It is 2:00 in the morning...

... and I’m sweating like Satan.

Originally written in October 10th, 2009

It’s peculiar, yet fascinating what I’ve come to throughout the years. People like me, doing absolutely nothing on a day like this, on a day that we long for the most. Friday nights.

I just saw the most incredible movie in awhile. American Beauty. Wow. I wanted to see it for a while now, but I never would’ve guessed it’d be so good. So much going on in 2 hours, I’ll need to see it over, and over, and over again, just to get one part of the whole movie.

That’s something not seen anymore in filmography. That’s the thing about the 90s. Things were kicking off. Everything. Film, technology, society, everything, just popping.

I never realized how different I was from the world until maybe after the middle of Freshman year of high school. I noticed 2 different universes:

There’s the people who focused on football and sports, girls and hooters, beer and underage sex, and America and Polo shirts. Self-centered, low esteemed queefs who cant even spell ‘intellectual’ without hinting a guess at what it means.

Then there’s the people who focused on video games and music, relationships and the color black, and Invader Zim and Hot Topic. Questionable and lost souls, who cant seem to find what they are looking for but to see the world cry in tears of blood.

Where do I stand? Where did I stand?

I tried the ‘preppy/jock’ universe for a while. Not only did I not look and act the part, but my family were too boring and low to afford something above one American Eagle shirt.

I tried the ‘emo/goth’ universe about Sophomore year. What a change… to them. The only Asian they knew who hanged tight with them. Interestingly, the ‘emo/goth’ world included the under-appreciated geek. And the random.

Though I can’t call everyone in this clique I found ‘friends’, they didn’t drive me to the floor for hating football. Christ…

Just tomorrow, I’ll hopefully be hanging with a ‘random’ I haven’t seen in months. Since I was rezoned to a new school, new and old things change rather quickly, but in the most wonderful ways.

Lucky me. She calls me a ‘best friend’. At least, I hope she does. I’ve never been called a ‘best friend’ by anyone in my childhood, let alone Anthony Avila in 2^nd grade. I was his only friend.

As far as I see, I’ve become everything I thought I couldn’t be when I was in middle school. Middle school was hell. Cliché enough. But in those rough 4 years of schooling, I couldn’t be anything I am today. A friend, a child so alive, a flirt, a smartass, a liberator, or even a politician.

I’ve changed drastically. And I only figured it out. It’s taking my breath away. It’s just too overwhelming, what I’ve become. I’m so happy with my life now. I’m proud to write that here. ‘I’m happy’.

I also don’t see how lucky I am until I see the rest of the world stop spinning as I myself spin. I only know about 2 people who are as lucky as me. Everyone I know has some of the roughest lives I’ve ever seen. Family issues, relationships, schooling, money, society, even living itself.

Sure, I may not have the best life in comparison to some more than lucky people. But these ‘lucky’ people are seduced by drugs, money, and power they THINK is acquirable like pudding in your hands. But that pudding is dirt. They just don’t see it.

I got 2 adults in the house who could get into arguments on many occasions, but we would still have a Kodak moment maybe once in a week. 2 adults in the house who try to pay the Man as much as they can, yet we can be fortunate on all levels to get most of what we want. Even most of what we yearn for on a Christmas morning.

They don’t smile anymore. They love me. They just don’t know how to show it. I don’t know how to see it, either.

I’m a walking milestone when compared to everyone else. But they’d (the people I see today) laugh anyway and just be ignorant to admit it I’m right. And most girls I would even care a dime about ignore it, and don’t see the happiness and fortune they see before them. Only the fewest people and women have the right mindset to see it.

That’s how it was/is since my first day of school in Puerto Rico.

I don’t mean to gloat my life. It’s impossible. But when you put me on a double-balanced beam, with one side as me, the other side as the world…

- Ant