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Beauty has always felt like this incomprehensible, elusive thing, forever outside of my reach. Running around with a tangled mane of hair and dirt on my face, what did beauty matter?

I tell her I used to wear makeup because I felt bad about my face, but I stopped because wearing makeup felt like covering it up rather than learning to accept it. It's the same argument I made to my mom and grandma. The same argument I still make to myself.

I didn’t believe I had anything to say that would spark someone’s genuine interest in getting to know me, so I relied on my outfits to do the heavy lifting. Then I discovered a new social skill to add to my toolbox: Compliments.

Standing at the grocery checkout with my mom, my eyes level with the Sports Illustrated model. I ask her questions but she doesn't respond. I wondered if she answered his questions. I wonder if he asked her any.

Calgary is commonly associated with conservativism, oil and gas, extremely cold weather and most importantly, being cowboy crazy. This is something I have run into whenever I introduce myself as a Calgarian. And for the most part, these are all true.

As a child, my parents would take the three of us kids to T&T to buy doujiang. The predictability of the store was comforting. White waxed floors, edged by subtle grime; the smell of plastic wrap and the mist they sprayed to keep the vegetables fresh. The bright lights, the temperature, the layout — these elements create theoretically perfect conditions, yet are too sterile to make me feel at home.

My family moved to Winnipeg when I was seven — another family in a long migration of those leaving their homes to start again in what seemed like an isolated tundra. We subscribed to all the Filipino things available to us in Canada: church, any bakery with good pandesal and other Filipinos.

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