I have this enormous anxiety being here and I can't really define it's origin. I've been looking through my Facebook page, amazed to have it back and browsing all the people who have come in and out of my life throughout the years. I really have been gone for almost four years now.
Things have changed. Nothing major. My closest friends are still close. Old lovers who truly cared still truly care. But some people have woven me out of their lives. For some, I am a vague memory of this kid who used to live here. And I wonder what my life would be like if I hadn't left.
Would I have fixed the issues I had? Would I still walk into a bar and feel like the ugliest person there?
In Shanghai, I've learned to get past all my drama... but I'm starting to feel more like I haven't gotten over my self-esteem problems as much as I have distanced myself from the source.
I've never been able to fit in with the gay crowds here. Theatre Rice was the first place that I really felt comfortable with myself, until more gay guys started joining.
So what's the deal here? I look at some of these people and I feel like a monster around them. Awkward, limping with boils and slime oozing out of my pores. Did heartbreak and rejection leave me to feel like less of a man?
I lost myself in California, and coming back makes me feel just as lost. For as much life as I have restored, recreated and reinvented in China, there is the part of me that exists here in LA, barely existing at all.
