This is part two of a four-part series.

I’ve said before that my high school was not a healthy environment for developing youths. I stand by that statement. It was too competitive, too tough. Too focused on building up your own ego in exchange for breaking down others. Because my mindset and my identity had changed so drastically in 5th and 6th grade, it made it easier for me to fall into this mental and emotional trap. The trap of constantly comparing myself to others. Of always being aware of where I fit in on the social hierarchy. Of feeling worthless if I didn’t meet the impossibly high standards that had been set. I had not necessarily been focused on my grades before that mediocre math exam in 6th grade. I was only doing my best, and my best had been pretty good. Up until that point. But I beat myself up for it. I was embarrassed by it. I tried to forget about it by hiding the results. But it ate at me. It worried away at my confidence until it was wearing thin.

I was close to empty, and it stayed like that for many years. Each new school year gave me a little bit of confidence to start. It was a fresh slate, most of my insecurities had been forgotten. Summer does a fine job of abrading the rough edges. In the fall you start out smooth, but by the time June rolls around, you’re craggily and coarse yet again. Each great English or Social Studies exam result filled my cup a little bit more. But each mediocre to poor Math or Science result eroded any good will. These failures broke me down more than the successes built me up. Because I had been trying so hard to be someone that I wasn’t. I wanted so badly to be good at math and science, because that was what I thought was expected of me. My parents were both scientists, and I had somehow convinced myself that in order to consider myself Asian-American I had to be good at STEM classes. But that wasn’t who I was. It never had been, no matter how much I tried to convince myself otherwise. That was not the skillset I had been blessed with. STEM was neither my calling nor my passion.

But because I had convinced myself that it was a critical part of my ethnic identity, I found it hard to switch focus. I was going to excel at math and science if it was the last thing that I did. But if you’re struggling and aren’t willing to ask for help, then there’s nothing you can really do about it to get better. A seventh grader who doesn’t understand the course material isn’t going to improve without tutoring or hands-on assistance. That was me when it came to math. My math teacher that year was not a good teacher. She didn’t explain things well and she didn’t provide good examples. She read monotonously from the textbook, and she did not translate lessons into terms that a seventh grader would be able to understand. She was quite indifferent. To top it off, she was neither kind nor pleasant so staying after school to get help from her was not an option for me. My confidence continued to sap.

The following year, the teacher was a straight-up bitch, so asking her for help was not an option either. She was perhaps a better teacher than the previous one, but she left me even more disinterested in the subject due to her grating attitude. She was blunt, sarcastic and unsympathetic. If you got an answer wrong she let you know about it. I don’t know if it was intentional or if it was just a byproduct of her personality but it was not a rare occurrence to leave class feeling embarrassed. Perhaps this type of teacher is suitable for a more mature student such as a high school senior or a college student, but she certainly wasn’t helpful for a junior high student. My confidence continued to ebb.

The summer after 8th grade, my mom had enrolled us in summer school for six weeks. One of the two courses I took was a math course. It wasn’t necessarily because I needed it, but she thought it would ease my transition to high school. As fate would have it, the math course was taught by perhaps the only person who could’ve damaged my academic career any further. I say that because all of my high school math teachers were helpful and kind, but because my spirit had already been broken it didn’t matter how good they were at their jobs—they couldn’t help me. I had already become too discouraged. The summer school class was taught by the high school department head. Which sounds like it should be beneficial, but it wasn’t. The teacher was a pompous, self-righteous asshole with no manners and an aggressive personality. It was clear in the way that he taught that he expected you to know more than you did, and he made you feel stupid when you showed that you didn’t. It probably comes with the territory. Math whizzes have a reputation for lacking emotional intelligence. During the school year he only taught the highest level classes: the AP and honors calculus classes. Pre-algebra was beneath him. He made that patently obvious. Why he of all people was allowed to teach summer school is beyond me. 

I came out of the ordeal more demoralized than before. I was defeated. Summer school is supposed to be easy right? More like a tuneup rather than education. But I ended up with mostly high C’s and low B’s. Half a summer of being made to feel stupid ruined me. It didn’t help that there was a kid from my church in my other class. He didn’t live in our town, but our school was prestigious enough that kids from other towns enrolled in the summer program. I don’t know how exactly it came up, but he had made a comment like, “why are you taking math? It’s easy!” And of course that pissed me off. Math at that time had been my biggest insecurity. I wasn’t good at it and I didn’t think I could get good at it. I got so mad that I stole money out of his wallet when he went to the bathroom, and I didn’t even feel bad about it. If you know me, then you know that I’m not a thief. In my thirty years I can count on one hand the amount of times I’ve stolen. But in this instance I had felt justified in doing so.

But I digress. That first C in 6th grade damaged me more than I knew at the time. It was only the start of a downward spiral. But it wasn’t the only thing that I struggled with that year. As I’ve said previously, my parents had pulled me out of sex ed during my puberty years. Being rather conservative, they weren’t happy with what was being taught in public school, but they also didn’t teach me on their own time. During those years I discovered porn, and watched an obscene amount of it, which only served to pervert my view on women. While my father had always been in my life, we did not form a relationship until recently. There had always been a chasm between us that we were unable to cross, so growing up I did not have anyone to look to as a suitable male role model. If I had, maybe things would’ve played out differently, but that’s neither here nor there. I had never been taught properly, so I didn’t have any sort of frame of reference for forming bonds with females. I didn’t know how it worked, but that didn’t stop me from trying. And to nobody’s surprise but my own, my “grand” overtures to woo a girl never succeeded. Oftentimes it was too creepy, sometimes I skipped steps, other times it was too ostentatious. I never could get it right. Even though I’m in a healthy four-year relationship now, I still don’t feel like I “won the girl” so to speak. She approached me, not vice versa!

My 6th grade year had been a year of changes. Changes in my confidence, in my ethnic identity, and in my body physically and emotionally. Deep down, I knew that watching porn was wrong. I couldn’t say why exactly back then. I didn’t have a firm grasp of it. I knew it was a form of lust, but what does lust mean to a twelve-year-old? In my juvenile mind I felt worse about disobeying my parents by staying up late than I did about doing the deed. But that isn’t to say that I didn’t feel unease about it. I did, but I willfully ignored my discomfort to find my satisfaction. My discomfort certainly did not outweigh my desire to find the answers to my questions. After a while I ran out of questions, but continued watching it because it had become ingrained in me as a habit. Every Friday after church I would wait until my family had gone to sleep, then sneak down to the basement with one of the laptops. As I grew older, guilt started weighing more heavily on my heart.

And school did not ease my burden. In fact it did the opposite. As a kid, I was rather two-faced. At home, I was a naughty kid. In public, I was generally well-behaved and shy. I was an all-around terror to my sisters. I’d like to say it was cause I was the only boy and the middle child, but that’s probably understating it. I was an attention-seeking little shit, simple as that. I had started to grow out of it by second or third grade (keyword: started). But just because my lying and hitting had waned to some extent, didn’t mean that my mom had gained any trust in me. Any time there was any screaming or shouting I was the first person that she suspected. I can’t blame her, it was my own doing. I mean I hadn’t shown her any reason to have faith in me. But remember how I said last time that I showed multiple versions of myself to the world? My home life did not mix with my school life. I wouldn’t let it. It was the one thing that I dreaded the most. I was the epitome of fake before I knew what that meant. I may have been a junior terror at home, but I was incapable of mischief at school. I tried to stay out of trouble as much as possible.

But just because I tried to avoid it doesn’t mean that trouble didn’t find me. To this day, I still don’t quite understand how I managed to get into certain situations. There were a number of incidents where due to a misunderstanding or poor communication on my part, blame was pinned on me for things that I hadn’t done. Remember, I was extremely scared of authority figures back then, so what should’ve been a simple conversation was nerve-wracking for me. If I couldn’t address teachers while in a group setting, you can only imagine what I was like one-on-one. It was disastrous to say the least. Being scolded by my mom was one thing, being scolded by a teacher was even worse (especially when you were being falsely accused). It was humiliating. I couldn’t help my nervousness. But that didn’t stop them from jumping to conclusions. My lack of poise was often mistaken for guilt. The reason why I stammered and sounded unsure of myself was because I was scared of the teacher and of getting in trouble, not because I was trying to fabricate a story or because I was scared of getting caught. I didn’t engage in risky behavior, because my fear of getting in trouble far outweighed my fear of getting caught. How can you get caught if you didn’t do anything wrong? So I had no reason to fear it. But that didn’t seem to resonate with some teachers. If they thought I was guilty, then by God I was guilty. It didn’t matter if I was a good student or an obedient and meek kid. 

In preschool, there was a situation in which I unintentionally made my mom cry. But it wasn’t my fault! Not really. The teacher was trying to get us to line up in single file. I was standing there minding my own business, when someone pushed me from behind. After losing my balance, of course my instinct was to reach out in front of me for support. I ended up bumping into a girl and causing her to cry. I really didn’t think I had contacted her that hard. Nevertheless, contact had occurred, albeit accidentally—that much I don’t deny—but that’s what it was. An accident. I had done it as a reactive reflex not as a malicious act. That didn’t seem to matter though. As fate would have it, the kid who had pushed me was a twin, and I was unsurprisingly unable to identify him. These two boys had had a reputation for being naughty, but of course I was to blame because I wasn’t able to point out the culprit. For some reason that’s still incomprehensible to me, it didn’t occur to the teacher that it was borderline insane to a.) ask a toddler to try to distinguish between a set of twins and b.) also ask said toddler to identify who had pushed him from behind. At the tender age of three or four, I had become the victim of a false accusation. It was the first time but it certainly wasn’t the last time.

As a kid, I was afraid to sneeze in public. I was always embarrassed to do so. I don’t know why exactly. One of my favored methods of stifling it was to rub my septum and my upper lip with a loose fist. It usually worked. But one time in third grade it backfired, and I ended up sneezing obscenely loudly. The teacher thought I was being intentionally disruptive so she was about to give me a timeout before she realized what had happened. Third grade had not been a good year for me. I like to refer to it as one of the worst years of my life; it is for sure in the bottom five. In the winter, I had slipped on a giant snowball which had turned into ice overnight and ended up hurting myself severely. There was an incident where the teacher had highlighted a mistake of mine in front of the whole class without naming me specifically. She was upset at the poor spelling the class had exhibited earlier in the week. She was criticizing us for having made careless mistakes. I remember her exact words were “one person spelled volcanos with an ‘e’. The word is vol-cain-nose not vol-cah-noos.” That snide little comment had embarrassed me greatly even though she had not named names. What gets me is that if you look up volcano in the dictionary, the plural form can be with an e or without. Both spellings are correct! But she was the teacher and I was the student, so I was wrong. Of course I was upset and angry that she had brought it up. It wasn’t the first time she had embarrassed me in front of the class. It was only one out of a long string of incidents. Now is probably a good time to mention that her name was Linda (cause of course it was). If I ever met anyone that embodied the connotation of her name it was her.

In sixth grade, my elementary school did this thing where each teacher had a specialization and a homeroom. For English, Math, and Science, the students would rotate to a different classroom. There was a small bobblehead living in the desk that I sat at for math. I remember looking at it. I thought it was interesting and weird. But I didn’t touch it and I didn’t glance at it for more than a few seconds. A few days later, the teacher called me into the hallway and told me that someone had broken the toy, and that the student was extremely upset about it. It became clear to me that she was convinced that I had done it, and nothing I told her would sway her opinion. Like any normal person I still tried to defend myself, even though I knew the endeavor would prove futile. I don’t remember what exactly I said, but I do know that I sounded wishy-washy and I ended up stuttering. I was sweating profusely, my heart was pounding, my ears were getting red, I was on the verge of tears. But it wasn’t because I was guilty and trying to cover it up with a mediocre lie. I was merely unable to complete a coherent thought. I was too nervous; I didn’t know what was going on. But apparently the way that I reacted implied guilt, and the teacher abruptly left the conversation. She was furious, believing that I was actively lying to her. I’ve lied a lot in my lifetime, but I’ve never been good at it. I couldn’t lie to save my life. That’s a simple fact. People know this. Unfortunately to some, facts like that don’t matter. They will believe what they want to believe. It was too much for me to handle. I was unable to focus for the rest of the school day. And I never enjoyed the class after that. The guilt that stemmed from that incident coupled with the C exam began to overwhelm me.

And it was a driving factor in the direction that my life was headed. This was the official end to the first phase of my life. I hadn’t been ready for it, but it had come regardless. It’s quite sudden. One day you’re a child, the next day puberty hits you and you’re different. Your parents, doctors, and teachers try to prepare you for it the best that they can. But for the most part your parents are still learning on the job. My parents didn’t know that pulling me out of sex ed would severely hinder my development. But they had done so because they thought it was the right thing to do. They had their conviction. You can’t blame someone for doing what they believe regardless of if it’s right or wrong. Knowing what I know now, this hadn’t been the right approach, but it happened and no one can change that. I appreciate all experiences—good or bad. Because regardless of what happens, you can learn, grow, and improve. You wouldn’t be who you are now without the adversity that you went through in the past. And that’s the truth. Your experiences mold you. 

For better or for worse. Unfortunately for me, as an adolescent the negative stuck out to me way more than the positive. I had grown pessimistic and cynical without realizing it, and it eventually blossomed into depression and anxiety. It was due to my burden of guilt amongst other things. I had become lost, searching for my identity without a compass, without a guiding star. Without a male role model, and without an understanding of how relationships form or work, I had become a teenager struggling to find his way in the world. Each new rejection or negative experience made me feel worse and worse about myself. My self-confidence had not been very high to begin with, but whatever was left had already eroded away. I didn’t know what or who I was. On top of that, my grip on reality was based more on delusion and fantasy than it was on fact and actuality. For the longest time I had had trouble sleeping. My late night weekends most assuredly exacerbated it. But my way of coping with sleeplessness did not help matters either. I was a lonely kid, I think that much is clear. It didn’t matter how many friends I had or how many people I talked to, the one thing I wanted in my life was a girlfriend. Or at least that’s what I told myself. I realized later in life that all I had really wanted was companionship, whether in the form of a significant other or a close friend, it didn’t really matter. I just needed someone to talk to, who understood me, loved me, and accepted me as I was.

It’s not easy to find that, especially not when you’re wired differently. How am I different? Stay tuned! You’ll find out next time. That being said, I was a highly misunderstood and tortured youth. I wanted to be bold but I didn’t have the courage for it. I did not overcome my shyness until I reached my early-mid 20s. Who I wanted to be was nowhere close to who I was. And the path towards it was cryptic and full of obstacles. The next steps were not readily apparent to me. I didn’t know how to get there, but I wanted to be there more than anything. But the divide proved to be too wide to cross. Not with the set of tools, mindset/mentality, motivations that I had at the time. I couldn’t deal with it. I didn’t know how. 

So I made up stories in my head. I lived vicariously through myself. Real-life Justin wanted to be bold but didn’t know how. But have no fear! Alternate reality Justin had no such issues! In times when I had trouble sleeping I dreamed up scenarios between me and my crushes. Scenarios where I went after the girl. Scenarios where I was popular. Where I knew what I wanted. Where I was accepted. Where I was who I wanted to be. The fantasies continued on from the previous night in the form of a long-winded story. For a few years this was where I did my greatest creative work! But none of that was real, and all of it was damaging. Your mind does strange things when you sleep. Sometimes stray thoughts linger. They circulate as you rest. They may slip into your dreams, and stay with you when you awaken. It was unhealthy obsessive thinking but I didn’t know it. I didn’t know better. I didn’t know that these role-playing narratives impaired my still-developing psyche. Reality and fantasy had interwoven and the thin line had become thinner.

I had unknowingly allowed delusional thought to creep in. And unfortunately it guided me for a time, like it was my instinct. But it wasn’t. I had unintentionally tricked myself into believing falsities. And occasionally I went through with asking girls out that I had never spoken to or interacted with. I had absolutely no business being where I was. Of course I was rejected or laughed at—that had always been the only reasonable outcome. But in my head I really thought that I had had a chance! Crazy right?! But like I said, I didn’t know how it worked. I was in a bad mental headspace for years, so it was easy for the lines between dream and reality to blur. Now it would be easy to blame all of my romantic troubles and difficulties on my delusions but that’s a bit of a copout. Real people’s lives were affected. There were real-life consequences. Potentially promising friendships were ruined. So to blame it on anything but myself is being unfair to everyone else who was involved. Despite what was going on in my head, I had still made someone else feel uncomfortable. So I have to take responsibility for it. I have to own up to my mistakes. In the end, regardless of your intentions, delusions, or misconceptions you are responsible for what you say and what you do. 

I know that now. But I can’t say I knew it then. I didn’t value myself very highly back then, but I valued other people even less. Me, wrong? I couldn’t be wrong! I couldn’t possibly be at fault! Instead of holding myself accountable, instead of admitting that I had fucked up, instead of recognizing my mistakes and moving on, I had maintained a woe-is-me attitude. I convinced myself that people were out to get me, that they hated me, that they wanted to see me fail. I didn’t acknowledge that there were things I could’ve done better. I didn’t think I could do better. I thought I was destined to be mediocre my whole life. I thought I was destined for failure. I didn’t think I could amount to anything meaningful or useful. But that was only because my way of thinking then did not align with who I was and who I wanted to become. Remember how I said that I have always been different? Well guess who was the last person to realize this? This guy! Me! 

Sure, in fifth grade I had started going to a “better” school. I started to have Asian friends that weren’t from church. I started to think more like a stereotypical Asian-American. I was only trying to fit in. But I was already different. I always had been. I was never meant to fit into a stereotype. I was selling myself short. I wasn’t the gold standard of Asian-Americanness. I wasn’t the shining church example. I was just me. The same me who hadn’t been afraid to express himself the way that he knew how in fourth grade. But I had lost sight of that during puberty. It had never occurred to me how different I was. It had never registered that I didn’t need to try to be unique, I already was unique. My thought process was already distinctively mine. I was an out-of-the-box thinker even as a young kid. When I was young, I wasn’t one to conform. I did what I wanted. But as I grew older, and as I grew more eccentric I started walking a tightrope. I wanted to be different, I felt a need to be different.

And this became a driving force in my life. It was my main motivation. But as adults we know better right? If your drive stems from a desire to be unique it will never work out. You need something more. You need something greater than that. Being different just for the sake of being different is meaningless. Your idiosyncrasies should serve a purpose. Sometimes they don’t, and that’s quite alright. It’s a part of you that likely isn’t going to change. But it’s you. That’s the important thing. Be genuine. Don’t put on a facade. Don’t be two-faced. Don’t pretend. Be you, and be proud of you. Be proud of who you are. Be proud of where you came from. Be proud of where you’re going. You can only ever be yourself. Trying to be someone else only leads to pain. I wish I had discovered this earlier on. If I had, I don’t think I would’ve been as lost as I was in my teens and mid-20s. I didn’t understand the purpose for my life, the meaning behind it, what I was put on this planet to do. 

I just don’t think I had the mental capacity to come to that conclusion at the time. I was too trapped in my own head to think clearly. I was too mired in my own insecurities to show proper judgment and discernment. My delusions had grown and multiplied. I didn’t have the ambition or the tenacity to excel at what I did. I had given up on academics somewhat. I had lost hope and had never really set any attainable goals for myself. I didn’t really know what I wanted. For a while I was thinking about becoming a musician. After I had convinced myself that the world was going to end soon, I had settled upon a military career. It was to be something of a place holder until I figured it out. Eventually I was persuaded to go the standard college route. But still it wasn’t what I wanted. I only went through with it so as not to rock the boat. Applying to business programs was just a way for me to manage expectations. I didn’t do it because I wanted to. I did it because I felt like I was supposed to. By my junior year of high school, I had distanced myself somewhat from the elite academic scholars. I didn’t like the way that hanging out with them made me feel. I just didn’t think that I could compete with them, nor did I want to. I really didn’t have that much in common with them aside from my skin tone when it came down to it. So I found acceptance with two other groups: the loners and the stoners.

I did not partake at the time. My religious “morals” prevented me from doing so. But maybe I should’ve. Maybe I would’ve been able to build up some semblance of self-confidence if I had. Maybe I would’ve been better able to understand myself. Maybe full-on depression wouldn’t have onset by sophomore year. Another one of life’s mysteries. Marijuana is what you make of it. It can be a crutch if you choose to use it as such. Or it can be a source of inspiration. It can make you anxious or it can calm your nerves. It depends greatly on your headspace and your reason for using it. Like everything in life, a balance is required. But I’m not here to talk about that. That’s a discussion for a different day. What happened happened, and marijuana hadn’t played a role in it. The stoners did help me feel a bit better about myself. There were less expectations, less pressure. They were more laidback. Not nearly as ambitious. But yet, I still didn’t feel like I belonged. 

I was still on the outside looking in. I wouldn’t say it was solely because I didn’t smoke. There were likely other reasons for it. Remember how I had shelled up and put up walls? Those didn’t come down around those kids either. I was less wary but still on my guard. I still distanced myself. I tried not to get too close. I was afraid of getting hurt. Being anti-social was more comfortable to me. So I didn’t try that hard to make friends. I was friendly and cordial to those I knew, but I rarely let it get more complex than that. I thought I was okay with that but I really wasn’t. Inner turmoil ate at me. But I told myself I was fine. I let the darkness envelop me because I didn’t know how to cope with it. I let depression engulf me. Resigning myself to the fact that it was going to plague me for years to come. I allowed it to fester because I didn’t know how to combat it. I let myself get too high and I let myself get too low. I rode the emotional rollercoaster wherever it took me. I wasn’t in control of my emotions. Instead I let my emotions dictate the narrative. I didn’t live my life. I let my life live me. 

And my depression worsened. One year turned into two. Two years became five. Five became eleven. Of course it wasn’t constant. I likely would’ve died if that had happened. But it would be a couple months here of feeling okay, followed by a couple months there of feeling in the dumps. It got old pretty quick. But I dealt with it adequately enough. I did it the best way I knew how, which was to hide all my trauma in a box that I hid in the attic of my brain (check out Un-Dealt with, Ignored, Sitting in a Box for more). That’s right. I didn’t deal with things head-on. I ran from them. I ran from any and all adversity. That was a defining characteristic of the pre-therapy version of myself. Case in point: I had asked a girl to prom over AIM (another person that I barely knew). When confronted by a friend about it—he was good friends with her—I tried to pass it off as a hypothetical. I told him that I had asked her how she would react if I asked her. We all knew that there wasn’t anything hypothetical about it. I had asked her and I had made things awkward as a result. But I didn’t deal with rejection well, so I tried to alter the narrative to suit my purposes. But just because you force yourself to remember an event one way doesn’t mean that that is how it happened. Reality is reality, and no amount of misremembering, manipulation, or gaslighting can change that. 

But like I’ve said a few times already, I was too depressed to think about other people or consequences. And instead of rolling with the punches and moving on, I dwelled on things. I didn’t let things go. I couldn’t. Sometimes after I was rejected by a girl, I geared myself up to be rejected by her again! I couldn’t take no for an answer, even though no was the only answer I ever received. Lack of sex education and lack of social etiquette was to blame. Yes, learning to become an adult is truly difficult. The transitional teenage years might just be the worst years of your life. It’s hard, but it’s not that hard. It just takes the tiniest amount of common sense. Sense that I didn’t possess. If she doesn’t like you, that’s not going to change unless you change yourself or circumstances change. She’s not going to come around in a week and just be like, “oh never mind. I do like you actually.” Things don’t happen that way. Maybe they do in stories. But that’s just it. Those are stories. They may be inspired by real life, but they aren’t real life. 

That’s something we all have to remember. If you spend too much time trapped in your own head, your perception of reality will likely obfuscate. You start lying to yourself, you start deluding yourself, you start to believe that anything is possible. Yes, you can be who you want to be. Yes, you can do what you want to do. If you put your mind to it, you can achieve anything you want. But that comes with certain caveats. You need to have the skills and the tools for it for one. Without the proper equipment you will be just another poor, mediocre soul. You know that saying about trying to force a round peg into a square hole? Don’t do that. Another thing you don’t want to do is ignore reality. You can’t just say, “fuck it,” and go for things that don’t make sense. Some things were never meant to be. They were never going to work out. It’s obvious to see. You just have to review the facts from a more objective perspective. If you’ve never spoken to someone before, chances are they weren’t thinking about you, let alone wanting you. They don’t even know who you are! If you’ve never played an instrument before, the chances of you becoming a musician are slim to none unless you really work at it. You can’t just think scenarios into reality. It doesn’t work that way. Things don’t just fall into place without the requisite effort.

It took me a long time to understand that. But joining up with the stoners was a step in the right direction. That was when I realized that STEM was not for me. I realized that I was projecting. Pretending that I was good at something that I was always going to struggle with. Trying to be something that I wasn’t, just to fit in. It was the first step on my path towards mental health. Letting go of the main thing that held me back. Unfortunately the second, third, and subsequent steps did not occur until years later. I did learn and grow from my mistakes but progress was slow. Until I actually got my mental health under control, I was still grasping at straws into my mid-20s. I was still ignorantly wallowing in my delusions. Especially when it came to my love life. I had stopped dreaming up fantasy scenarios by then but that didn’t mean that I was more realistic about my expectations. I still expected the unexpected. And that was to my detriment.