2015 was also kind of all over the place. I can barely remember it. Usually it merges with 2016 and 2017 a lot in my mind, probably because I was in such a bad state mentally. Poor me. Starting the year with a court session with my dad who sued me (not getting into it. I love the man), and the big news was I had to go to film school (actually any kind of school). This year was starting with the wrong foot and that foot really stepped on it.
Film school was fun though. I learned a lot of skills that I use even now. I’ll be honest, I was never the best student so my grades were pretty below average. I never said I was the brightest cookie in the jar, just the tastiest. And boy did they get a taste of me. This is where all my anxiety issues were starting to blossom into very melodramatic panic attacks in between classes and sometimes in the middle of a class. The worst one that year happened right before my presentation me and my project partner were not ready for, at all.
First I started feeling a little short of breath and my palms were sweaty and shaking, as I tried to hype myself into “just improvise”, which is what my partner was going to do. I was so worried about looking like an idiot in front of everybody. I couldn’t focus on what my partner was saying to me anymore, it turned into “wa-wa-wa” like in an episode of Peanuts. That’s when I felt it in my chest, slowly rising to my throat which decided to start to contort like a goddam acrobat. Finally it reached my eyes, filling them with water. I barely had enough voice in me to say “I’m sorry” as I stood up and ran out of school. I grabbed the first cab I saw and I went home. I still couldn’t let any sounds out of my mouth because of how much I was choking on my own panic. My mother got worried sick when she saw me, she started asking many questions I couldn’t get a single sound out of me.
What happened?
Did someone hurt you?
Were you robbed?
Is it one of your friends?
“I don’t know” were the first words out of my mouth. I tried my best to describe what had happened to my mother and she didn’t understand what was going on. So I went to the doctor the next day as an emergency. The answer was a short and sweet “you had a panic attack”. This was the start of a very large issue I'm still struggling with until this day. But more on that later. I got medicated for my anxiety but I didn't like the feeling of it, it would leave me so numb. Yes, it took the bad thoughts away, but it also took the good ones. I was just floating around in the nebula of existence.
I stopped taking them because it'd also interfere with my creative process. If I was going to suffer, might as well do it for the art. And boy I did. I struggled with my grades, my sleep, my emotions, my eating habits, my relationships with other people, but at least had great ideas to write about. I was also partying too much. Sleeping around in a desperate attempt to find "the one". I was a mess. That's why I tend to not judge people going through it, especially those in their mid-20s.
I can rescue some good memories from those years though. This guy I met, Joe. I liked him so much, but it was mostly physical, he was tall and beefy, just how I liked them. I could tell he wasn't all that into me, but I loved living in denial. We even went to a Tame Impala concert together which felt like the best night ever. I can barely remember that night though, but I remember the feeling. We'd flirt here and there until eventually, we slept together. After that, we didn't keep in touch much. But nothing new with that, I got used to that being my routine with men I liked.
By 2017 I had mastered the "fake it until you make it", I was doing it with little to no money in my pockets. I was getting my picture taken at every party, event, and opening I attended. I even had people hating me for no reason. I got death threats on dating apps. That last one was actually scary. I lived a very hedonistic life to try and fill that emptiness and ignore the fact that I felt lonely even if I was constantly surrounded by people. I think it's because of how alienated I felt being very queer in a not-so-queer-friendly country.
Of course, there's a small group of people who appreciate the queerness and how well I carry it. I've been called an inspiration and an icon. Before I start sounding conceited I'll jump to THE PICTURE (taken by the amazing Veronica Cerna) that made not only believe all that, but also star feeling comfortable in my own flawed but beautiful skin. The boy from Venus had been reborn, after all my actual name means "born again". How ironic I'd have to be "born again" a couple more times. But at that time I saw myself as an unstoppable force of nature.
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