Tell Me a Story: I’ll Go First
By Clarissa Ma

The sky is perfectly ombré blue today, stretching out further into the horizon than I’ve been able to see for a while. Not two weeks ago, it was completely obscured by a blanket of thick smoke from West Coast fires in California, Oregon, and Washington. I’ve never felt so grateful to see clear skies streaked with feathery clouds before.

I tend to possess a low-grade anxiety about something at all times, but these days I feel chronically disoriented. Pandemic times? Check. Homeschooling some children? Check. Neglecting some other children? Check. Outrage and grief over racial injustice? Check. Traumatic US election year? Check. And then, as if we could bear anymore, a suffocating sky traps us indoors.

After 12 years of living in the US, I feel confident saying that I’m in the middle of a bad case of existential vertigo. Trying to wrap my head around my place as an Asian non-American, living and raising Asian American children at a time like this, is dizzying. There have been no easy answers, other than I’m convinced that hopelessness will get me nowhere. Writing began as a form of cheap therapy for me to untangle mental loads like this. Flannery O’Connor’s words taught me that “I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.”

I believe in the power of paying attention to the small details of our lives, our feelings and thoughts, as we write. It helps to tell rich, nuanced stories that allow people to see each other more clearly. It’s how we grow in empathy, understanding, and compassion for others. A story’s superpower is it dispels the notion that we are alone in our struggles. Stories remind us that the human experience, while varied and complex, leaves none of us exempt from joy, depression, love, or loss.

My story is of someone who has always struggled to belong. Raised in Hong Kong by a Chinese family but educated in the British system alongside expatriates created a conflicting identity. Part of me always felt out of place because I wasn’t an international student at my international school. I didn’t fly back “home” for the summer because I was already home. The other part of me that did fit in amongst the sea of raven-haired locals struggled to rely on my parents to translate Chinese menus, public signs, or colloquial phrases used by friends and family. I couldn’t read or write in my mother tongue because I foolishly rejected it as I grew proficient in English. I caved to my heightened awareness of how different I felt from others in my circles. 

I stopped telling stories for a while during These Unprecedented Times because the spinning in my head was too much. It turned out to be a disservice, not only to myself but more importantly to others. Story is how we come to understand each other’s discomfort or rage of not feeling accepted in your own skin, the desire for people to hang on to their heritage, or the reasons why others let it go. The artist’s duty is to engage with the inner happenings of the mind and story by releasing it—for me—as words. When we fulfill this duty, we create language for others who might resonate with our stories, but aren’t yet able to find the words for themselves. By exhaling our own stories, we inevitably allow others to exhale theirs, too. And maybe if we look around, we’ll find that the air has finally cleared and we too can see the blue skies again.

Born and raised in Hong Kong, Clarissa Ma is a naturalised Chinese Canadian and British dual citizen currently living in Seattle, Washington where she raises her American-born sons with her husband. These days, you'll find her haphazardly homeschooling her three children, serving in a local church, and writing in whatever cracks in the day she can find herself alone. She is a member of Hope*Writers, an online community of working writers.