Story About a Boy

His name is Dirk (yes, that's him in the picture). He went to high school with me. He was two years ahead of me. During my freshman year (2005), around the time Facebook was gaining popularity with high school students, I was the first one (in my school) to publicly display my sexual orientation on my profile. I was the one that guys from school, who were still in the closet, would privately message to confide in and ask questions about "being gay".

I helped him ease his nerves and talk him through his first few dates with a guy. We would chat online way past 2-3am on weeknights; we'd talk about love, life, stories of ourselves, anything that came to mind.

This whole friendship of ours only existed online. He never spoke to me when we passed one another in the hallways. We looked at one another, but our eyes never met. He was the gorgeous in-the-closet upperclassman and I was merely a freshman that nobody knew and everyone ostracized for being gay. Nonetheless, I was satisfied with the secret late conversations we had.

One day, he asked me to meet up, in person. I didn't know what to say. It was so unexpected. Was it a date or us just hanging out? I was afraid. I was ashamed of myself. To be in real, personal contact with a guy I admired from afar and realized I was finally growing feelings for. I was afraid of expecting something from it and being let down in the end. I made up some excuse as to why I couldn't and he said okay.

Our late night conversations continued until finally he said, "Ich liebe dich. Sie machen mich glücklich." I asked him what it meant and he said, "It means 'I love you. You make me happy' in German. :)" At that point, I felt encouraged to perhaps take him up on his offer to meet up, even if it would only come out to be casual meet up rather than a date.

Weeks passed by the time I had gained the courage to ask him. When I did, he asked me for my advice on a guy he really wanted to take out on a date. Night after night I would advise him on how to keep his cool and whether his intended actions were cheesy or romantic. He would tell me about his date ideas such as taking the guy to dinner on top of the John Hancock building, saving up money for each excursion he planned, taking the guy to concerts, etc. I pushed my feelings aside to give him the advice he wanted, but what I felt couldn't be left unnoticed.

Finally, one night, I told him how I felt. I told him that I had grown fond of him. That I wanted to get to know him in person, and perhaps continue our friendship or whatever we had face to face. He told me that he was sorry. He told me that he didn't really know what he was saying back then when he said he loved me because I made him happy. 

I asked him, "What changed?" He said, "I realized I'm only attracted to white guys. Sorry."

The Grass Looked Greener in the Past

This was me no more than two-three years ago. Can you believe it?

Back then, I thought I was fat and ugly. I was ashamed of being surrounded by big groups of people (e.g., parties, eating out, going to the mall) because I was ashamed of being seen. I was ashamed of myself.

I took pictures to compensate for how I perceived myself. I thought that if I could take a few pictures that others would perhaps find attractive, they could convince me that I was attractive. Yes, the pictures I took were nice, but inside I still felt ugly and undeserving. I realized that even if I could change every physical aspect of me, the ugliness I perceived would not change. What I saw was not the problem, but how I saw it.

Now that a few years have passed, the person in the picture seems like a separate entity from me. A person whose attractiveness I can appreciate. I wish I could be that person again. Perhaps I am still this person. Perhaps nothing has changed. I just wish that the beauty I can now see in my past is something I can appreciate in my present self. Maybe, just maybe, in some time, I will look back and appreciate the person sitting in front of this computer. However, I really want to look at myself in the present moment and see the beauty in what is now.

My Own Enemy

Been fighting my own shadow. Once I looked the other way, I had to let it go.

Death

I'm afraid of death. Who isn't, right? It's like a debilitating fear, for me, however.  I've mentioned it before and labeled my situation as "thanatophobia". Should I be labeling it as such? A part of me believes it to be true, but another part of me perhaps just doesn't understand or know how to live...

Whenever I think of death, I find myself saying, "What's the point of it all?" What's the point of building myself up if all that will happen will simply crumble through death? What's the point of loving, attaching myself to others, or even finding what I'm passionate about if such things will inevitably flee from me? It scares me and makes me want nothing more than to crawl into bed and not get up. In a sense, I feel as if I'm trying to fight against death by trying to make sure that death would have nothing to take from me...

Then I realized: I'm giving away my life into the nothingness. Each moment, each passing second, each possibility I don't grasp is a portion of life I'm voluntarily letting go by staying idle.

I'm afraid of death. Everyone is. I don't have a say as to how my life will end... However, I do have control over how my life could be lived. I still don't understand life. Ultimately, I don't understand myself.

Je reviens.

Hello. I'm back. Expect a legitimate blog post from me soon.

Love,
Kenneth

Le Corps

I want to start working out. I want to have a body and self-image I can be proud of. I want to be healthier, feel better physically, emotionally, and cognitively. I want to finally accept my friends' invites to go to the beach. I want to put myself into that perpetuating cycle of taking care of my body/overall-self because it makes me feel good, and where feeling good makes me want to do it even more...

The problem is that I don't know where to start. I don't know what to do to get things started. I want to have a plan, but I don't even know how to develop a plan that would be challenging, but not discouraging. I'm also afraid of looking stupid because honestly, 85% of the challenge for me is the self-doubt I have in succeeding.

Word Vomit

Where have I gone? i don't really know. Why did I stop writing? I guess to get away from myself. Or perhaps from the self I thought I was and no longer wish to be. I stopped writing because it kind of bothered me. I lost my muse. I lost all feelings to write. I didn't stop writing for my sake but for the sake of writing: for the sake of undeserved words, meaningless words, pretentious words, all words. I wanted to get away because I was doing nothing more than holding up a facade. What I wrote, I assumed to feel, but never truly felt with the blisters and bruising of emotion. All that I wrote were speculations and assumptions of what I thought I felt or should have felt. I still feel the presence of these speculations, these hints of emotions, but their strength have faded. Now, life has fallen dull and I no longer feel the desire to write. I have no desire to write until I find my identity once again. I need to find that person with a heart that loves, aches, and hungers for life. That person has fled and all that is left is a shadow. A shadow that thinks of feelings, but no longer feels them. I can longer write until such a person returns. I have hope that such a person will return when the times comes, whenever that may be. Until then, perhaps these words deserve to be kept in reservation.