Danny ChaiOne of those weirdo self-reflectional entries that bore everyone but the writer. Warning.
I don’t think it’s possible to understand who I am without knowing that I’m fundamentally insecure. I dunno, that might be surprising to whoever, but yeah, it pervades a lot of who I am. From like, my love language (words of affirmation) to why I do a lot of what I do, it’s related to that. I think as I’ve grown in my faith and in my personality I’ve become a lot less so, but it’s still there in the core of who I am and it still manifests itself in random ways.
Dunno if you’ve seen the anti-Danny Chai club (SN. Lee Ott recently saw it. Tilden showed it to him, of all people. I find that totally odd. Tilden???) but yeah, like the faq says, there’s history behind it, I was always saying that people hated me in college, and there was a grain of something behind those comments, namely insecurity.
Anyway, some people who are insecure try to curry other people’s favor, they want to be people pleasers. I went a different way, like predeclaring it so in a twisted way it gave me control. What I mean is, like, with saying people hate me, if/when people do hate me, by predeclaring it, it gives me some measure of control, at least over the rejection, if that makes any twisted sense.
I think part of the reason I went around in late high school early college saying I was celibate was because I was convinced that a female would never like me, at least in that way, so by saying I’m celibate, it made being alone my choice rather than my curse.
So yeah, that’s route I took. I didn’t go the people-pleasing route because I believed that people just would not like me, or that those who did would eventually come not to, so there was no point in trying for that, the best I could do was emotional damage control.
Honestly, when I examine myself I still kind of believe that. It’s not that my friends don’t like me, it’s just I believe that in time, they will all come to like other people better than me, so I’m constantly thinking about the best way to make a graceful exit when I get replaced as a friend, not step on any toes. It’d an odd way of thinking, I know, and not particularly healthy, but yeah, I’m just identifying that in me.
I’m not entirely certain why I’m like this. Part of it I think is inherent, like I was super shy as a kid and I think that’s related. A big part of it is, like I’ve written countless times, because I was super skinny. There was one time a friend’s dad asked my mom if I could swim, because I’d go to their place a lot, they had a pool, but I’d never swim. This is in junior high. Reason of course is I hated taking my shirt off and revealing my pencil torso. I remember that because that just kind of summed up a lot about how I felt.
I think another big thing is there weren’t enough Asians in my school when I was growing up, and I completely matched the Asian-male stereotype . smart, completely unathletic, and generally unmasculine. And therefore thoroughly unattractive. There being fewer Asians, the stereotype was reinforced in my mind way more because I fit it and there were no counterexamples. As much as I rail against those schools with tons of Asians, in a lot of ways I wish I went to one, because I think people who went there ended up a bit more secure than me. Even the nerds. If you get enough Asian nerds together, even the nerds can be cool in their little subculture. As I understand it, that’s Whitney in a nutshell.
I’ve only gotten more secure I think after I started hanging out with a bunch of Asians in college. So maybe that is a big part of it, I dunno.
No real point to this at all. Just, even with good friends and the hottest woman in the world who is honestly in love with me, it’s hard to escape lies I’ve held onto most of my life. But God is sovereign.