I think I might have figured out the source of my troubles – depression lately. And in the most Buddhist sense of why I have been depressed my whole life, it’s with the sense of self. This time, it manifested with Rejection.
I was catching up with a friend that I have not seen in a while. We actually knew each other in university. Well, knew of. I was sort of dating his friend when he was just kind of hovering. And so it is kinda funny when I said I was kinda alone and rejected by my community when I was doing my masters, he said “What do you think a chubby gay man feel, just hovering in the background?”. The world is not kind to gay men who look like us.
A lot of my life was with rejection. Rejection for being a geek. Rejection because others are not ready. Rejection – repeatedly – from someone who said they loved me but he didn’t think I was attractive or desirable. There was once in my life that I was desperate, and pathetic, so much so that I resonated with Grey’s Anatomy. Yes, that. “Okay, here it is. Your choice. It’s simple. She or me. And I’m sure she’s really great. But Derek, I love you, in a really, really big – pretend to like your taste in music, let you eat the last piece of cheesecake, hold a radio over my head outside your window – unfortunate way that makes me hate you, love you. So pick me. Choose me. Love me.”
I could be really lazy and said it was all deep-rooted in the way I was brought up. My mom doesn’t tolerate failures in the house. Second place in school? Not the best at the city level? Failed an Olympiad? I faced disappointment and the silent treatment for those, and hence this deep-rooted fear of failures because it’s just rejection. People who don’t succeed get rejected.
I could be a bit less lazy and said it was because I was in the closet for a long time. And being a geeky Asian without access to good hair products, high school wasn’t kind, the undergraduate school wasn’t kind, California was exceptionally wasn’t kind. Internalized racism mixed with internalized homophobia creates this intoxicating mix of self-deprecation and overdrive to perform to not be rejected.
And maybe the reason why staying back in Calgary has stressed me so much in the past months. It’s the rejection. I was rejected, repeatedly, for 6 months when I was trying to look for work here. So any early signs of my work that I’m not getting up to speed fast enough, or that I’m not performing at my self-imposed optimal result, I get really really stressed out about it.
It’s our life here. Let’s watch a movie? No. Let’s go out? No. Let’s spend some time together? No. I drove myself into spiral insanity when my partner would say yes to someone else for the same thing he had said no to me. Insecure. Unreasonable. Needy. All that. And I know it. And rationally I know it’s not fair or healthy or productive, but here it is. And the fact is that (maybe valid) fear and feeling are so often dismissed, it manifests itself as a form of rejection. I was truly hoping a new city, a different place, a more open community will give us a chance to reconnect and do the things we used to love doing together.
Yes, my sense of self-worth and well-being should not be based on the validation of others. And I know this, rationally. Yet, when something so minute and seemingly so irrelevant come up, I could feel a pang in my chest and internally desperately grasp for air.
I wondered to myself what would have happened if I have noticed Zac in the background and if I have tried to be his friend back then. A lot of the best friends I had in life are my rag-tag crew of rejects. Black queer women. Nerdy Asians that failed their parents. Chubby queer men under-represented in the community. Older people make an impact in the increasingly ageist world.
I wondered what would have happened to me if someone had noticed me, picked me, chose me.
Pace Fine Arts 