Matt Joseph Diaz

"The universe is a big, dark, cold empty space — but you're not any of that. You're a light."

Vulnerability is a sign of strength, not weakness, and those who see being open and sincere as symbols of fragility have a skewed idea of vulnerability. It takes NO strength to close yourself off from the world — to refuse to be who you are because you’re afraid of the reaction of those around you. Feeling deeply and openly, even in the face of resistance, is what takes true strength.

I’m recovering from some pretty major surgery that has made it really uncomfortable to move around. In addition, because of the painkillers and antibiotics, obviously, I’m not allowed to drink or basically do anything I enjoy anymore.

Being asked about my weight-loss “secrets” make me uncomfortable. It feels very different from people wanting to know about my story. It feels like being asked to provide a shortcut.

Though it's worth noting that my weight was beginning to become a health concern, I’d never considered my body a “problem” until I heard how doctors talked about it. In the same way a hurt child won’t start to cry until he sees the worry in his parent’s face, I never felt bad about my body until the first time I felt like I was being looked at with disgust. So whatever route you decide to take with the health of a child, make sure it’s treated as a growing opportunity and not a solution to a problem. Your children are not problems — they are the foundation upon which the adults of tomorrow will be built.

How embarrassing is this story, and is the value in it (be it entertainment, educational, or both) enough that the benefit in sharing it outweighs how mortifying it is?

There’s a big difference between talking and communicating. One exists to relay messages, ideas, and feelings: the building blocks of being a person. The other exists to fill time. I’m by no means here to tell people how to approach their relationships — I just don’t want people to feel pressured to fill silences with noise out of the fear their partners won’t think they care.

From a young age, people (especially women) are constantly taught that we’re in competition with one another. Whether it’s our grades, our social status, our economic status, or those creepy beauty pageants for 6 year olds, we’re immediately thrust into a world where we’re taught to view everyone as adversarial to a certain degree.

CN: suicide

These days, I’m gentler with people than I’ve ever been. I’ve learned of the beauty and strength in each and every person regardless of where they come from or what they’ve been through — and with every interaction, I understand more why Mike saw the best in people.