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On Living Loud

Dante Mesa
Jul 28, 2017 · 7 min read

I’ve never been a quiet child. From my personality to the truth that drips from my lips. I’ve been exuberant. My presence is known and when I enter a room I take up space [On purpose].

I’ve never been the kind of person who liked to shrink himself to make others feel large. I don’t put myself into elegant little boxes for people to make sense of. It’s never been a priority of mine to sit back and look pretty so people can admire my ability to belong. I don’t belong and that is no longer a burden of mine, but a celebration.

I used to view the concept of not fitting as a tragedy. Because of the pain it brought. Because of the loneliness it lead me to endure. It took me a while to start looking at it as a blessing of difference. I am not like anyone around me, in fact I pride myself in being so different that you are sure to never meet my duplicate. No one can replace me in any form. I live loud. I live weird. I live different.

I am not your tragedy.

I am a fire. I am rage when my identities are threatened. I am passion when I am loved. I am scorching when I am intimate. As a fire licks and renews everything in its path. I too blaze through these environments with an echo that is not forgotten with ease.

Some look at fire as a destructive force. Anything can be destructive with the right eye. To me its a restorative entity that leaves behind the chance for renewal. The ashes are fertile soil in which seeds of growth and change can be planted and nurtured.

I live loud because I am unafraid of what others might say. I was not born with the intention to please, perform, or perfect. I was born that I might shake mountains. I was born with an insatiable thirst to fashion my craft into a career. I was molded with the tenacity to be f#$)ing destructive towards my barriers and the things that attempt to hold me back. At every turn, at every corner, at every high there is someone — a group of people ready to sling you back down to their valley. But it only works if you forget how to climb.

I remember making a post about how I was shooting for a 250 on my USMLE Step 1 examination. Back then I had doubts, I thought to myself, You’re not smart enough to get that. You aren’t as good as these other people.

But despite my doubts. Despite my fears of failure. Despite the barriers [and people] who tried to stand in my way I succeeded. I wrote down the score I wanted to get. I put it into my pocket, and I prayed about it constantly. I carried that piece of paper with me everywhere I went.

God proved to me yet again that he is with me. Because I opened that score report about a month from this date and I saw that I had scored beyond my goal of 250. My heart was pounding in my chest and I laid down on the on call bed and I cried. I cried because I was in disbelief that I had done what I set out to do. I cried because I’ve put up with a lot of shit and a lot of malicious people to get that score. I cried because the environments I have had to operate in [In this current space] have been malignant. I cried because I never thought I’d get there based on how I performed in undergrad. People kept telling me that your MCAT score correlates to your STEP score.

I thought to myself: I’ll be damned if I don’t prove that I am in this career for a reason and that God is with me.

Then I yelled in excitement and praised God for how great he is to me. I lived loud that day.

I live loud because people have always tried to stifle the voice I’ve carried within. From the man who raped me to the people I told after the fact to colleagues who have attempted to shame me into silence. People run around with their masking tape ready to pounce at the slightest opening of my mouth. I’ve never been a quiet boy.

“You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.” — Anne Lamott

I’ve reflected on this quote often, because it highlights the fundamental concept that we are story tellers. As human beings it is in our DNA to tell our stories. So we should not be silenced when we speak our truths. Our truths because they belong to the people who live them out and not the people who observe them.

I live loud. Because I speak up when there are injustices afflicted against my person and the identities I hold. I have been subject to rumors and speech centered around Hate and Homophobia for years. People may not look at it that way but when your sanity is coupled with rumors of obsessions and infatuations with someone of the same sex that drives you to psychosis — there is no clearer picture. Disguise it in sheeps clothing if you must, but the wolf is spotted with ease.

I find it disturbing that people couple mental health status and sexuality. As if the two tango intimate enough to beget each other.

I am loud. Because I am unapologetic for living the life that I do [Demi, Sorry Not Sorry]. I do not wear badges of tears for expressing myself as I see fit. I do not live in regret for the decisions I make or the roads I tread. I don’t look back at the past longing for different outcomes because I have been carved with an intimacy that few know and few experience. My love is too magic to have thrown back on my face.

I am loud. Because I defend my identities though often I shouldn’t have to. I don’t have to defend who I love, how I live, how successful I am or am not. I don’t have to provide evidence as to what I believe, why I believe it, and how I came to believe it. I don’t have to convince a jury to be accepting of the things I do because I am human. Room is made for error and mistakes are stepping stones to greater moments.

My growing pains are not unnoticed. There are ways in which I learn through fire to grow. Ways in which I learn that sometimes living loud is paid with a price of biting one’s tongue. Ways in which living loud isn’t always accomplished with words, but sometimes with actions. Living loud is being present, being known. Living loud is about showing up for what’s important. And I still have room for growth.

Growth Hurts — Cody Keith Charles

Another phrase; words I hear as if he is speaking them to me for the first time. While handing me a cup of coffee and hugging my fragile existence [At times] reminding me that while painful we must continue to grow.

As I continue to traverse the roads of life. Blazing my way up to heaven, I can’t promise to live to anyone’s liking. I can only promise to be authentic to myself. I can only promise that I will live my best life when possible. That I will be a bomb Anesthesiologist. That I will make impacts and change lives of people [Even those who are watching from the sidelines].

Those who know my friendship know my ferocity. They know how deep my love is for them. They know that I am willing to show up in any circumstance for the ones I love. I do not love people by halves as Jane Austen says.

There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.

If you’ve stuck with me this long you might be wondering why I wrote this post. What it’s connection is to my existence.

I am LIVING. Thats why. Because I have been struck with a surge of awareness that life is too short to live by others imposed notions who I meant to be.

I am meant to be me. Whole and Unapologetic. Real and Raw. Authentic and Vulnerable. I am meant to explore the complexities of life and human nature. I am meant to craft medicine into a passion that invigorates and vibrates the atoms of my existence. I am designed for love and for heartbreak. I am created for joy and I belong with the misfits, outcasts, and weird kids because I will never be put into boxes for convenience of ease and space. Thats not just me.

On that note, I am dating one of the most amazing guys I have ever met. Something new for me. I’ve always been open to the idea [sort of] but tentative to try because of fear, because of judgement, because in some spaces its still an unsafe identity to hold. But I’m not sure what identity I do hold with regards to this. As someone once put it to to me, “If you lined up 10 guys and 10 girls I’d be attracted to 6 guys and 4 girls.”

I like semi-abstract concepts like this because they make sense when you can’t quite constellate your star filled thoughts. Mine might be more balanced at 5 and 5 or perhaps 6 girls and 4 guys. I am not sure, but all I know is that I just am living and my goals in doing that are to Love God, Myself, and Others.

I. Am. Living.

And I’m enjoying every minute of every day knowing that life, while intense and rough at times, is worth every stolen moment. And at times I don’t have to live [as loud] I just have to be as I am.

That is to say, that I am enough.

Who Broke Your Heart?

Exploring the complexities of life, love, masculinity, and vulnerability one empty coffee cup at a time

Dante Mesa

Written by

Who Broke Your Heart?

Exploring the complexities of life, love, masculinity, and vulnerability one empty coffee cup at a time

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