Do You Really Have Time to Be so Happy?

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Jimmy Dean Young Mrs. Wilson English 1010 September 29th, 2011 Do you really have time to be so unhappy? What great wisdom do you hold true in this world? I’m not a philosopher, and I don’t expect some grand answer. Sometimes it doesn’t need to be grand it just needs to be simple. I believe the most important thing to do in your life is to be happy. Yes, I know I’m only 25 years old, but you deal with a great many things in a life each important in its own moment. One of the more important times of my life was the time spent wearing a mask. This mask was not physical, it was mental. The purpose was to shield the world from whom I really was, and give them the person I thought they would rather see. I wore the mask through my entire childhood and, wasted so much time being depressed worrying what everyone would think of me if they knew who I was. I always knew I was different. Growing up as a boy in an African American family is challenging. You are expected to be over the top masculine never showing weakness over feelings. None of this is particularly easy to do when you are the boy in the corner playing with a ken doll imagining your dream date with him. At this point you can already see that this kid is going to have a few challenges growing up. Actually, you would be amazed to know the boy breezed by for a short time without to many issues. I quickly learned that Ken was not a boy’s toy, and you definitely didn’t go on dates with him. The world around me was very quick to inform me that boys that liked boys where not ok, and if I walked down that road I’d be alone and sad. Though, I being the smart little guy that I was, I decided that no one needed to know that I liked boys. I decided that I could hide it from the world even myself. I hid it with my amazingly wonderful normal boy mask which I would use to become popular, get a
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