Eggwashed

Growing up, I took whitewashed and internalized it as a term that equaled acceptance. As long as I had molded to the fray, belonged in the space, that word could continue to be tolerable, used both for me and against me.
It's a sad realization knowing that it had stung the whole time, but the thing about stings - the more you endure, you eventually go numb. Sometimes you can't feel them in the first place, and then it's too late. 
Numb, like not being able to talk about it, and not knowing how to push away from it. 
Numb with compliance, docility and resignation. A misplaced acceptance of others shaping a warped version of your sense of self.
Numb to the idea that being anything other than white was an offense; an offense that sorely needed to be prosecuted. 

The numbness is melting away, leaving the feeling of pins and needles that resembles something like regret. 

Whitewashed was and is a way to explain me away. It's appellation of something you don't understand and have no desire to. It's the shallow concept to keep colonization alive - that being white is still prized or elite, or that I should be ashamed, and it doesn't matter which way it leans. It's the pointing of a finger towards a negative perspective of being biracial, and specifically with caucasian parts.
Although that yes, there's the blatant fact that I am half white, it's the decision to use the washing as a way to undermine that I am also Asian.
Whitewashing like it would strip me of everything else of myself, clean of anything that doesn't fit the ideals of those who use it. Washing like you would dishes with soap**, as if it would circle the drain, like exclaiming that part of me belongs to be swept away by the sewers. 
It's a reminder that there has to be an asterisk, a but, an uneducated reasoning behind my identity that your brain can't compute, as if it's something that requires your comprehension and I should care whether or not you get it. It doesn't matter how it's spun, every time I'm told I'm the whitest Asian, or that I don't look Filipino, it begs to question the goal behind the words. I've ought to ask what the angle is. 
It's a recognition for what it is; a lack of depth, left wide open so that I have no choice but to call it out and hand it back to you like musty laundry you refuse to fold. 

There's a new defiance of "whitewashed" that takes hold when I hear it. It is liberation and indignation rising in my chest, at such a rate I have to control it from steam rolling whoever evokes it.

If you choose to call me anything, refer to me as eggwashed, like the kind I use to cook lumpia.
The way it holds together the pale wrapper that envelopes the bold filling, to keep it from coming undone. The way it also becomes golden under heat (and pressure?). 

Eggwashed, sounding like the only appropriate, endearing or truly tolerable term to compliment the halo-halo of it all.

** Colonialism, white supremacy and colorism continues to feed shame in the Philippines, propelling the desire of the use of whitening products to maintain ideals of beauty and status.