Immigrant parents, when they first move to North America, push towards whiteness, towards assimilation, to survive and thrive. Naturally, their children do too for the first half of their lives. This usually tips the other way, but before we're taught anything, we're taught to hide.

She used to call me on the phone and scream, “I LOVE YOU SO MUCH, I AM GOING TO CHOP YOU INTO PIECES SO SMALL, YOU WILL BE A POWDER AND NO ONE WILL FIND YOU.

Mom talks about moving to Canada as though my father had requested she start wearing fun hats. "Why not try it?" she thought, instead of "This fucking lunatic wants me to go to a country made of ice and casual racism.

I'm not white, no, but I'm just close enough that I could be, and just far enough that you know I'm not. I can check off a diversity box for you and I don't make you nervous - at least not on the surface. I'm the whole package!

I like being present in spaces where I am not welcome because you do not deserve to feel comfortable just because you're racist or sexist or small-minded.

Did I mention Indian weddings last seven days? There are prison sentences that run shorter than Indian weddings.

I have never had to be brave. Bravery is for parents and people who get tattoos in another language or dare to eat pinkish chicken.

Mom has reorganized the kitchen so that the one room that was everyone's room is foreign to me. My visits are punctuated with me whipping around, angrily demanding, "Where are the forks, WHY DID YOU MOVE THE FORKS?" and she has to calmly open the drawer on the other side of the kitchen as if she moved it just to ruin my life. I just found out where she puts the bowls and their new location feels like such a personal attack that I can barely talk about it without raising my blood pressure.

There is no cowardice in removing yourself from a wildly unhealthy and unwinnable situation . . . You shouldn't feel like you have to play . . . you don't owe anyone anything. You don't have to be available to everyone. You can stop.

All things built by humans descend into the same pitfalls: loathing, vitriol, malicious intent. All the things we build in order to communicate, to connect, to find people like us so we feel less alone, and to find people not like us at all so we learn how to adapt, end up turning against us. Avoiding human nature at its most pure and even at its worst is pointless. No one deserves your attention, but no one has earned your withdrawal.