Tag Archives: Mental Health

Changing, Discovery, Dreaming, Greatness, Growth, Healing, Hope, Mental Health, Mindfulness, Self-Care, Self-Love, Wellness, Writing

Gotta Let Em Know

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This wonderful journey has taught me many things—about myself, about my expectations, about my hopes and dreams. I’ve been “cooking” for a little over three years now, but I’m ready to show the world. I know what I’m capable of, and it’s time to let em know. 

When I first started out, I was figuring stuff out as I went along. Let’s be honest, I didn’t know what I was doing, but I learned. And I was writing. That was the most important thing. You can’t become a better writer without practice. There’s a saying that goes that you have to write a million words before you’re able to write something worthy to be published. This is a bit of hyperbole but probably not by much. No one is going to be able to write a perfect manuscript right off the bat. It takes debuting authors years before their novel sees the light of day. 

Writing is a tough medium to master, especially if you’re looking to become a novelist. There’s likely to be years of toil without any tangible result. You don’t contact publishers or agents until you have something that you feel good about. They don’t offer contracts based off of ideas or half-assed work. You need to have something that’s finished and fairly polished. How long it takes to create such a thing is up to the individual. Each writer develops at their own pace. Unfortunately for us, sometimes it’s hard to gauge our progress, especially when we’re writing in isolation. We need affirmation from others in order to keep us going. It’s not the end all, be all though. If your primary reason for writing is anything other than that writing is good for you and makes you feel fulfilled, then your priorities are all wrong. You write for yourself first and foremost. 

Fame and fortune doesn’t come from writing necessarily. It might happen, but more than likely it won’t. Most writers don’t become George R. R. Martin or Stephen King, but it doesn’t mean that we give up trying. We all have a lot to give. We all have something to offer. We have knowledge we can impart. We have stories to tell. But most importantly we have people that we can help. We aren’t meant to be sponges our whole lives, taking taking taking without giving back. It’s fine to be one for a time, but once we’ve learned, once we’ve healed, its time to bestow unto others. Making an impact is the name of the game. It doesn’t matter how big or small. 

Be intentional. Be grateful. Be encouraging. Look to have thought-provoking conversation. Look to brighten someone’s day. Help those around you. Even something as simple as holding the door for a stranger can go a long way. Don’t be so self-absorbed that you can’t see what’s around you. Don’t forget to thank those that help you. Don’t forget to be kind. But most of all don’t forget to do everything in your power to be a decent human being. Oftentimes that’s lost in our journey up the corporate ladder. We’re told such things as “good guys finish last,” or “you always have to look out for number one.” The “good guys” that finish last are the ones that let themselves be taken advantage of. You can be a good guy without being a human doormat. You can look out for yourself without being an asshole. You can be ambitious without stepping on other people’s backs. Just because everyone else is doing things the same way doesn’t mean that you need to follow. Forge your own path. Birth your own career. March to the beat of your own drum.

But be realistic. Be aware. Know where you stand in the grand scheme. Don’t be so relentless in your pursuits that you inflate your self-worth. Don’t overvalue your skillset. Don’t put on an air of entitlement—acting like the world owes you something. No one owes you a single dime. Every accomplishment in life requires effort. All praise needs to be earned. No favors come for free. In order to get something out of life, you need to put something in. On the other hand, it’s time to stop self-deprecating. Time to stop undervaluing your importance. You mean something to someone. That’s the truth. Someone somewhere cares about you. Someone will miss you when you’re gone. So it’s best to know where you stand.

Some people were meant to work a 9-5, some people were meant to go off the beaten path. Some people need structure and value conformity. Others would prefer to find their own way. No one way is right, no one way is wrong. One thing can work for some, but not for others. No piece of advice is meant for everyone. Of course you should listen  objectively to anyone willing to invest in you, but know that the mileage may vary. Their advice may or may not work for you, you have to determine that for yourself. Each person lives a unique life with unique circumstances and unique backgrounds. We owe it to ourselves to find out who we are. 

For most of my life I never really fit into a specific box. I was always a bit eccentric, for good or for ill. This was a point of contention for a long time. My internal struggle centered around balancing fitting in with keeping my individuality. I think it’s safe to say that the latter won out in the end. But it took some time to reach that point. It took understanding who I was and learning to love myself for it. I couldn’t start thriving until I accepted that this was who I was. I needed to learn to be proud of where I came from, and be excited for where I was going. It was hard at first, but became easier over time. That’s the case with most things. Habits don’t form overnight. Changes don’t happen in a day. You need to keep working at it—always molding and tinkering. Sow your seeds now, and keep on watering them. Eventually something will grow. Something beautiful and abundant.

We were meant to do so much more than eke out a mediocre existence. We were called to be fruitful and to add some meaning to life. We were meant to seek greatness in everything that we do. If we aren’t trying our absolute hardest to be the best version of ourselves that we can be, then what exactly are we doing? We help ourselves first, then we help others. You take and then you give back. That’s the circle of life. Of course, you can’t give back if you have nothing to give. Take some time to focus on your growth, to discover yourself, to find your purpose. Don’t try to tackle everything at once. Take it one day at a time. If your today is better than your yesterday then it’ll lead to a better tomorrow. If you’re better now than you were a week ago then it means that you’re on the right track. Rejoice in that. 

You’ll have good days and you’ll have bad days. Don’t beat yourself up too much. A step back doesn’t mean that you’ve regressed. Regression is a steady trend in the wrong direction. One bad day does not constitute that. But don’t let it become more than what it is. Don’t allow your bad days to stack. Decompress and destress. Don’t circulate negativity in your head before you go to sleep. When you’re in bed you need to rest. Your stresses, worries, and anxieties can be tackled in the morning. Use a diffuser, smoke weed, count sheep if you have to. When you’re ready to sleep, do so. Calm yourself as you go to sleep, and you will wake up calm. 

You need to start your day off right, with a healthy mindset. Each morning should be seen as a reset. Each day is its own. Try not to let yesterday’s frustrations carry on into today. Of course, it’s unavoidable sometimes, but don’t let it become a habit. This is how regression occurs—allowing yourself to become more miserable each subsequent day. Start each morning with a refresh. You’ll feel better for it. Treat each moment, good or bad, as its own. Take a second to breathe. Return back to zero. 

This was something that I learned early on in therapy, and it’s stuck with me since. Before I found my healing I had a tendency to let singular events tank my day. One nasty customer on the phone and I would resign myself to the “fact” that “this day sucks,” but I would ignore all the good that had happened. The outcome of my day should not have been dictated by one lousy experience. Each moment is its own. A bad moment doesn’t have to lead to a bad day. A bad day doesn’t have to lead to a bad week. A bad week doesn’t have to lead to a bad month. This has become more and more evident to me the more that I write.

Some days are more productive than others, some days are less, some days I don’t feel like I can even write at all. At times I feel like I’m the best writer in the world, at others I feel like I can’t form a coherent sentence. It’s all part of the process. Writing, like most things in life has ebbs and flows. But you need to stick with it. Persistence is key. If you let every negative comment or piece of criticism get to your head then you won’t ever reach the lofty expectations that you’ve set for yourself. Don’t let yourself be held back by doubt. You will have lovers and you will have haters. That’s a given. Anything that’s said will affect you one way or another—it can’t always be helped. But at the end of the day, outside opinion matters, but it isn’t what matters the most. Your opinion of yourself is what matters the most. Know your worth. You are capable of achieving everything that you set your mind to. But you have to be in tune with yourself, check in every once in a while. Know what works for you.

For me, I value all feedback, positive or negative. It helps me form an accurate picture of where I am at. I need one-star reviews just as much as I need five-star ones. It helps me fine-tune my approach. I need people to tell me that I suck, and I need people that will praise me. It keeps me level-headed—the hate prevents my ego from ballooning, the love keeps me motivated. The negativity used to sap my confidence, throw me into a rut. But I needed that. It helped me to gain a more realistic understanding of how far I’ve developed as a writer. The first shitty comment is always the hardest, but each subsequent one gets easier to bear. Hatred and doubt no longer drain me, they fuel me instead. I know how good of a writer I am but I also understand that I still need work. I reach onwards and upwards, but I know that I will never attain perfection. I will never be a finished product, but that doesn’t stop me from continuously reaching. Once you stop reaching, once you stop dreaming is when stagnation settles in. 

Stagnation is the ally of decay, the enemy of growth. In order to chase your dreams you need to keep moving forward. Work on your craft. Better yourself. Learn more. If you’re passionate about what you do, it won’t feel tedious. The effort you put in, the time you spend early on, will pay off later. I can say without a doubt that my efforts have paid off, but I’m not done yet—nowhere close. I speak differently now, that’s what my therapist told me. And there’s a reason for that. As I’ve improved as a writer, I’ve discovered my voice. I’ve learned what I do know and what I don’t know. I’ve learned what to do, and what not to do. I know what sort of a writer I am. I’ve unveiled the strengths and weaknesses in my skillset. I can look at all feedback objectively and determine if it has legitimacy. Anything that’s unhelpful or untrue I can throw out and ignore. I know where I stand.

The more I write, the more confident I get. Confidence comes with improvement. And improvement comes as a result of my hard work. I didn’t always have something to show for it, but I do now. This hobby of mine went from something that I thought that I was capable of to something that I know I’m capable of. It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when. When the time comes, my novel will be a reflection of my best work, as will the ensuing series. I’m still typing away, still crafting my story. It’s still in the workshop, but I’m making meaningful progress. The time will come when I’m ready to show it to the world, but for now this should suffice. 

This blog has been in existence since 2014 (albeit with a different URL), but for six years posts were sporadic. I started taking this seriously in 2020, but I was writing for myself. In 2023 I know who I am and what I am. I know what I can and will become. I know what I can offer. This blog is for you: the broken, the hurting, and the decaying. I’m here to offer hope, I’m here to offer peace, I’m here to offer healing. I know what my purpose is, and I gotta let em know.

Brokenness, Changing, Discovery, Dreaming, Greatness, Growth, Healing, Hope, Mental Health, Mindfulness, Self-Care, Self-Love, Wellness

A Neverending Journey

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I met someone. Words that are often overused, but words that mean something. I didn’t meet a crush, or a lover, or some sort of romantic connection. I’m spoken for, and happily so. But I met someone nevertheless. Someone who will help me on my journey. Someone who will help me accomplish my dreams. I met a friend, and a collaborator, and a partner. 

My life the last few years has been a bit of an adventure (at least for my standards). Since December 2019, I’ve quit two toxic workplaces. You may wonder why I quit one, just to join another, especially when my focus has been on maintaining my mental health. It was simple. I needed a job, but I had my eyes set on something else—something greater—so I didn’t mind it. It was only ever going to be temporary. The job kinda found me, and it was super convenient. It was low stress and not super taxing for a time, which freed up the brainpower that I needed to be able to write. I could come home fresh and ready to get my creative juices flowing. Something that I hadn’t been able to do in the six years prior. 

Truth be told, I’ve wanted to try my hand at writing for a while. But something always held me back. Usually it was fear and anxiety, often times it was excuse making. It was something that I was good at, letting fear control my life, believing the misconceptions. When you’re mentally and emotionally drained for long stretches at a time it’s easy to allow outside circumstances to dictate your life. It’s easy to hold yourself back and to let yourself be held back. When you’ve self-deprecated for over two decades, and your self-esteem has been running on fumes for as long as you can remember, making excuses feels natural. Underestimating your competence, understating your abilities, convincing yourself that you’re not capable of more, believing that you’re destined for mediocrity. All these things are lies that we tell ourselves. Lies that prevent us from becoming the best version of ourselves that we can be.

For the longest time, I was plagued by a nihilistic mindset. I didn’t know what I wanted from life. I didn’t know what I could contribute. I didn’t know what I was passionate about. I didn’t know what fulfillment felt like. I didn’t know what satisfaction was. I believed that I was destined to live an uninspired existence. To work laboriously because that was all we were put on this earth to do. To grow up, work, recreate, and die. In that fucked-up brain of mine, I thought that my life was out of my control. That I was subject to the whims of whatever uncaring god was out there. I found myself stuck at a dead-end job, but what proved more detrimental was that I was stuck in my mindset. I had stopped dreaming a long time before that. I had forgotten what it felt like to strive for something better. I had never known what my self-worth actually was. I had convinced myself that I had already peaked, that it would only go downhill from there. The risk taker in me had been overcome by my fear. 

It was easy to keep being mediocre, to maintain the status quo. Growing up, I had been taught to seek comfort. To find something stable. Not to take too many risks. This led me to the false belief that settling was acceptable. That just okay was good enough. I didn’t know what it meant to dream big, or to seek greatness, or to have ambition. The anxiety and depression that I suffered through in my teenage years and early twenties was crippling. They prevented me from becoming the best version of myself that I could be. In truth, I didn’t think I was capable of goodness, let alone greatness. My demons had robbed me of all of my ambition. There are many things that I could blame, but I’m not going to do so. One of the first steps in transitioning to adulthood is taking responsibility for your actions and holding yourself accountable. Shit happens that may or may not be within your control. That doesn’t matter. What does is how you react to such circumstances. What’s important is that you learn from any and all experiences—good or bad. It doesn’t matter how they came to be. 

Everyone goes through shit. That’s a fact of life. Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone has their own demons and vices. How you speak, how you think, how you act matters. All of this stems from having a healthy mind. I say this time and time again, but I will continue to do so until I go blue in the face. Get your mind right and everything falls into place. Of course, it’s easier said than done, but you have to keep at it. I didn’t accomplish anything meaningful in the first twenty-seven years of my life. That’s because I had a bad attitude and an overly pessimistic mindset. At some point in time, a small voice needled its way into my brain, telling me that I couldn’t do shit, that I wasn’t capable, that I was useless, that I was trash. As disappointments stacked, I started to believe this voice. I gave it room to grow. To fester. To corrupt. The more I fed the voice, the more I believed the lies.

Unfortunately, this isn’t unique to me. As millennials, we were conditioned to run from our problems. To hide them in a lesser traveled area of our brain. Our parents’ generation didn’t really understand mental health, therefore not much focus was put into fixing the issues. We were told to suck it up. Be happy. Don’t worry about it. But as we got older, as we shifted from early-twenties to late-twenties we started to realize how detrimental this was to our well-being. Ignoring the trauma only made things worse. Numbing the pain was only a temporary fix. Pretending to be strong only sapped our energy. We were left broken and we didn’t know what came next. Some of us have found our healing. Some of us have addressed issues we’ve been ignoring for twenty years. Unfortunately, many more of us are either still broken or are trying to figure things out.

I’m blessed to be a part of the former group, but it didn’t come without growing pains. Of course, I had good days and I had bad days. Mostly bad. Figuring things out on my own didn’t quite work out as I had expected. For a while I was too stubborn to seek out the help that I needed. I didn’t want to admit that I didn’t have the answers, because that would mean admitting that I was consistently failing to meet expectations. But these weren’t expectations that others had of me, but rather expectations that I had projected onto them. I was supposed to be such and such a person, because that was what was trendy. I was supposed to study this, because it was a respectable career path. I was supposed to do that, because it would make me less of a loner. I worried so much about what others thought of me that I had lost sight of what I thought of myself. At the end of the day, it’s the thing that matters the most. If you don’t love yourself, why would someone else love you? If you don’t respect yourself, why would you be deserving of respect? If you don’t think that you’re capable, why would others give you more responsibility?

I couldn’t find happiness because I felt none of these things. I didn’t love myself, I didn’t respect myself, I didn’t think myself capable. Life wasn’t fulfilling because I had no purpose. I had no purpose because I had stopped dreaming. I had stopped dreaming because I could no longer find the goodness in me. I was worth something, but I couldn’t see it. I had spent too many years downplaying my self-worth. Too many years living in fear. Too many years trying to please everyone but myself. Life was meaningless because I had lost all passion. And that was a dangerous spot to be in. I had gotten too comfortable with my mediocre life. But it wasn’t worth living, because I was just going through the motions. I wasn’t looking to make an impact on those around me. I wasn’t looking to seek greatness. I wasn’t willing to take any risks. I had asked myself, “is this it? Is there more to life?” and had resigned myself to it. 

But there is more to life than that. There’s more to life than being fine with okay. Okay isn’t good enough. Seeking greatness is the goal. You have to be willing to step out of your comfort zone to do so. I didn’t learn that until I turned twenty-seven, but it wasn’t too late. There isn’t really such a thing as too late. There’s always room for growth. There’s always time to change. You can always strive for better. There’s always more to learn. You aren’t confined to a box. You can step out, you can step up. Change is something that you need to seek. It won’t just happen, bad habits don’t go away on their own. You need to work at it until you break it down. Change has more to do with determination than it does with doing the right things. In order to change, you need to start with your mindset. The first step is to stop making excuses.

That was the biggest thing that held me back. It wasn’t my lack of self-confidence. It wasn’t my lack of drive. It wasn’t my fear. Yes, all of those played a factor in my average existence, but nothing played a bigger role than my excuse making. I didn’t write because I gave myself reasons not to. That was the easy way out, and I took it because I didn’t know how to deal with adversity and I didn’t want to. But anything worth doing takes effort. It takes determination. And it takes self-control. If you don’t force yourself to do things, chances are you won’t do it. I think I know that better than most. 

Writing for me happened in spurts. Inspiration came and went. Without any determination, that left me not doing what I do best for long stretches at a time. I always had a way with written word, but I needed refinement and I needed direction. But most importantly I needed encouragement. I needed someone to remind me that I was good at something. I needed someone to help me realize that I had talent and that I was worthy of praise. I’ve mentioned many times that I wrote poems and lyrics as a kid. Somewhere down the line that changed, and removing my creative outlet left me feeling empty. Writing is what I was meant to do. I was put on this planet for a reason: to help others using my words. It took me more than two and a half decades to realize that, but I will run with it and never look back.

In the autumn of 2019, things began to change. By that point I had been seeing a therapist for over a year. I had finished breaking down and I had finished healing. So what came next? I didn’t really know, until she asked me if I was happy with my career. No surprise that I said that I wasn’t. I had spent my whole life chasing something that I didn’t actually want. It wasn’t my dream, it was someone else’s. It was time for me to start chasing the thing that had eluded me for so long. It was time to stop making excuses, and start writing. It was time to turn my idea for a novel into something tangible. I’ve had my ups and downs, but I’ve stuck with it this whole time. I’ve figured stuff out on my own, I’ve had to look things up. 

After I quit my job, I started writing in isolation. For several months it bore fruit. I could see progress. I could see improvement. But I didn’t have any external affirmation. No one saw my work but me. Which was fine for a time. I hadn’t yet grown confident in my ability. However, even the loneliest hermit needs affirmation. Even the biggest introvert needs people to care. Everyone needs to know if they’re on the right track. I thought I was, but I didn’t know for certain. Which brought me back to therapy. I needed new answers. I needed to know what came next.

I needed writer friends. I needed peers. I found that in October through an online writing community. It led to some growth. It was scary, putting my work out there, but it helped me to learn and improve. I had some positive, helpful feedback. I had some not so helpful feedback. Assholes exist everywhere. For a few months I fell back into old habits. Every hater, everyone who told me that my writing wasn’t good put me in a rut. I took each and every criticism personally. Every negative comment felt like a dagger to the heart. The voices that told me that I wasn’t good enough began to rear their ugly heads again. The feelings of doubt started to reemerge. I started asking myself if I was built for this. If I had enough talent. I began spiraling back into this rabbit hole of insecurity. But an angel came and rescued me. In January I met my ideal reader—he is mine and I am his. Someone who understands the story the way that I understand it. A writer whose strengths and weaknesses complement mine. We are symbiotic. A friendship, a partnership, a collaboration that will go a long way. 

The going may be tough at first, but your hard work will pay off in the end. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you can’t do something. Don’t believe the voices that tell you that you aren’t worth shit. You are capable of so much. You can do good. You can be good. You can be great. But in order to do so, you have to keep on keeping on. Push yourself higher and higher. Dream big; never stop dreaming. Everything is within reach. Nothing is too ambitious if your eye is set on it. You just have to force yourself to do it. Eventually the habit will stick. Your hobby will become your passion. You are meant to make an impact on those around you. You are capable of great things. Goals are within reach, but life doesn’t end there. They are only milestones, not end points. Life is a neverending journey. Keep reaching higher. Aim for perfection though perfection can’t be attained. When the time comes, you will show the world that you are worthy.

Brokenness, Changing, Dreaming, Greatness, Growth, Hope, Mental Health, Self-Love

Back to School

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I started seeing my therapist again. I’m not afraid to admit that. I have said before that when I stopped going I felt like I had graduated from it. I still feel that way, but just because I graduated doesn’t mean I can’t go back to school. The issues that had plagued me didn’t pop back up—I didn’t slip back into depression or suffer through crippling anxiety. I didn’t regress. You know I’m not about that. I won’t ever let that happen. As we get older we should only be moving in one direction: onwards and upwards. Anything else is a failure. The more life we experience, the wiser we get. That’s the way it’s supposed to work.

So, it may seem like going back to therapy is a step backwards, but it’s not. Your mental well-being is more important than anything else in the world. If you don’t have a healthy mind, things are not going to work out. You’re only making things harder on yourself. You need to get out of your own way. The best way to do that is to address your issues head-on, starting with getting your mind right. Once you have your mind right, everything falls into place. The hardships aren’t as hard, the outlook isn’t as draining, the blessings aren’t as easily ignored.

Accepting that you need help does not make you weak. Acknowledging your flaws does not make you less of a person. Admitting that you’re wrong does not change other’s perceptions of you. You are human, and humans make mistakes. Every person has their own issues. Whether you accept that these are things that need fixing is up to you. Things can change if you’re willing to put in the effort. Bad habits can be broken. Mindsets can be altered. Outlooks can be shifted. But none of this can be done if you don’t have the drive. 

You need to motivate yourself to change if that’s what you really want. There’s no cause without effect. Change won’t happen unless you put in the effort. You will have setbacks. There will be times where you feel destined to fall back into old habits. It’s all a part of the process. Sometimes you have to take a few steps backwards in order to go forwards. But you have to keep trying, no matter how difficult. You have to keep pushing. Yes, there’s risk involved with trying, but there’s also the potential for a great reward. You won’t know what’s in store for you until you’ve put in your best effort. Things might not happen the way that you envisioned, but at least you know for certain now. You tried your best and it didn’t work out, so try your hand at something else. That’s the only way to live a life that feels fulfilling. 

Failure doesn’t come from lack of effort. Every experience in life comes with a lesson—good or bad. If you learned something from an endeavor that fell short it counts as a success. You learned something valuable for next time. Success and failure are relative, they need reference points in order for them to make sense. One person’s failure is another person’s success, or vice versa. So, instead of seeing things as successes and failures, instead focus on winning and losing. The only way you fail is if you lose. And the only surefire way to lose is giving up. Persistence is often underrated and overlooked. If you’re passionate about something, you’ll find a way to make it work for you. If you’re not good at it, the only way you’ll get better is through practice.

In the age of social media, it’s easy to get discouraged. It’s easy to see the end result—that’s what is broadcast far and wide—but we don’t often see the process. We don’t see how much time and effort it took for a musician to write a song. How much trial & error. How much practice it took for them to master their instruments. Sometimes we think that things in life come easy, but they don’t. Everything worth doing requires hard work. It requires ambition. It requires learning. It requires admitting that you don’t know the answers, but are willing to find them. It requires allowing others to help you. But most importantly, it requires sticking to it. Learning through the ups & downs, the bumps & bruises. You need to stay motivated, some way, some how. 

And the best way to do that is to be confident, and to stay optimistic. Of course, that’s easier said than done. You know me, I was once the most pessimistic person in the world. I had to train myself to be the man that I am today. That also took hard work. Switching your mindset from glass-half-empty to glass-half-full is monumental. It might even seem impossible, but again, persistence is key. Don’t give up, don’t give in. Glass-half-empty might be the only way you know, but it’s a fallacy. Believe me when I say that. It’s a trap that sucks the fun out of living. It’s a demon that tells you that you’ll never be good enough. It’s a belief system that sets you up to fail. 

Self-fulfilling prophecies are a thing. An easy lure to fall into if your mind is not healthy. Avoid this way of thinking at all costs. Learn how to win, forget how to lose. Self-fulfilling prophecies are no different than giving up—only you’ve given up before you even started. If you believe in your heart that things aren’t going to work out for you, they likely won’t! You become so focused on, “what if this fails,” that you don’t do everything in your power to make sure that it doesn’t. You’re doing yourself a disservice. You‘re trying to lose before you even put in the effort to try to win. 

Admit when you make a mistake. Allow that you can be wrong. Acknowledge that there might be a better way. Embrace your imperfections and know that they can be corrected. Some truths hurt. But reality isn’t all sunshine and roses. Life is tough. There are hard lessons to be learned. It’s all a part of human growth. Everyone makes mistakes, but not everyone learns from them. I believe that the same obstacles will be placed in your way until you change your ways. Learn from your mistakes, otherwise you might have to face the same ones over again.

I’ve certainly learned from my mistakes. My old mindset has not come back—I haven’t allowed it room to do so. But, that doesn’t mean that I’m not going to keep making them. It’s a part of human life and cannot be avoided. So, instead of spending all that time pretending that you’re perfect, stop lying to yourself, and admit that you have issues. Admit that you may need help. Admit that you’re unsure of what to do. You’ll be better for it.

For a time, things weren’t going well. Yes, it wasn’t as bad as before, but it didn’t necessarily mean that things were working as efficiently as possible. After quitting my job I became a bit isolated, lacking social interaction. I became disillusioned with my writing, seeing as I had no external input on my content. My novel manuscript was a file on my computer that only I could see. I had no reinforcement, neither positive nor negative. No one to tell me if I was on the right track. No one to encourage me to keep on going. So, I went back into my contemplation and negative thoughts started popping up again. I began to doubt. I began to fear. I began to feel like I had made a rash decision. My mind was still healthy, but trending in the wrong direction. Before I let it go too far, I told myself that it was time. 

It was time to go back. To let go of my pride, and to once again admit that I needed help. That I needed more answers. That I needed more healing. That I needed an unbiased outlet for my thoughts. I hadn’t forgotten what I had learned in my first stint with therapy. All these things had been practiced and internalized. All these coping mechanisms were part of my routine now. But that didn’t mean that I had learned all that I needed to know. I had all the answers that I needed for that time, but then is then and now is now. The circumstances may have changed, the outlook may have improved, but that doesn’t mean I’m too big a man to speak to a therapist. Therapy served its purpose at the time, and it will serve its purpose now. I’m going back to school, so that I can continue to grow. There’s always more for me to learn.

Brokenness, Changing, Growth, Hope, Mental Health, Self-Love

Fake It Til You Make It

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I think I owe you, my readership, an apology. I haven’t been as active on here as I want to be. I’m sure you’ve noticed that most of my recent posts have been poetry, and my blog entries have been few and far between. I have to admit that this long multi-post series has burnt me out to some extent. I’ve been writing about (or at least trying to) write about the same damn thing for so long that I’ve gotten kind of bored with it. I lost sight of where I’ve been trying to go. Directionless writing tends to leave you with your gears spinning in neutral, so we can just forget that for now. I will likely find my focus and finish it at some point, but I feel like I need to do something different. So here we go. 

I used to write a lot of poetry as a teenager and in my early 20s. In 2010/2011 there was a popular Facebook trend where people challenged themselves to post an artistic photo every day for a month or three months or a year. Photography had never been a strong suit of mine, so I had wanted to try something different—something I was better suited for. I decided to write poems. I drew inspiration from observing people and nature on my way to and from class. It was refreshing and gave me a different perspective on life. Up til that point (and a decade beyond), I had been extremely pessimistic. As you know, I wasn’t in a good mental headspace, and not in tune with my emotions. I was mad at the world. I hated myself. And I found it hard to count my blessings. It was easy to overlook the positive, and see only the negative. I was uptight, and judgmental. Opinionated but uninformed. Overall, not a particularly pleasant person to be around. But I didn’t know it, I lacked self-awareness. I was too caught up in my own head to open my eyes and see the world around me. 

Writing poetry allowed me to do that to some extent. Instead of finding new things to hate, I found things to appreciate. Birds for one. Trees for another. The smell of an autumn breeze. The sound of wind rustling through the leaves. A stray ray of sunshine peaking through the clouds. All these things I took for granted. All these things I hadn’t really noticed. They were just there, and to me, they would always be there. They didn’t mean anything to me, but it didn’t mean I wasn’t able to write about them. A lot of things in life can be faked. Appreciation for nature is no different. Faking it sounds bad, but it isn’t always. Sometimes it’s necessary in order for you to move on in life. Sometimes faking it is the only way for you to feel okay with your life trajectory. Sometimes it means tricking your mind into believing things that you can’t otherwise convince yourself to believe. 

I am a rational person. Logical and methodical. Things have to make sense in my head in order for me to function. It is a good character trait to have, but sometimes life calls for something different. I’ve said time and time again that one of the key elements to living a fruitful life is to have balance in all things. Being rational is good, but not all the time. Sometimes you need to show emotion, be spontaneous or impulsive. Not every decision needs to be well thought out. If you’re overly rational all the time, you risk missing out on impromptu moments that can’t be experienced any other way. If you’re not rational enough, you open yourself up for delusional thought or misguided actions. 

This is something that I have worked on and am still working on. Spontaneity will never be a strength of mine, I understand that. But it’s something that I need to embrace. I can’t always plan things out weeks in advance. Life doesn’t always give me that option, so I need to learn to adapt. However, adapting is easier said than done. Sometimes I feel lost if I don’t have my rational thought. True, it’s generally better for you in the long run. Making deliberate decisions (especially when it comes to finances) will afford you better control over your life. But often the counter to rationality is gratification—more specifically instant gratification. It’s often believed that the freer you are with your decision making and looser you are with your wallet the more fun you will have. You can make a decision that will pay off later, or you can indulge now. I won’t deny that there is some merit to that argument, but I wouldn’t go so far as to label it a universal truth. Not many things in life are. The world doesn’t operate in absolutes, despite how often they try to teach us otherwise. They want us to believe that everything is black or white, but that oversimplifies things. 

It has been some time since I’ve been in school though, so maybe things are starting to change. I don’t think it’s crazy to say that the way kids are taught now is not the way that I was taught. Culture has changed. Society has changed. Expectations and beliefs have changed. Growing up it used to be male or female, heterosexual or homosexual, good versus evil. That was how we were taught, that was how we were raised. It’s safe to say that this isn’t the way that kids are raised these days, judging from social media and Hollywood depictions of this generation. Everything seems to be on a spectrum nowadays. We operate on a sliding scale. I think we’re better for it. Classifying things as black or white turns situations into us versus them, leaving no room for deviance. It limits people into groups A or B, leaving no room for anything else. What if we’re both; what if we’re neither? What then? 

I have always been an outcast. I likely always will be. I’m fine with that. I am comfortable with myself. I like who I am, and where I’m going. Of course, it wasn’t always like that. It took a lot of hard work. Years of therapy fixed me, but it didn’t change me. Who I became through my efforts had always been there, hidden deep. It just took a key to unlock it. I didn’t change who I was, I merely gained confidence in my abilities and realized who I could become. In order to do that, I needed to know who I was. I needed to better understand what my role was in the grand scheme. I needed to understand the purpose that I served. Everyone has a role in life. We were all meant to make an impact—great or small, positive or negative. We are all cogs in a machine. 

However, we all play a different role. No two people are the same. No two people serve the same purpose. That’s something that I had trouble understanding growing up. I saw other people’s success and I envied them. I wanted to be like them and do the same things that they did. It didn’t matter if the pursuit wasn’t well-suited for me. I wanted to do what I wanted to do, without regard for potential consequences or possible outcomes. Unfortunately, the image of my heroes was all I could think about. I didn’t have the time or energy to spend on the work I needed to do to be like them. My outlook was short-sighted. I saw the starting point and I saw the destination, but I never paid attention to the journey. This proved to be a hindrance for many years to come. Anything is attainable—your dreams are within reach—but only if you work hard and invest the requisite time and energy. No surprise then that I wasted a decade of my life putzing around. I didn’t know any better though. It was easy for me to self-deprecate and diminish my own accomplishments. I didn’t think very highly of myself. I didn’t believe in myself and I had no confidence in my abilities. 

If you don’t believe in yourself, then who will? If you don’t love yourself, then  who will? If you don’t think that you can succeed, then who will? You can’t expect things to go well in your life if you don’t have faith. If you don’t think that you will succeed, then you won’t. It’s as simple as that. Self-fulfilling prophecies aren’t a myth. There’s no tangible evidence to prove it, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t see it in action. The world sees your energy and it replicates it. If you have trouble seeing the good in life and only focus on the negative, then bad things will keep happening to you. Negative energy will lead to negative results. What you get out of life is what you put into it. Karma is real. Vibes are real. Energy is real. Optimism is contagious, but so too is pessimism. When it comes down to it, the way someone experiences life centers on their mindset.

Unfortunately, it’s easy to get stuck in an unproductive mindset. Our brains are still developing into our mid to late 20s. We’re treated like adults, but we’re not yet fully formed. We’re expected to grow up, but we aren’t fully grown. It’s a hard thing to reconcile, but that’s what college is for. It gives young adults a chance to mature before they’re thrown out into the real world. Having a college degree doesn’t necessarily guarantee us a high-paying job. Contrary to popular belief, that’s not the greatest impact higher education has. Its greatest impact is teaching us how to become independent. We’re given more responsibility and more freedom at the same time, while the stakes are relatively low. However, I would be remiss not to mention that college isn’t for everyone. I’ve said it before, and my stance hasn’t changed. Don’t mistake this as a handbill pushing youths towards college. That’s not my intent. That is to say that I would’ve been utterly lost and aimless without college. It afforded me four-and-a-half years to get my mind right before I jumped in. And even then, my mind wasn’t fully right or healthy, but at least it was on its way.

Breaking bad habits is hard. Especially when you’re a young adult trying to figure out the way of the world when your brain is still developing. I’m not saying anything groundbreaking here. It takes constant attention and training. It takes dedication and intention. Circumstances won’t change unless you will yourself to change. That’s the bottom line. Things rarely happen on their own. Sure, there might be good omens or good luck here and there, but it doesn’t last. If you want to grow as a human being, if you want to improve and expand your skillset, you need to work at it. You need to put your all into every endeavor. You don’t half-ass things. You don’t make excuses. You do. Simple as that. You set your eyes on a goal(s) and you keep advancing towards it. When you reach your goal, you set a new one. Your career has only milestones, it has no endpoint. 

Your achievements—big or small—mean something. They’re not to be taken lightly. Don’t downplay your skill level. Don’t talk badly about yourself all the time. Self-deprecation is fine in moderation, but don’t start to believe the lies you tell yourself for humility or humor’s sake. Learn to love yourself. Self-love more than anything will help you to achieve everything you’ve dreamed of and more. Your mental health matters. If you need to take a step back from a relationship or friendship to focus on getting your mind right, then do so. If you need to quit a toxic work environment to get your mind right, then do so. If you need to distance yourself from your parents or siblings to get your mind right, then do so. 

It’s hard, I know. We don’t like to admit that we have flaws or weaknesses. We don’t like to admit that sometimes we need to cancel plans because we don’t feel up to it. We might be drained mentally or emotionally, but we’re scared to let others see. Don’t be. We are all humans, and we all go through things. We all have moments when solitude is all that we ask for. We might feel guilty for making up a shitty excuse, but sometimes you just need to be alone. Take that time. Make the effort to make sure that your mind is healthy. Sometimes it’s hard to love yourself. I’ve gone through moments of deep self-loathing too. I understand your pain. 

But you have to rid yourself of that mindset. It does you no good. Start small. Count your blessings each and every day. If you can’t find things to be thankful for or proud of, then think in general terms. You woke up today. You have a place to live. You have food to eat. You have a job. You have family; you have friends. That’s more than some can say. You may not love yourself yet, but you will get there in time. Fake it til you make it. Remind yourself of what you have already. Remind yourself that you are loved. It may not be from yourself. It may not be from people around you, but someone out there loves you and cares about you deeply. Remind yourself of this every single day. Eventually the love may come from within. But until that time comes, you can fake it. It’s okay. 

Brokenness, Changing, Discovery, Growth, Mental Health, Reflections

Tortured Youth

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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.