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When I was in middle school, I had a crush on a boy in my grade. He sat near me during lunchtime, fooling around with his friends and fiddling with a DYMO label maker that made white embossed black labels.

I can still remember the fluttery feeling I got when his eyes zeroed in on me. As he approached me, a million thoughts rushed through my head.

“Quick, think of something to say, he’s coming closer.”

He smirked, bent down to touch the rubber heel of my converse, and went back to his friends. I was mortified by the attention and felt the heat rising in my cheeks. My fingers touched the raised white lettering as I felt an unfamiliar twisting inside the pit of my stomach. I struggled to make sense of the word.

“CHINK.”

As a first-generation Asian American, I was raised to focus on school and ignore all else. But every microaggression and racist comment I experienced served as a constant reminder that I simply did not belong.

Years later, during the COVID-19 pandemic, I found myself bitter and tired. The sentiment towards Asians had deteriorated, and I braced myself for the jokes about bat soup, aggressive insults about China, and the “Kung Flu.” When a coworker made a xenophobic comment blaming China for the virus, I could no longer stay silent.

When I reported the incident to my manager, I was met with deafening silence. Days went by before I received an email instructing me to confront my coworker myself, placing the burden of educating others on my shoulders. The regrettably familiar twisted feeling transformed into white-hot rage.

I finally got an apology after I urged my manager to speak to my coworker. But when I left my job, I was aggressively belittled and reduced to tears during an exit interview with the CEO. They accused me of wasting the company’s time and said I was not welcome to return.

Even though I questioned for months whether I did the right thing by speaking up, I now know my experience is something that my younger self wished she could have done. I hope that by sharing my story, I can give strength to those who have or will experience discrimination.