14 September 2025 |
After yesterday's post I have found myself thinking more and more about who I am, where I came from and how I got here. This is something that I don't think I have ever expressed to anyone except today as a YouTube comment, ironically. I found Vanisha Marie's channel and it reminded me of myself in my boyhood.
I loved to read. It was my escape. For the longest time, it was the only thing I could do. When I was much younger, we were poor. It was about all we could manage to pay fees and rent. The biggest gifts I ever received were 7. Three game consoles over my early years and into my teenage years. A smart phone when I was 12. A PC when I was 18. And a laptop when I was 19 for school. Another laptop when I was 24. Of course, I had all the other stuff like clothes, food and a roof over my head and I'm very grateful.
I'm just saying that I didn't have much in the way of entertainment except books. It might not seem like that because these are quite a number of devices. And when they came into my life, they were quite a time sink. I would be obsessed over these devices and would spend my whole day just playing with them. They were my whole world outside of books. Needless to say, I was quite a heavy gamer when chance allowed. However, for most of these consoles and PCs I think I had on average 5 - 10 games for each. That would take me about a year or two to finish my collection cause I had to balance with school. So it wasn't that many games.
I just remember this distinct feeling from as long as I can remember that nobody really understood me and what I wanted. I always felt the odd one out. I never really found anyone else who shared my passions except for a few disparate incidents. Maybe I'd meet someone who loved video games but they didn't love books. And even if they loved video games, we didn't love the same video games. Or I met someone who loved books but didn't love the kind of books I loved (though it was pretty rare to meet anyone who loved books).
The one thing that always made me stand apart completely, was my desire to excel in my studies. You know for me, school was a survival game. I knew that if I failed at school, my life would be cut short. I knew my only future lay in studying. So I could never understand why others took it so lightly. I felt that if I could make it to a more prestigious institution, then I would meet people who were just as determined as me. It never happened and I always went to the most prestigious places in the country on my own merit.
It's not to say that these people weren't smart or even hard-working. The best word is hungry. They weren't hungry. The didn't yearn for success from the bottom of their souls. They were content to accept what fate had dealt them. I could never understand these people.
My desire for success, monetary success especially, is what drove me to drop out of college. I was making more money than I had ever seen in my life and I thought I understood what it meant to run a business. That's not to say I wouldn't have succeeded, but at that point, I was still an addict and I had much growing up to do. I have faith that I would have figured it out had I stuck on that path, but in my maturation I felt that I needed something purposeful to derive my life's meaning. My life's work had to be meaningful, not just a money making machine.
You might be wondering why. And for a long time even I thought that I just wanted to make money, fuck bitches and do drugs. But I had forgotten myself you see. Over the years, because of the constant rejection, I rejected myself. I conformed to what I thought other people wanted. I beat myself into an unrecognizable mush of other people's desires. Whether it be my friends, my family or those in authority, I thought that my way of seeing the world was wrong. That I was weird. That maybe if I could just be cool, then they would accept me and I wouldn't be lonely. I was wrong.
The truth is, I am not like other people and I never will be. The sharpest juxtaposition is when I compare myself to my own family and I realize that I am not like them at all. I love them to bits but I know we will never understand each other. Those I have called my friends are even so far removed that I know now all I wanted was to feel part of something and that's why I fraternized with them. It wasn't because we understood each other, it was a relationship of convenience.
What broke this illusion for me was when my heart was broken 5 years ago. I fell head over heels in love with who I thought was my soulmate. I so loved this woman. I thought that if only i could have her, this world could never hurt me again. Until of course, she left me and my broke ass to make money abroad. I felt used and abused. Sometimes, I think this is just a reflection of how I treat others, cause I want to imagine that if this is my mistake I can correct it and go back to that fantasy. But that's not the truth. The truth is, it was a relationship of convenience. Once it stopped being convenient, it stopped being a relationship. I swore never to so much as indulge in flights of fancy ever again.
That heart break took me to the depths of hell and back. Were it not for that pain, I would have remained in la-la-land and forgotten who I am and where I came from. But I must never forget. The pain and toil that allowed me to overcome all challenges set before me. It is what made me. I am different and that is my strength.
For so long, I hated myself and wished I could be someone else, someone rich, good-looking, popular. I chased all these idols and found all of them bereft of meaning. I had so discarded myself, so undervalued who I am as to hate myself. In this despair, I lost myself to all sorts of aversions, drugs and porn being the worst offenders. It was painful to be alive because I could not see my own value. I could not love myself for who I am, for who I was. I thought myself to be my own worst enemy and in my own path. If only I could just be cool!
This is the most ludicrous, ridiculous, shallow garbage but it's the truth. I was just like all those people I thought I was better than. I thought that I was hard-working, meticulous, original, creative and all along, I just wanted to be liked. I just wanted to hold my woman every night and wake up to her beautiful face. It is not wrong to want these things. And it is not the world's fault for not giving me these things.
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
I couldn't see in myself the rising star that I was. It took my whole world to shatter and me stomping it to pieces to realize what could never be broken. Who I am. This inch. This being in space and time. And for the first time in a long time, I see myself through the mirrors of time reflected and at peace with who I have become.
I have many dreams and ambitions. But there are not things I strive for in the sense that they out of my reach. They are things I cultivate for they are within me and I have only to bring them out. There is a danger that I can become self-contented and masturbate myself to obscurity. But that's not what I want. I see these passions within me and they guide me, they furnish my life and they show me what I am capable of. In this sense, the journey can never end. It has chapters that I write and now I want to write my greatest chapter yet cause I don't know how long I have to live and whether or not I will see my potential flourish. I just know that I have always had this precious seed within me and now it is up to me to cultivate it. It's so precious and can easily be lost. But in it I have found joy.
All around me was darkness and the only light I found was in myself. So many things about myself I had thrown away! But piece by piece I reconstituted myself from what I found to be true. My love for beauty. I wanted to be beautiful and loved too. I wanted someone to cherish me. For me to be their whole world. I wanted love. I still want love. But now I no longer thirst for it. Because I love myself. Not a surface level kind of love that just accepts everything. No, there are aspects about myself that I mean to change and improve. But I do not hate myself on the whole. I am still learning this new way of being. It is so foreign to me. I know now that I have never experienced real love. In all my relationships, even my most tender ones, it was a kind of duty or a kind of convenience. That's why it never once touched my heart. It could be as well that because I didn't love myself then how could I appreciate the love of those who genuinely loved me in their own way.
All this verbiage and pondering to say that I just wish I could tell that boy who was so alone that it was okay to get lost in stories of chivalry and daring. Even today those stories warm my heart. If I could talk to that boy today I would tell him that yes, you will face a lot of disappointment, but take heart and stand fast because even though you may never see the dream, that was never the point. I'm not going to say the point was the journey, that doesn't seem authentic. The point was you. The point was me. The point was everybody. To experience life is its own great gift. With its ups and downs. In that experience you will find yourself and know yourself. The challenge is to be yourself. To express yourself. It is not to be accepted or to judge others. In you there is beauty, but to bring it out is the most difficult thing of all.
Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.
~ Viktor E. Frankl
I guess that's the instinct that drove me start this blog. Both as an introspection and a expression of what I wish I heard growing up. Of course, I heard these things, but I never understood them. All I wanted was to be loved. I never want to feel that feeling of inadequacy again. Whether it's from loneliness or poverty. Practically, studying computer science solves all these for me. I can express myself and earn a living. That's all I want. To live in this world as myself, expressing myself to the best of my ability. Beyond that, I don't really care what happens.