The Last Time I Cried

The last time I cried, I was sobbing so hard. On and on the tears kept swelling up against my will. I choked on my breath. Taking a deep breath, a hiccup, a breath, a hiccup, I gradually soothed my breath. I wiped the tear off my face, and felt the warmness trickle along my fingers. In a wet, sporadic voice, I managed to mutter, ‘I got second place at the school’.

The last time I remember crying was when I realized that I wasn’t the smartest kid in the room. Pathetic, perhaps, but you must understand: all my life, since pre-school, I had been accustomed to the role as ‘the guy who knows’. When anyone had a question, they had to come to me, and beg for my wisdom. Oh, the joy. It felt, by explaining why 69+73 was 142, not 132, as if I held the key to the world of answers, a nirvana for my elevated soul. But when I graduated my elementary school and enrolled middle school, I met a different world.

 Naturally, I assumed that people would come and ask me whatever they had trouble understanding. Strangely, after days and days, no one came. Then one day, someone entered the classroom with a piece of paper hanging on their hands, half-solved. I could just see it. That look, that posture- that guy was going to ask me something! In fact, he did start coming toward me……then started asking questions to a girl across the aisle. I was aghast. How could that guy choose her over me? ‘I will show them who’s the boss,’ I thought. On my first midterm at the middle school, I perused through each page and memorized every detail. As I came out of the test room, I smirked confidently. Now I could go back to being myself, the guy who knows.

When I got my first report card back, therefore, I couldn’t believe my eyes. It had a ‘2’ on the class-rank. In total, there were about 15 people in the school ‘smarter’ than I was! Impossible! I felt an emptiness that I’ve never known before. It felt as if someone had gauged out my inner parts and filled it with hot, humid gas.

I wasn’t that upset for losing the first-rank. Well, that might have played a part, but the major part of my loss was the loss of my identity. What would I ever be if I wasn’t the guy who knew? It felt as if a huge part that defined me was suddenly gone. It left me in desolation. Looking back, I can remember the moments with still some pain, but with nonetheless a bit of humor from the striking irony. How could I have been so dumb enough to assume that I was the smartest person?

 That was not the last time I lost a part of what defined me. I ended up as the ‘English guy’ at my middle school, only to lose it to the Yankees in KMLA. I was the ‘cello guy’ in my middle school, only to lose it to the more expert players in my orchestra. I know that it would be a lie if I said that these ‘losses’ no longer hurts. It hurts to have something that you were proud of taken away by someone else. It sucks to seemingly be left with nothing that differentiates you from the others because in the end, everyone wants to be special. But I also know that just longing to be special means nothing. As I earned my uniqueness of ‘English guy’ and ‘cello guy’, I have to hone my skills and look for things that can define me, rather than cry and feel sorry. This is what kept me through the seemingly perpetual displays of superiorities that others possessed. This is what kept my eyes dry since the last time I cried.