Asians Ex Diary -

Exes are supposed to fade into a blur of bad haircuts and unreturned hoodies. But you show up in the way I check my shoes at the door. In how I haggle at the wet market without guilt. In the way I finally learned to say “I love you” in my own mother tongue — because you asked, once, “Why do you always say it in English?”

Because here’s the thing no one tells you about being Asian and falling in love with another Asian from a different Asian country: you spend half the time bonding over the similarities (rice, filial piety, saving plastic bags) and the other half quietly decoding each other’s wounds. Your family’s brand of strict wasn’t my family’s brand of strict. Your “I’m fine” meant something else in Cantonese than it did in my mom’s Tagalog. asians ex diary

— A former someone’s favorite eggroll. Exes are supposed to fade into a blur

Now I do: because some heartbreaks are too precise for translation. In the way I finally learned to say