I was talk­ing to Eugene, or Yoog as I used to call him, the oth­er day after hav­ing no con­tact with him for over a decade. It was good to rem­i­nisce about the good times we had so long ago, me going to Australia for the first time to meet a friend of my moth­ers’, and him com­ing to vis­it from Australia, to stay with me.

It was odd to hear that I affect­ed his deci­sion to shift the focus of his card col­lec­tion to base­ball, as odd as it was to find out that one of my ex’s would scream my name in her mind while mas­tur­bat­ing.

I’m sur­prised, aston­ished, at how much influ­ence I could ever have on any­one. I still can’t believe it, since a card col­lec­tion can be such a sig­nif­i­cant part of a young boys life, and unat­trac­tive Chinese guys aren’t gen­er­al­ly the object of any­ones’ fan­ta­sy.

The more I think about it though, the more I real­ize all the lit­tle things that I’ve done to affect peo­ple, whether it’s some­one’s choice of uni­ver­si­ty (which, I feel, is no small deci­sion), or how I could ever bring some­one to tears.

I’ve felt like my life has been so worth­less for so long that I’ve been blind­ed to the part I’ve played in the life of oth­ers. It’s only with this new infor­ma­tion, this cat­a­lyst, that I’m able to begin to real­ize that I’m not so worth­less after all.

There have always been peo­ple whom I admire and respect. It’s only these peo­ple who real­ly have an affect on me. After all, hear­ing hurt­ful words from a per­son you look up to is much worse than from some­one you don’t have any respect for. I’ll always won­der if it’s respect which allowed me to have influ­ence on oth­ers, or whether there was some oth­er rea­son, such as love or friend­ship.

And per­haps, with time, there will be more.