Dot Falls Apart

Maybe it’s the start of the year. Maybe I’ve just had a four-way Skype conversation with some very old friends from Singapore. Maybe it’s just time.

Who the hell am I?

I tried to answer that question earlier, rather unsuccessfully. But it all came to a head today when I noticed my wor(l)ds falling apart.

That’s right. I am officially sick of speaking properly. Or whatever it is I am speaking here.

Do people even know what I am saying? What the hell is my accent anyway?

Why can’t I speak Singlish? Why can’t I speak in whatever mish mash accent others may get away with here, in jobs that don’t require them to sound like they can write, edit, and assign work in that language?

That I feel “caught” in two worlds is such a freaking cliche.

I know there are others who face this daily: We’re all adjusting, we’re all assimilating.

But at what cost? I feel the burden of being linguistically perfect because of what I do for a living. If I spoke in heavily-accented English, would anyone give me an editor’s job?

Maybe I feel I’m losing half of me, but is it a half that was going to be lost anyway?

I sound like I’m making a big deal out of an accent, but it is ALL about the accent. (That, and the ability to be a chameleon.) It determines the way people look at you, judge you, befriend you.

I sometimes find myself chatting about things I know crap about; my face and my words betraying nothing.

I wonder who it is that people are getting to know here. Is that Dot? Is that who I am?

They know the “American” Dot, the one who pulls off certain cultural references because she is a news junkie and code switches very well. My friends in Singapore know the “Singaporean” Dot, the one who secretly relishes Singlish and when home, feels comfort in being among a population with shared experiences.

Some days, I find myself being neither. I hate it that I can’t relax my words here. I hate it that when I go to Singapore, I don’t quite fit back in.

I make sense to everyone except me. Two halves make a whole, but I am incomplete.