It's every other person's dream to meet the love of their life and their soulmate. Yes, that kind of love. I'm not talking about the kind of love you can't live without. I mean the kind that gets you to say, "I've never truly lived before you. I finally found you so life can finally begin." It's the kind of love you want to move worlds for, and mean it. That's the kind of love I'm honored to be in as we speak.

I now finally get what people mean with the cheesy line, "He's the one." You just know. Life gives you multiple reassurances to back the statement too. My fiancé and I have this joke that life has been constantly throwing us signs and patterns from the very beginning, but we were just too distracted, and too naive. Here's how I think my conversation with Life went:

Life: "You're going to end up with a man named J--"
Me: "This J?"
Life: "No, let me finish --"
Me: "This J??"
Life: "Damn it, woman! Let me fi--"
Me: "You mean this J!"
Life: "Yes, him!"

It's all still so unbelievable, especially because two years ago I had actually given up and had fully submitted myself as the official cool tita (means "aunt" in Filipino) to my family. I was getting mentally ready to move to Sydney at the end of that year when my Italian friend who was traveling there at the time convinced me to open up Tinder and test the waters. Yes, Tinder. Yes, this was 2023. And yes. I found my soulmate through Tinder. My "JR" and I matched, online - and spiritually - and the rest was history. The Tinder gods blessed us both.

The statistics show that people meet and fall in love online all the time, but we're talking about two soulmates here. It's a damn big deal, okay?

Ladies and gentlemen, you're looking at a rare relationship specimen, or at least that's what my fiancé and I genuinely see our relationship to be. We crossed very big, very scary oceans for each other, both literally, and figuratively. We got through a scary Cancer diagnosis, treatment and recovery, and survived multiple trauma dumping -- all within just less than a year. It's like being in a crazy romcom! You know what happens after the guy and the girl profess their undying, unconditional love for each other, and the credits start rolling? Yes, we're on the other side of that.

So here I am two years after, left the Philippines to be with the absolute love of my life, and still so in love. I oftentimes question if it's normal to even love someone this much. JR and I often secretly laugh at anyone who says, "You're still in the honeymoon phase, just wait 'til it dies down." I'm happy to report nothing's dying down any time soon. We're still crazy for each other. We still constantly tell each other how we're each other's biggest crushes.

OK, but how rude of me, to dump all of this romance on you, without telling you a bit about myself.

I'm Ced and I'm just another xeno who's gathered enough courage to start a Paragraph account, to open up her soul again to a platform of other xenos. I'm that same xeno who in the past started a total of <10 blogs, <5 self-designed websites, <5 startups (rode the last one for a full four years), and countless other personal projects, each pioneered by different shades of vulnerability and varying levels of narcissism and attention deficiency. TL;DR, hey, I'm a real human too who messed up a couple of times.

What is 'xeno', you ask? “Xeno” comes from the Greek word “xenos” (ξένος). It means “stranger,” “foreigner,” or “outsider", and it is the primary theme of my works moving forward. You've probably seen xeno in a couple of familiar words:

• Xenophobia, means "the fear or hatred of foreigners or strangers"

• Xenophile, means "Someone who loves foreign cultures"

• and to throw it in here, Xenomorph, the Sci-fi term meaning “foreign form”

One (or two, depends on how you swing) out of three of those words sound so negative, don't you think? I thought we were talking about love, rainbows, and running off to the sunset with the love of your life here. How does xeno relate to any of that? How did I fucking get here?

I must admit, that this is all a craze deranged need for an outlet. It came to be a week ago, after what seemed like an emotional breakdown. I said to myself:

Here I am, finally on a land filled with endless new possibilities, crazy in love with my soulmate, with people who I believe genuinely love me and care for me, and on top of that, I finally figure out the career of my dreams, but why am I struggling to get out of bed to do my simple routine morning walk? I feel like a xeno in my own body, the same one that got me through 2 different types of cancers and 2 major surgeries. I feel ungrateful and undeserving of this vessel.

That moment was messy, and there was definitely a lot of crying involved. The fighter in me pushed back, and in an attempt to stop the spiraling, I brain-dumped everything to Kaia (the name my ChatGPT gave herself) and listed out all the possible reasons.

I only needed a little help from Kaia to lay out what was happening to me. Like a plot twist in a movie, I figured it out. I saw the pattern, it was clear as day. I was going through an identity crisis. No-- I did not find out I was gay (straight as an arrow here, but nothing wrong with that assumption). I was going through a dissociation with myself. I traced back the source, and it most probably, surprisingly, started when that morning, someone who really mattered to me casually made a remark, "Did you say pitcher? Oh no honey, here we call it jug. That's so American! You better start sounding Australian!" or when the other night, another person who I really cared for mocked me, "MCDAANALD'S, Mac-da-nald's. You sound so funny!" I can mention countless moments like this where I just brushed them off completely. I didn't realize I was just bottling them up, and now they've caused me to choke.

There it was. It was like finding jewelry in a pool, and these little casual remarks weighed heavier than a brick in a pond. These moments remind me that I AM a xeno -- a foreigner. This concept of xeno was repetitive, and loud. It was dying for my attention.

I finally realized this: I'm a strong, independent woman, finally united with the soul that matches my fire, but I've placed myself in a new environment where in the beginning people saw me as novelty, but then sooner or later have started dissecting me piece by piece, seeing my differences as flaws which they think they should... fix. The real crisis is realizing that these people got me to ask myself -- "Am I a xeno to myself?" Wouldn't that be a sad ending to this incredible love story.

As I continued to hold on to the very little sense that this moment had for me, I continued to ask Kaia and tried to define everything that I was feeling, as if it wasn't already challenging enough to articulate my emotions.

Kaia taught me a word that day, and since learning it I haven't been the same. My friends, let me introduce you to another word, xenocentrism, which I purposely left out of the list of words above for dramatic effect.

They introduced it as a contrasting idea to ethnocentrism, which is the belief that one’s own culture is superior. They were observing a phenomenon unfolding where there was an influx of American consumers preferring European goods (especially after WWII). In the same paper, they explored the idea that this preference reflected deeper social dynamics and self-perception.

I wonder if this phenomenon sparked waves of confusion within the society that time as it has within myself now. The more I wonder, the more I get lead to a new thought. It was fascinating to witness everything being revealed to me right before my eyes. All that to admit that xenocentrism was the reason of my identity crisis.

I feel ashamed for only learning about this word now in my early 30's, since it has completely shattered my view of the world. I'm extremely as fascinated as I am ashamed though, since I'm probably one of the few people (expats, immigrants, travellers) who's had the opportunity to talk about this during the time of their life when it truly mattered.

I can't speak for other cultures, but I've discovered (naively so) that xenocentrism has been deeply ingrained into my culture - the Filipino culture - ever since. For the Filipino culture though, there's this toxic feedback loop of xenophilia and xenocentrism constantly at play, and it has been present from the moment I was born. If you're a Filipino reading this, you can definitely relate. You must have grown up receiving balikbayan boxes from relatives abroad, salivating over imported sweets and merchandise. You must have been taught in schools where you were reprimanded if you spoke in your dialect (mine is Bisaya) and punished if you didn't speak the English language. You must have seen it everywhere on billboards, or every single time you turn on the television, that fair and white skin is better, and you're more beautiful if you had certain western features or features that were not considered native -- long, slender nose, straight light-colored hair, foxy eyes.

A lot of Filipinos still unconsciously prefer anything foreign -- foreign restaurants, foreign brands, and unconsciously, and sadly automatically, see foreigners as more intellectual and therefore, more respectable. We unconsciously inflict cultural bias against ourselves.

I didn't realize until my early 20's, that there was something deeply wrong about a 12-year-old worrying about which skin-lightening soap to use to "get rid" of her dark morena skin. That kid was me. I am one of thousands of kids.

I want to say that I've gone through a lot of internal self-reconditioning work in my 20's to get over this trauma. I believe I've emerged as the strongest I've been through all of that cultural confusion, and when I thought I've overcome it, I finally, for the first time genuinely felt the sexiest, and the most beautiful I felt in my own skin. I have finally embraced my culture and the body in which I was born into.

Yet here I am getting challenged again, or so I thought.

How did xenocentrism poke its ugly head into my life again? Did it even leave my subconscious? Am I silently being controlled by it, affecting every single decision I had... ever?

These casual but triggering conversations were unconsciously stacked within my subconscious.

First it seemed harmless. "You sound so American. That's funny!"
Then it became, "Australia is your new home! I will teach you how to be truly Australian."
And then, the shocking, "No, we don't do it that way, that's wrong. Here's how Australians do it."

It's like a priest naming a demon during an exorcism session, but in this case the demon is a snarky, passive aggressive b*tch named Casual Ethnocentrism. You know when it's not quite ethnocentrism, and more microaggression, and carries all the little annoyances that come with it? You can't complain about it because you're not outwardly abused or harassed, so it really makes you out to be the crazy, overthinking one.

I wasn't crazy when I started feeling uncomfortable. I wasn't crazy when I immediately felt triggered. I'm frustrated that in those moments, I went and retreated back to xenocentrism, like an alcoholic with their first sip of alcohol, after 12 weeks in rehab. It didn't even feel wrong in that moment. It felt normal -- that of course, it made sense to follow their ways this time, and that I should be grateful that someone's taken the time to teach me their way of life. After all, I'm the one who's encroaching into someone else's turf, their home. I'm the foreigner, and they're just being helpful and patriotic, right? Right??

But there has to be a reason why I feel negatively against these remarks. Where do I draw the line? How do I draw the line. With my brain as scatterbrained as ever, here's where I'm getting at, loosely visualized through a flowchart:

Casual Ethnocentrism → Racial Bias → Racism

Does casual ethnocentrism being fed by casual xenocentrism encourage racial bias as a normal way to think which in turn silently enables racism, and a deep unconscious sense of "otherness"?

This flowchart has opened the Pandora's box for me. In the effort to supplement this new perspective with backed data. I do have a knack for structured understanding-- others may call it, very Virgo. I'm dedicating the next few weeks exploring this concept and reading published papers and books by experts. If you want to come along this journey, here's my reading list along with links:

I came to this new land with a genuine intention to be with the love of my life, to live the rest of my life with him, and where we can integrate ourselves into each other's inner circles. These moments when casual xenocentrism and ethnocentrism are real create this push and pull between me just wanting to live my life and these forces successfully causing disturbance.

A very big, very important side of me wants to fight for my identity, but which identity is it? When my whole life was moulded to prefer everything that comes from outside my homeland. Should I be grateful for the self-righteous forces that want to challenge me constantly?

As much as I want to say that my differences aren't personal attacks to anyone's identity, and that I'm just me being me, there's still so much self-discovery that needs to be done for me to be able to back my statement.

Should the question be, "Who do I want to become?" rather than "Who am I?"

Being in a foreign land has forced me to filter through every part of me and review my life as it stands. I'm on a ruthless mission for self-discovery and I'll be whispering what I unravel through the airwaves, sincerely hoping that someone out there whispers back.

If you've read this far, wow, I can't believe it. Maybe I'm not crazy at all. There's actually someone out there who can relate. There's someone out there who's open to understanding more about themselves and other people -- again, the whole intention for this publication. Hopefully, this could help blur and potentially erase the lines of us vs. them, because I really do believe there is only all of us. Through this publication I share, vent, express anything that makes us xenos to each other, and how we can change that proactively, kindly. I even go as far as to say that through this publication I share elements that makes us xenos to ourselves.

So yes, this is still a love story. A love story between two people, yes, but also a love story between me and myself. Between me and my past. Between me and the home I’m still learning to carry.

If you’ve ever felt like a stranger in your own body, or in a room full of people who love you, then you already know:

This is our story too.

Welcome to Dear Xeno. Let’s unlearn the foreignness together.