I Am Different. I am different?

Back in 2003 or 2004 when I was still in Victoria School, I found myself to be the butt of alot of jokes. As if it wasn't enough that I was plump and behaved in a somewhat weird, gay-ish fashion, my chemistry teacher became the catalyst to bring me into the screeching world of opera. And unabashedly I would sing to myself soprano pieces as in transit between classes, along the corridors... actually, alot of coloratura soprano pieces, which for the everyman I suppose could be translated to 'advanced soprano', what with ridiculously high notes I was surprised I managed to hit without screaming the fuck out of myself, and trills and spills and all the crazy ornamentations and embellishments that simply spelt G-O-D-L-I-K-E.

Use your diaphrrragm, your diaphrrrragm!, they say.

As such, I was not at all surprised to have people make jokes and laugh at me in my face. In fact, I rather relished the fact that I was somewhat in a class of my own. In the student body there were less people who cared about opera than the fingers on my hands (maybe even one hand), and of these, there was only one other person who would actually sing opera like I did (he was quite a splendid tenor though... never had to use falsetto, unlike me who sang soprano because my tenor CMI), and that was my classmate and friend Bryan. I wouldn't really take the choir guys into consideration... anyway from what I heard from my classmate who was the choir chairman, the lower sec soprano boys were cringingly airy, unlike the rich voice I managed to at least fake (the things I did would have taken a true-trained opera singer a decade and a half to master).

And so thus the 5 or less of us with the common passion for the arts --song, literature, theatre-- would come together and meet out of school either for events, or simply just for a chat and some mindless fun. We would laugh and revel in the fact that we were different from all the rest of the school, that bunch of testosterone-driven violent brutes who knew nothing of the lofty heights of the fine arts. I was happy, at least.

When I came to SIM/UB, I vowed to myself to take full advantage of the fresh, new environment to not be such a misfit (the jokes and laughter do get tiring after awhile). And that I managed to do, sometimes at the expense of others. But now that two years have passed, I look at myself, and what do I find but a person terribly insecure about himself. Worrying if friends are pissed at me for something I don't know just because I don't hear from them for awhile, worried if I'm saying things that make me sound stupid, or selfish, or an asshole, worried about things I never thought about back then.

What's happened to me? Perhaps this is the real me, and back in VS my numbness to all that teasing made me feel alright about myself. Or maybe I just got so concerned about myself, how I look talk walk dress... maybe I lost my sense of self.

Well it's time to regain it.