Words by: Jackie Zhou
Art by: Annabel Condon

“You always pick on my words. I don’t know what I say that hurts you, but you get angry at me anyway.”

These words from my mother, after I angrily told her that she said something ignorant about my mental health, made me realise that our language and cultural barriers are stronger than I initially thought — with future discussions surrounding my queerness and gender identity feeling more and more impossible to have. After consulting my sister, temporarily removing myself from home, and reflecting on our miscommunication, I came to realise that the things she said that might have felt  invalidating to me, were actually her improperly conveyed thoughts thrown together with whatever words she could hold on to. Spending her early adulthood in Australia, my mother’s English is proficient enough to allow us to converse almost entirely in English, so I sometimes forget that it’s her second language — and one that she never received complete, formal education in. With her inability to wholly express her thoughts and feelings in English, combined with my less-than-ideal level of Mandarin, discussions surrounding more nuanced topics such as politics, gender, mental health, queerness and other social issues become all the more difficult to have.