Rediscovering myself at nineteen

I can’t say if I’m I too young, or maybe too old, because I haven’t yet found the answer to the question is age a feeling or is it determined by society? One thing I know for sure about myself is that I have a lot of energy that I’m willing to put into battles that chose me.

I believe that events happen to me for a reason and I learn from them. That has built me as a person, the warrior, I believe I am. Growing up different in a poor and very conservative region, I had to be aware of that at a very young age, which had me growing up way too early – and the solitude, the lack of love, the lack of recognition, and of tolerance towards differences in this society determined me as a strong, independent boy that was simply too ahead of his time.

But it feels like I’ve been fighting for my life lately. Modeling the world around me had me changing other people on the price of losing myself. I started living retrospectively – with having skipped a very important stage of life, that distracted me from my surroundings. I was slowly, but surely, going towards a giant void.

And I did fall into that very void, hurting myself badly. That happened after I graduated High School – this summer, when I refused to acknowledge my own birthday. I distanced myself from my friends and family because I didn’t know what I really wanted – I wanted to grow up, I needed to, but I also wanted to have a childhood even when it was way too late. Have a second chance at learning how to speak with other people. I had concealed my lack of social skills under verbal attack, arrogance – that I called respect and power. While that cemented my place, I had successfully built an impenetrable wall around myself, protecting not just what’s inside, but also the outsides from what’s inside. Not too late all of it went out of control and I started projecting my self-intolerance onto others, mostly my friends – and hurting myself meant that I also hurt them. And I was completely aware of that.

I needed to save myself and save my friends, my family and keep in touch with my surroundings. But when I had completely lost control and awareness, that was impossible. And people quickly forgot I existed, starting two incredible months where I only went out in nighttime, when there weren’t enough people to see what a ruin I had become (quite visually), and not showing any signs of life in daytime. I was all alone with my thoughts and that was the key to starting my path to rediscovering my identity.

My second chance hit me like a bullet-train, starting a pyramid of three main events. I had a distant friend come back into my life after a long hiatus, helping me find out about problems I didn’t know I had – we started healing each other, sharing our pains, which started the long journey towards finding their solutions. Turned out that shared pain hurts less.

I also started studying for a degree, and getting admitted to studying was hard and painful. But when I succeeded I told myself that maybe life was worth living and maybe I should really try getting better. An amazing opportunity to start all over was ahead of me – there were all these new people I was willing to meet. But I was scared – what if they don’t like me, what if they are scared of me, what if they already knew each other and didn’t need me? Questions I’d rather die than find the answer to. And I’m not a social machine – I can’t speak to that many people all at once, so I started going through the crowd person by person. But after going through my teens without ever having been in a relationship I was really, very strongly hoping the time has finally come. I was terribly wrong – and now I have another five years of complete solitude ahead of me. But a person – one of the few I’d consider calling a friend – once told me ‘Don’t have any expectations – and you’ll feel fulfilled.’

The final stage of my redevelopment was marked by me landing a crush. That happened not long after I had realized about my spiritual journey. Yet again, like a fifth grader, I have to find out how to win this battle that I somehow keep losing. It’s quite funny to me – knowing what it is to like someone but never knowing what it’s like to be that someone (or with them.)

And my path towards a new chapter is not done and I probably have a long way to go and again – lesson learned. I’ll keep walking towards this new me and I’ll try my best to keep myself genuinely happy, without faking it. That includes acknowledging my solitude in crowded spaces and embracing it. Who knows – maybe this happens to me at just the right time. The ultimate goal of this learning experience is to find a way to balance my inner universe and make myself lovable. Not just lovable by somebody else – but by me. Because that is something I miss too.