Happy Days

My birthday was last Sunday. Although I’m now the ripe age of 23, I can’t help but feel like a wee little school girl ready to embark on the path of womanly pleasures… armed with sultry curves and pheromones. I’m a transvestite in the making. Nevertheless, getting another year older has surprisingly been accepted with open legs. This could be in part that I celebrated the BIG B-DAY in Tokyo, or, I’m just beginning to feel comfortable in my own skin.

I thought I was going to kill myself on my 21st birthday. Merely two years ago I suffered a bout with depression, occassionally tracing the thin, blue lines on my wrist with an X-acto knife. Days prior to my birthday, I toyed with the idea of pressing harder, ending torturous months of loneliness, emptiness, and paralyzing hopelessness. Luckily on the eve of my 21st birthday I was poisoned by a Mexican eatery.

The night before the big 21, I ate a chicken enchilada at “Chano’s” kiosk located beside the beloved campus of USC on a ghetto-fabolous street, otherwise known as Figueroa. I woke up 5am my birthday morning to find myself bowing to the porcelin god and spewing refried beans, sour cream, and chicken bits. Barf. For the next eight hours I was chucking every hour on the hour – projectile vomitous erupting from my mouth and nostrils like a congested camel in heat. Needless to say, I wasn’t in the state to kill myself.

I figured that this food poisoning was a blessing in disguise. If I wasn’t poisoned, I’d probably have died by either: 1. the hands of my X-acto knife; or 2. exploding from alcohol. As most Asian’s know, we lack an enzyme (specifically alcohol dehydrogenase) that breaks alcohol down properly, causing one to appear like they’re dying, or ready to spontaneously combust. This phenomenon is commonly known as “Asian blush/glow.” It’s an allergic reaction to alcohol. Therefore, if I had partaken in what usually occurs on a 21st birthday – binge drinkin’ debauchery – my liver would have probaby begun to bleed. Therefore, the South of the Border cuisine was an early birthday gift; I made it past my 21st birthday not dead.

Six months after my birthday, with the help of a good friend and a great counselor, the hazy, depressive veil that covered my eyes had finally been lifted. A year and a half later, I feel like I’ve grown well into my own skin.

There’s a sense of peace that I have turning 23. I no longer feel the 22 “in limbo” what-the-hell-am-I-gonna-do-with-my-life age. Sure, I still have no idea what I’m going to do and where I’m going, but istead of working myself to an ulcer, I’ve come to accept the things I don’t have complete control over. Moreover, there’s a better understanding in regards to my normalcy, insecurities, and existance on this planet. With that understanding, there’s a sense of quiet confidence. Perhaps all this optimism is due in part to my epiphany that I wrote about in my last entry. Or maybe it has been taking a year out and living in rural Japan the past 9 months. Or maybe it’s swallowing and digesting what Life has given me so far. Whatever it is, I’m able to look at the long road ahead of me, filled with childlike excitement to take the world head on; I’m happy to be alive.

For those who’ve battled clinical depression are aware that “hopelessness” is a huge weight which can lead one to do what they may do. Those who are currently suffering from depression may take this “testimony” and tell me to shove it up my rectum. Sure, I’ll do that… but what I’ve come to realize is that much of humanity is linked by this thought or idea of loneliness, when, in reality, we’re sharing a lot of these feelings than we let on. There’s probably somone you know who is going through the exact same thing, but masks those feelings with, say, Max Factor or Armani Gio. If you ever find yourself completely lost, there’s always at least one unbeaten path leading towards hope. Sometimes you just need one listening ear and a little bit of help to point you in the right direction.

In other words, don’t kill yourself. Two years later you could possibly be the happiest kid on earth.

I’m not the one to say that I’ll never relapse into the same self-depricating hole two years from now. Hell, 6 months from now I could very well take a butcher knife to my own wrist. Life is unpredictable. That is what makes it frustrating yet tittilating at the same time. If anything, I believe that one can find happiness by pursuing that of which makes one happy. It can be that easy sometimes. This could be jerking off, kicking puppies, or taking on the world with whatever. All ones needs is just a smidgen of hope, a listening ear, and some confidence.

So, for a melodramatic ending, Happy Day. Happy Birthday to those who are living and are continuing to live throuhg peace, pessimism, and pain. Happy Birthday to those whose wished have or haven’t been granted on that cake of theirs. Happy Birthday to you, to me, and to all those wee school girls (and boys) ready to embark on that path of womanly pleasures… otherwise known as life.