Proof of Existence - 1

Proof of existence by Bigrice





         Existence - What did you first relate to this word in your brain? This was the topic of a writing competition I saw on the magazine the other day. This topic is so vague yet so deep that took me a while to figure out what EXISTENCE means to me.



Most people can relate words to their emotions(or in other way, words can affect our emotions). To me, this word is gloomy, blue and negative. But I still couldn’t get a picture in my head about what event caused a genuinely optimistic person like myself to tie negative feeling to this word.

I’m homosexual and still me.

I have to admit that this is a topic buried deeply in my mind.As a gay man, I guess many would have come to the moment when they doubted their existence. I had mine when I was about 14 or 15, after my first encounter with another guy. I believe it is more or less related to the identity and acceptance issue. Luckily enough it only took me few months to think through this and accepted the fact that I’m a homosexual and still me.





But yet I knew I can not just yell out to everyone that I’m gay and fabulous. Although now I know this is actually not right to think “I CAN’T” because I believe NO ONE should think this is abnormal. Being a minority is far from being abnormal. Unfortunately, this is an ugly nature of human - Intolerance towards minority.

I’d rather be black than gay because when you are black you don’t have to tell your mother. ~ Charles Pierce, 1980

I was more or less affected by this wrong behaviour from the society. Even though I had accepted my identity as a homosexual at the same time I knew I cannot tell anyone, not even my parents. As an only child, I had to deal with everything by myself, find out what’s right or wrong by myself. I might have a better life’s goal if I had someone to guide me through my teenage life. During the identity period, sometimes I struggled with the fact that I have to perform as someone I knew I’m not. Not a difficult job but just fed up by the fact that I HAVE TO.





I guess this is why people joke about most homosexual being good at lying - we do that all our life! This also made me doubt sometimes about my gay existence. What if my friends find out ? Which existence would they prefer? Although I understand friendship should never be based on sexuality now but this is what stressed me the most back in those days.

Homosexual is a god’s way of insuring the truly gifted ones are not burdened with children. ~ Sam Austin

To this point, I finally remember why I tied negative feeling to this word ‘existence’. I thought most people have a very simple, some say boring life’s plan. Study > Work > Flat,Car,Money > Marry >  Baby > …Yes, Babies. Some people say after you passed away, the only thing that can proves your existence in this world is your children. I worried about this more because I’m an only child, also a Chinese man.





As an only child, being gay is the last thing most Chinese parents want to know. They expect their son to have a child that carries the family name to the xxx generation. Imagine if there were a gay king in the old Chinese kingdom, how he dealt with 3000 women in the palace. OK, bit far from the topic but that might be the reason I choosed to bury this deep. Because I don’t want to think about what if my existence will be forgotten.





Don’t get me wrong, I have no complain about my family and friends. These are just some random thoughts,doubts I came across with over the years. Recently, I have a totally different yet interesting interpretation about the reason of having a child , I will talk about this on Existence II.

                                                    - TBC-