Saturday, September 1, 2012

The Moment I Remembered I Was Awesome

      In between the time of my last post and this post I've been through a number of things that have really occupied my life in a wonderfully busy way. With being a counselor for two summer camps, meeting up with old friends, moving to an actual house instead of an apartment, and starting  life as a graduate student, it's been an eventful rollercoaster ride. It's interesting that I feel that I've grown up in a few ways that I just noticed a while ago. It's a combination of being more confident in myself, more eager to work towards my goals, and a better idea of what I'm going to do with my life. At the same time, I still a sloppy mess. It's great. And I've had ample chances to be even more of a sloppy mess too. I'm still a big kid inside an awkward Asian guy's body. Except I'm supposed to be an adult now. More adventure for me, I guess.
      One thing of note I do want to say is that being a gay/bi guy in central Texas or wherever I am is rough sometimes. Rough in the sense that it sucks not being able to find a decent guy around it seems who mutually establishes the connection I want with him, but not because I like dudes. If anything, liking dudes and having my circle of friends know about it really isn't the issue. It got me down so much that any random punk on Grindr could bring me down. The breaking point came when I tried Grindr again and quickly found out why I left it in the first place. To be honest, all of this dating, finding a guy, online dating, and whatever had always felt meat market-y and disillusioning. Over time, those feelings built up, and had been for a while, and at that moment they boiled over. I quickly spiraled into a pity party reserved for one. Cue Adele singing in the background about love gone sour and me shedding a tear or two about why no one loved me. But no really, jokes aside this actually happened. That day was turning out to be really awful it seemed. After a day or two of being in a rut, I decided I needed to get myself out of this. I got a haircut, changed into some nicer clothes, and felt a little better because I felt that I looked good. A little while later I went out with some friends and got a few compliments from the ladies. This made me feel a little better.Time does eventually heal all wounds and I felt I was well on my way. I'd lick my wounds and keep on walking. However, sometimes, life throws you a bone. And when I say bone, I really mean a hand-held chainsaw.
     After the partial success of getting out of the hole I was in, I went back home to my parents. It was great. They gave me chores that they themselves couldn't do like carry heavy things and other mundane tasks. However, one thing that did stand out was some yard work I had to tackle mostly on my own. A storm had come in and large portions of our backyard trees were torn asunder. It would have been a cumbersome and labor intensive task to clear the mess I was tasked with cleaning, except for the fact that my dad handed me a hand-held chainsaw to use as I pleased. I had never used a chainsaw before but before long I got the gist of it. I was still in my nice clothes from the night before except now I was sweating like a man as I ripped through huge branches and brush. It was fun. I can't say I've had better times doing chores before. Wood chips were flying, woodland creatures were fleeing, and I felt I was giving mother nature the finger every time I cut up those branches like butter. I thought, not only did I look good in my nice clothes and haircut, I was gaining a nice bundle of man points with my chainsaw. And before long I realized something-I was awesome. At that moment, I felt like a badass. I was Big Pappa Smurf. I was King of this Mother F&#king Jungle. I was thinking, all those punks on Grindr were probably jerking off at home and was I doing? Using a chainsaw to chop Mother Nature down to size. Literally. Hell yeah. And I also realized that maybe, all along, I've always been awesome and that I didn't need anyone to dictate my personal worth or desirability. And finding that out was in itself, really awesome. To set the record straight, I don't like to toot my own horn and I try to keep myself humble. But sometimes, you just really need moments like these. So I guess the moral of this story is that when life gives you lemons, use a hand-held chainsaw to F&*K those lemons up. Because you're better than those lemons anyway. Hell Yeah. America. 

-C.C.