There were so many times in my life where I could have fallen apart. Despite those times I am still here, broken like a glass cup. The little shards are glued together. Functional, but not very pleasing to the eye so to speak. Life was turbulent. And here are the shards of me:
Health and Muscular Dystrophy
Even since childhood. I was born with Becker's Muscular Dystrophy. ( If you don't know what that is, do some fucking research. Google at your fingertips). My parents and family misunderstood me for 10 years. I was made fun of all through middle school and in high school for my lack of stamina and inability to participate in sports. I was self conscious even during an young age because I had huge calves but couldn't play sports. I knew when people were staring at my legs. In the summer time I hated wearing shorts because I could feel the stares of people as if invisible beams from their eyes locked on to my calves. My playground was the hospital waiting room when the other kids played in actual play grounds. Every year I had to go to the hospital for countless checkups, batteries of tests, needles, medicine. Advice from doctors. Even now those tests and exams still continue. I gained weight due to medication that I started taking since 10 and still am taking. I've lost some weight since high school but I still have a round face. I acquired additional health problems due to side effects of the medication and had to take more medication to counter act some of those side effects. And people thought I was fat. They thought I ate too much. They thought I was plain lazy. Even my close friends made fun of me and failed to understand. I joked along to keep save face. But at home I cried. I didn't understand why life was so hard. I became a Christian at an young age and I knew somethings about God or at least I thought I did. But I never understood why I had to suffer so. Do you know what it feels like to run for a few minutes and feel completely drained? walked up hill and drenched in sweat? Muscles cramps and chest pains so intense you have to lay down or sit down for upwards of 30 minutes to recover? The sadness when you are the last pick in any sports games. Kids making fun of you? Oh you fucking won't know. It was hell. I DIDN'T FUCKING ASK FOR ALL THIS. As the saying goes you couldn't walk a mile in my shoes. You couldn't walk a fucking quarter mile in mine before you got too tired or too cramped up. So this happened in high school one day. I felt like I wanted to plop down on the side walk and sit for and hour before I wanted to move. But home was 6 minutes from the bus stop. By minute 3 my legs felt like lead. By minute 4 I was literally dragging my legs and hitting my self so I would move. By minute 5 I've exhausted my water supply. The bottle was fucking empty. Its 85 degrees out. By 5 minutes and 30 seconds I had pains in my chest and couldn't catch my breath. FINALLY by minute 8 I had gotten in side and collapsed on the staircase to the kitchen. Uhhh but wasn't it 6 minutes walk from the bus stop to home? OH WAIT I WAS SO OVERJOYED TO HAVE FINALLY REACHED MY FRONT DOOR I didn't even want to open the door. Cuz inside was a flight of fucking stairs to climb. And did I mention how I hated stairs? They were my worst nightmare. They would drain me faster than the sand in an hourglass with the bottom shot off. After I finally caught my breath, it took me everything I had to drag my ass up a flight of stairs to the kitchen, drink like a camel maybe half a liter of water in 10 seconds and drop like a pile of bricks on to the couch. And then it would take 30 minutes before I can feel my legs again. Another 20 before the chest pains subsided. Another 30 minutes before I could get up off the couch. And then I would be sore all night. I might sound like I am exaggerating and a being an excessive liar but only God can attest to the shit I had to go through.
Oh and a little bonus to this section. I was on a mountain in China once. Walking down the stairs should be easy right? Well after over 1000+ flights I made it to the bottom. My legs shook violently when I got to the bottom and when I sat, I fell down. I couldn't control my legs past my knees. They wouldn't budge. My uncles had to carry me to a restaurant when it came to dinner time. After dinner and back at the hotel, I fell again trying to go up stairs. It took me 2 whole days to gain the ability to walk normally. That was one of the first times where I thought I would never be able to walk again and it scared the shit out of me. But I thank God for that cuz going through that made me the dude I am today.
Family issues and The Walking failure
Many times I thought It'd be better if I didn't exist in the world. Life was hell. I didn't care about people suffering a worse fate in the other parts of the world. I was self centered. My world was bad enough. I'd be lucky if I didn't cry more than a few times a month. (Yes by my standard crying for a dude was unacceptable. My parents enforced that idea over and over again). I resented my parents. I thought my parents were the worst people on the planet. I had anger issues and sometimes they got so bad I thought my head was gonna split. I fought my mom. I cussed them out. They cussed me out. They called me stupid and other very horrible names in Chinese because I was bad at my studies in high school. (Read some of my very early posts from years ago and you'll know how bad it was. I thought my family was a war zone.) Even up until last year, my sophomore year in college they thought I was a walking failure. A disappointment in the family. It had been like that since 7th grade. I lived with the thought that I was a walking failure for 7 years. I became a very pessimistic person. I had nothing to be proud of. Every report card brought more disappoint looks to my parent's face. I could never forget the times my mom said "Son, You disappoint me." I hated my self. I hated them. I hated the world. Like all Asian parent would do to their kids, I got compared to my friends. And my parents would always say why are you so stupid? I remembered they wouldn't let me sleep at night until I finished my fucking algebra homework. I really thought they were assholes. When I couldn't get a problem right after they tried explaining it to me, they would call me stupid, retarded, brain dead, idiot, mush for brains all that shit in Chinese. I kid you not. I wanted to kill my self. My algebra teacher was a cunt too. She was mean and talked to her fish. Sprayed kids with Windex and all that. I hated her and after many years I thought she caused the down fall of my disinterest and subsequent failure in academics. Living with the mentality that you are a walking failure for 7 years during such an important time of a kid's growth will fuck em up for sure. And surely, I am. A fucked up person. I could go on but this might have been one of the most messed up pieces of my life. Its so depressing even I don't want to recall anymore painful memories.
Self consciousness, forever alone status, Identity crisis
This section is pretty fucked up too. Because of my chronic use of meds, I gained a lot of weight. The heaviest I weighed in high school was up to 195. I had a moon face. That is very round and huge double chin. I was aware of that. I thought I was ugly and a fat ass. I thought I didn't really have friends and was very hurt because this one girl joked and said nobody likes me. She doesn't really remember now because it was so long ago but that hurt me really badly. And to this day I'm still single. I still think I am unattractive. Hence the forever alone status. So yeah, I was very self conscious at an young age. I would take pictures at certain angles cuz I thought I wouldn't have an as pronounced double chin. The girls I confessed to in my life all rejected me. By senior year I thought I'm gonna be a hermit when I grow up. Forget the ladies. (Don't you dare for a second think I've had thoughts about turning gay tho!. But I am no a homophobe either. I have gay friends). I thought there is no hope for me and I am the definition of an anti chick magnet. Its a little funny in retrospect. And then I did stupid stuff like tell a whole bus of schoolmates that I liked this girl and yeah, even though we go to the same university, she probably forgot about that episode almost 7 years ago. We don't communicate at all and I've seen her only a handful of times. Whatever. Laugh. Go ahead, i mean this post is where I let off nearly 22 years of frustration so I don't care about what I put in it.
The identity crisis comes in because I couldn't fit in into any social circles. Ever seen Mean Girls? The part where they described the cliques in school? Yeah. I didn't really belong in any. See sometimes I talk funny. I grew up near African Americans and so called "hood" people so I spoke like them. AAVE. Look it up. People called me country, hood, gangsta (I hated that association). Other people thought I was an wanna be gangsta because of my inflections in speech. I was shaped by my environment, I never purposely wanted to sound like that. And I picked it up when I was 10. So for the people that misunderstood me then, yall some assholes sill (JK, I forgive yall ignorant bastards). So I faced an dilemma. I was too "hood" for my Asian friends and my Black friends would never truly accept me. I watched anime, listen to hip hop, played lots of video games, and wore XL white tees. A pretty tacky combination I know. So i never really knew where I was supposed to be. It was an identity crisis that I just resolved. Yes it took me until college to accept myself. And I have God to thank for that as well.
Suicide and Change
Recently, the summer of 2013 things got so bad for me I thought about suicide. I have a post on that so I'm not gonna go into detail. My dad had cancer, I had no direction in college. I stopped Church related activities as well. I picked up drinking and smoking. At least 1 beer a day and a couple of swishers a week. I felt lost and lonely. I thought nobody cared about me and I only have my self to rely on. Fuck everyone else. I'm done relying on people. After the semester ended, I went home. The first weekend I just didn't want to do anything. I didn't do dishes and my parents yelled at me. That triggered my sudden break down. It sounds stupid but the human mind is fragile under stress. That Sunday morning, I wanted to end everything. The darkness consumed me. I took a pair of garden sheers and put it against my wrist. I was so ready to pull that cold blade across my wrist and watch as I died a slow bloody death. But I shook with fear. Something prevented me from doing so. I got scared. I started sobbing uncontrollably. I was an ugly sight. I didn't go to Church that day. It was mothers day. That night was when I started writing on this blog again. Soon after, my friend invited me to CCUC. Chinese Christian Union Church in Chinatown. I was reluctant at first because I was already an Christian and religion didn't help me at all before so I doubt that it was gonna help this time. But something changed in me. The same phenomenon that prevented me from killing myself made me actually call out for help. That night I told my friends what I have been dealing with and they prayed for me. That night was when God sought to lead me back to his pastures. I was a little lamb lost for long enough. That night changed my life. Soon I went to a retreat with CCUC and made new friends. Sharing time brought me new perspectives. For the first time I thought people actually understood me. Like minded people sharing struggles. A community of broken Christians redeemed through Christ. We weren't perfect but God was there for us. We were there for each other. The people I met then are some of the best people God sent my way. I felt blessed and good for the first time in a while. I felt I could trust and depend on people in a very long time. Thank God for that.
Death of a Dear Friend
Just recently, in October of 2013, tragedy struck. A close friend, a girl that I have had a crush on for years passed away. Tragic car accident and I wrote about that too. Go read it if you don't know what happened. I was shaken. My faith was being tested. It was an wake up call for me to never take friends or family for granted. I was in disbelief for many weeks. I couldn't even cry or grieve properly for weeks. I tried to hold it in and comfort others at her funeral but I ignored myself. I was depressed for a while. But God has led me out of that dark time. I miss her everyday of my life. She was a good friend that I thought would be the last person to die in an stupid accident. Its inappropriate to thank God in this context but he taught me a lesson here that contributed to my character.
Dad's Cancer
Just recently, my Dad's cancer turned for the worse. The Doctors stopped treatment. No more chemo. Its like hes waiting for death. He lost weight. He told me his will. Its like he knows his time is very limited.
This fucked me up more than anything else. It was stressing me out. I was losing sleep at night. I have many posts about this so go read those. I don't want to be redundant. Just this weekend I was there visiting him in Chicago. He was as skinny as a starving African Child. I am now really fucking serious. I Saw him and was happy. I smiled and gave him a hug but the longer I stayed in the room, the worst I felt. I freaked out. I lost my appetite. The whole weekend I could not eat right thinking about how skinny he looked. It was killing me so I started writing on my blog again. Its also inappropriate to thank God in this context but he taught me a lesson here that contributed to my character as well, maybe a significant portion.
Current Times and Hope
Up to this point, I've listed so many areas in my life where I am cracked into pieces and fucked up. But God has a way of testing you. That test is suffering. He gave me endurance to carry on. That endurance helped me weather all of these horrible elements and it is slowly paying off. I am finally able to build some character. I don't mean to brag but my friends say I am changing. Maybe becoming a slightly better person? I don't know. But I'm far from perfect. I still fuck up a lot. I still piss off people, make poor choices, alienate people that I really treasure. But as long as you live, you will always make mistakes in life. Big or small. We regret our poor choices. I am constantly being tempted by the Devil. But if God really is your rock he will protect you from temptations, he teaches you lessons from those mistakes and they do make you a better person. Some might deny HIM but change is undeniable. You might think I wrote this for fun and its all an big ole elaborate scheme by some crazy Christian college kid trying to convert people. But seriously. I swear profusely at times. I am anything but a perfect person, let alone a perfect Christian. I have just as many flaws as everyone else, if not more. I just wanted to vent near 22 years of frustrations. I want people to believe even though we go through so much shit, God is there for us. He empowers us to move forward. To keep going when we want to stop. Comfort us when we are sad. Be a light in times of darkness. Don't give up. Not on yourself. Not on your friends. Not on your family. Not on God. As long as the Lord is there, even the worst wrecks can be salvageable. Relying on others is okay. Its human nature. Don't try to solve everything yourself, it won't work. I speak from experience because I've been to some of the darkest parts of "life" and yet here I am encouraging yo ass to not give up. There is hope yet. Just keep praying and believing. If a foul mouthed loser like me is still alive and kicking harder than ever, you can keep going too. After all, when you read about how God changed me, just imagine a giant hand always reaching out to you, when you fall all you need to do is grab it.
Philippians 4:19 - But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.
AMEN.
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