't really need these aspects of life as much as I wanted them; I intended to transform these feelings with wanderlust and being young, wild, and free, but I was only avoiding, repressing, and internalizing distress. Eventually, I could no longer cover up the roots of loneliness and dissatisfaction because my unique social environment on the #BennVoyage turned into a fertile soil for psychosocial and spiritual introspection, contemplation, and reflection where I could no longer escape the darker parts of my psyche.
Dislocation
A subtle dissatisfaction in life started manifesting, particularly during the festive holiday season when I missed Thanksgiving, celebrated my birthday with strangers, spent Christmas on my own, and rang in the New Year alone, all whilst being thousands of miles away from my closest friends and family members, in a land with opposite seasons and time zones. Dislocation of time, culture, weather, space, and place became very real! I tried to distract this dislocation with nostalgia, but it backfired-- only further disconnecting me from reality, and placing me at the gates of existential loneliness with nothing but memories, thoughts, consciousness, wants, needs, desires, and dreams.