by_myslf
By Bryce Matsuda | He/Him/His
August 15, 2020
What do I do to ignore them behind me?
Do I follow my instincts blindly?
Do I hide my pride from these bad dreams
And give in to sad thoughts that are maddening?
Do I sit here and try to stand it?
Or do I try to catch them red-handed?
Do I trust some and get fooled by phoniness?
Or do I trust nobody and live in loneliness?
Because I can't hold on when I'm stretched so thin
I make the right moves, but I'm lost within
I put on my daily facade, but then
I just end up getting hurt again by myself
Yeah, I ask why
But in my mind I find
I can't rely on myself
I can't look around
It's too much to take in
I can't hold back
When I'm stretched so thin
I can't slow down
Watching everything spin
I can't look back
Starting over again
If I turn my back, I'm defenseless
And to go blindly seems senseless
If I hide my pride and let it all go on
Then they'll take from me 'til everything is gone
If I let them go, I'll be outdone
But if I try to catch them, I'll be outrun
If I'm killed by the questions like a cancer
Then I'll be buried in the silence of the answer by myself
Yeah, I ask why
But in my mind I find
I can't rely on myself
I can't look around
It's too much to take in
I can't hold back
When I'm stretched so thin
I can't slow down
Watching everything spin
I can't look back
Starting over again
Don't you know
I can't tell you how to make it right
No matter what I do, how hard I try
I can't seem to convince myself why
I'm stuck on the outside
As someone who was born and raised in Hawaii, a state with a majority Asian population, I probably will never know what it’s like to grow up as the rare Asian kid in school, but I do know that being raised in a “culturally diverse” community where a lot of people share practically the same ethnicity, generation, and culture as you doesn’t make you any less immune from suffering.
Looking through old preschool and elementary school yearbooks, you would’ve never imagined today that I was the outgoing one that wanted to be the center of attention. I have no idea where that energy came from, despite my parents claiming I was a pretty quiet toddler. Who knows, maybe it was just childhood innocence or something. For the first few years of my educational journey, I was a pretty curious, cheerful and energetic lad. After finishing third grade, I moved to a new Christian private school and I would remain there until graduating high school. My previous schools were actually all Christian too, but this is where things took a noticeable shift in my life. I'm not sure if it was because I was the new kid, I sometimes cried a lot, or did really childish things at times, but as soon as I got there, I was immediately targeted and for being picked on occasionally by some of my classmates. None of it had to do with race, in fact some of the worst offenders throughout my life were the same ethnicity as me, but a lot of it was for really petty things. I don’t know, maybe it was just a kids being kids thing. Thankfully, some of them would stop altogether after a scolding or two, and life would be good again. But then it started to pick up really bad around middle school when my “friends” at the time started picking on me. Maybe they thought I was weird. Maybe it was because I didn’t listen to the same music, play the same video games, or watch the same TV shows as everyone else. Maybe it was because my voice hit puberty later than others so it sounded like I was mumbling at times. Maybe it was just typical youth adolescence kicking in. Whatever the case, it got to the point where more people in my class joined in. Then it spread to a couple of people in the grades above and below me. Then it got physical. Then it got to a point where my stuff would get stolen. Then it somehow spread to extra-curricular activities outside of school. I tried everything, from avoiding them, calling them out, trying to be compassionate to them, trying to fight back, ignoring them, but nothing seemed to work. Teachers and parents stepped in at times, bless their hearts, but there's only so much scolding and detention can do. It also turns out some kids are just really good at lying or apologizing and getting away with it.
会って「ごめん」って返さないでね
形のない言葉は いらないから
会って「ごめん」って返さないでね
「疑うだけの 僕をどうして?」
救いきれない 嘘はいらないから
I don't want your apologies
Because I do not need empty words
"Why do you doubt me?"
Because I do not need lies that cannot be saved
- from the song “秒針を噛む”(Bite The Second Hand) by ずっと真夜中でいいのに。(Zutto Mayonaka de Ii no ni.)
At the peak of it all around freshman year of high school or so, I felt like I was alone in the world. I tried hanging out more with other classmates, but nothing seemed to click, or I was just laughed at. I started to feel like I had no one to trust in, not even myself. While I don’t believe I became socially anxious or depressed, my self-esteem definitely took a major blow. I became a lot more quiet, and would cautiously limit the words I said out loud for fear it would be turned against me. Songs like the Linkin Park one shown above and other loud, angry, or sad music became constant anthems in my life. The library and computer soon became my shelter outside of class. If it wasn't the library, then it was any classroom where I could just be left alone. At assemblies or chapels, I would usually sit by myself with a slight gap separating me from the next person. I was never really invited to hang out outside of school besides the few club events I was in, but why did it matter though, when the computer and Internet had everything I wanted? At one point, I thought about wanting to transfer to another school altogether. Thankfully, my thoughts didn't go anywhere beyond that, towards much more darker thoughts and actions, but looking back at it now, they definitely had the potential to do so. The thing is, my school would have weekly chapels and yearly camps. Sometimes there would be these moments where we’d all gather around a campfire or a big circle, and we’d sing songs, pray for each other, sometimes cry, make testimonials promising to be compassionate towards one other, and all that, which would last for all around about two weeks or so before the bullying continued like nothing had changed. I just remember being so frustrated at the time considering how much I was going through, I wrote an entire rant about it as part of an English class essay, which has long since been lost. I wish I still had it with me. I just remembered thinking that if years and years of Christian education, praying, reading the Bible, chapels, camps, and whatnot with messages about always loving one another and “Jesus loves you and every one of us” didn't make some people be just a little bit more compassionate towards others, I'm not sure what would.
Starting around maybe my sophomore year, I don’t remember exactly when, I started taking the public transit bus home from school because one of the routes from school passed directly near my house. This route also passed by the local public middle school and high school in my hometown along the way. Naturally, being a nerdy-looking private school kid, this made me a prime target for local Hawaii kids that were looking to pester someone on the way home. One of those days, I had my iPod Touch out and was listening to music. One of these kids asked if they could see it. Being the totally naive person I was, I gave it to them thinking she was just trying to be friendly and would eventually give it back. She jokingly tossed it around to her other friends, before running off the bus with her friends and my iPod, never to be seen again. I will never forget what happened afterwards. I remember the ominous silence and nonchalance from the other passengers, the immediate panic that set in, waiting way too long to tell the bus driver about it, the bus driver saying there was nothing he could really do about it, getting off the bus a few stops early and having my mom pick me up because I couldn't handle my emotions anymore, and the police officer who came by trying to show some empathy towards a sheltered Christian school kid who clearly just had his view of the world shattered into a million pieces. I didn’t have a dry eye for the rest of the night. I still remember the following day at school where I just blankly stared ahead every class, still in shock at what happened.
Thankfully, my life and mental health got much better after that, and hasn’t really gone down to that low of a level since then. The people that picked on me either moved to other schools or completely stopped doing it altogether after realizing that maybe they were being a little too harsh and that I was a decent person to hang out with. I started reconnecting and hanging out with old friends that I had grown distant with in the past. Life became a lot more positive than before. That being said, the memories of the past were still fresh in my mind, and I started to become more cautious of who to put my trust in from that point onward. Ultimately due to this and some other non-related incidents in my life afterwards, I made the personal decision to walk away from Christianity altogether soon after graduating high school. (To my Christian friends and teachers that happen to be reading this, I still love y’all.) I guess I could’ve also considered myself Buddhist (Christian-Buddhist?) at the time by way of attending a couple of special family services, funerals and anniversary services, Obon services, and Bon Odoris, but I never attended Sunday services regularly, nor attended a Dharma School, nor participated in a YBA program either. I mean I’d probably fail, and still fail today, the pop quizzes that are sent through the Seattle Betsuin email newsletter. So I suppose that made me Buddhist-ish? Who knows, but I digress.
The iPod Touch incident didn’t stop me from using the bus as my primary form of transportation while in Hawaii and even today living in Seattle, though my guard around my personal belongings is much higher now. Since then, I have taken buses that pass through downtown cities, small towns, very nice neighborhoods, and very bad neighborhoods. I have taken the bus in the early morning, morning, afternoon, evening, and the dead of midnight. Most of the time nothing out of the ordinary happens, but when something crazy happens, believe me I have been there. I have been witness to or involved in nearly every sort of situation you can think of from every single walk of life. Arguments, fights, drunk people, drugs, theft, blaring music, yelling obscene or racist remarks at everyone, happy old ladies turning angry in a blink of an eye, you name it. I suppose it’s one of those things you become accustomed to after awhile. Continually being on the Internet in a time before the web and social media really took off like it is today also ended up exposing me to everything the world had to offer. And by that I mean I have seen everything, from the very happy, innocent parts, to the very...let’s just say, not so happy, innocent parts. (Sorry, Mom. I’m fine, I promise.)
All of these moments in my life made me realize that there are a lot of things education simply does not prepare you for. While there are plenty of good people in the world with good intentions, there will always be people out there in the world, no matter what ethnicity or race or gender they are, that will find some reason to hate you, look down on you, or do harm to you or your loved ones. No amount of words, actions or education will change them. You could be compassionate to them, give them everything they want, read all the books, watch all the videos, sign all the petitions, share all the things on social media, donate to all of the charities, have all of the conversations, shame them all you want, do what they tell you, and it will never be enough. It doesn’t matter what race you are, what gender you are, what religion you practice, how much you love the world, how old you are, or which political party you support or don’t support. It will never be enough. They might be nice at first, but in reality they will never accept you. They want nothing more but have some sort of power over you or want you dead. I think that is the unfortunate reality of suffering. I know it sounds harsh, but once you’ve personally experienced or seen a lot of negative lies, betrayals, rejections, and hurt coming from “good” people and “bad” people, you’re able to tell the difference between someone who is good and someone who wants to impose suffering on others for their own good. As you grow older in the real world, you realize some things in life just aren’t worth the time and energy lest you risk further damaging your own health. Nonetheless, it is through these sufferings that sometimes positive change can come from it in the end. I mean Siddhartha Gautama, after leaving the palace and seeing the suffering in the outside world, for all we know, could have stayed inside the palace for the rest of his life free from harm and trauma and with all the luxury he ever wanted, but it was through his journey afterwards through adversity and suffering that he then became enlightened, which is why we have Buddhism today. I think without the sufferings I experienced early on in my life, I wouldn’t have been able to become the humble person who I am today, and learn not to subject others to what I went through.
Buddhism mentions that there are 84,000 paths to enlightenment. I know that there is a lot is going on in the world right now, but please be mindful of what you say or think about others, either online or offline. I know some of us may have not gone through the same hardships as others, but just because someone is not on the path you or others are on, doesn’t exactly mean you should shame them for being on the wrong path. By all means they could very well be on one of the other remaining 83,999 ones, and some of them may have more mental or physical scars, bruises, and bandages on them than others.
“It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life.”
- Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek: The Next Generation
