As a Chinese descendant in Indo, in my younger years I struggled with the idea of belonging. I felt that the nation itself didn't acknowledge me fully as their own, so I wrestled with the idea that I wasn't a native anywhere. Where did I belong then? The Chinese (mainland Chinese) would have nothing to do with me as I don't even speak their language and I don't know their customs and their way of life. I wasn't interested in learning the language at all as it was a grueling process that needed money and determination (I chose to study English instead) and in my young mind at that time, I didn't want to be even more "Chinese" than I already was. I was bitter and angry for some years because of this.
A square peg in a round hole. That was what I felt. My saving grace was the fact that there was a big Chinese community in Indo and I had lots of friends that were in a similar position and I grew up with lots of relatives and cousins. When the riot happened in 1998, I felt sick to my stomach that my Chinese facial features could have made me a target of attacks (FYI my family was safe), but there were others who were in a similar position, so I didn't feel alone and I was definitely not alone. We tried looking out for one another as a group and we tried to stay home as much as we could. After the political situation got better in Indo, I started to be more at ease and the older I got, the more I came to terms with the non-native idea. I'm a citizen of the world, native to none and that's OK.
Now, after having lived in Finland for a little over 8 years, I'm partly Chinese-Indonesian, partly Finnish, and partly Indonesian. Even with this hodgepodge of cultures within me, I can still find other people like me relatively easily through the wonder of the internet and as an expat in Finland, it's again relatively easy to find other expats and relate to them.
Being a childless-not-by-choice woman, though, that took the isolation to a whole new level as regular people (even those that didn't lack empathy in other areas) couldn't really relate to this. The first time I used the world "infertile" in my emails to my closest friends, their reaction was so strong that it made me feel as though I had jinxed myself for using that word to describe myself. Yet I desperately needed the term to find my support group, to find those people who could understand and validate my inner chaos (and thereby validate that I wasn't a bad person just because I had my inner chaos). After we decided to let go of this dream, I started using the term non-mom or childless-not-by-choice (CNBC) as my self-identification in order to find my support group.
That said, these days I've started thinking more about labels and how I'd like to call myself. All through these years there's one thing that never changes about me: I LOVE exploring my own thoughts and feelings and finding out why I feel the way I feel and then figuring out what to do with them. I enjoy the ecstasy of screaming out "EUREKA!" when I finally find out why I feel the way I feel, even way before I can figure out what to do with them.
So hereby I'd like to declare my current badge: I'm an Eternal Self-Explorer. Nice to meet you. :-)
After not being pregnant within a year of TTC, I started reading IF blogs and then I started labelling myself "an infertile" whenever I talked to my close friends via email. Hearing the bitter and angry tone of my emails, they were shocked. They wondered why I even used that label to call myself. I felt as though some of them had probably thought I was "jinxing" myself for calling myself an infertile. One of them got pregnant on their twelve month of trying, so she had probably thought that it was "too soon" for me to call myself that. I know and knew she meant well, that she wanted to encourage us to keep hoping and trying.
But I got angry because they "wouldn't let me" label myself that way (self-defense mechanism kicked in). I must've responded to their well-meaning words in a harsh way, because after that they were much more careful in saying anything to me related to my IF journey. Bless them!!! :-)
childless-not-by-choice
I felt so desperate back then. I WANTED to label myself because I was searching for a place to "belong" in all the madness, in all the chaos. I was searching for people who were able to make me feel less alone, who could help me make sense of what I was feeling. If labelling myself helped me find my "peers", then so be it!!! I don't care even if it "jinxed" me.
Conclusion: I find that sometimes it IS necessary and even healthy to label yourself so that you can learn from your "peers".
Mind you, though, I don't actually share these labels in real life freely unless I feel that I need or want to do so. :-) In the beginning, though, I felt like I wanted to scream out the word "infertile" to everybody 'coz I felt that my pains were "unseen" and "unheard".
These days I mostly use the words "infertile" or CNBC in this blog rather than anywhere else. Because this is my safe haven, where I feel most understood in terms of this part of my life. :-)
