There is something that happened in my life after being sent to learn about my family's origins that really chills my spine. I remember a time when I was casually laying down and saw the illusion of my little sister trying to wake me up, the world around me changed into the front room of where I once lived with the rest of my family, even hearing her voice when she wasn't even there..
This illusion was followed by a second one where myself, my older brother, and older sister were laying down on the couches we somehow 'owned' from sitting on them all the time and liking where they were. When these illusions disappeared, I found that my mind had wondered to the point I became delusional.
Why am I mentioning such a personal memory and telling it to strangers in a blog? I'm not quite sure myself… Maybe I'm trying to get attention or maybe I'm trying to turn my thoughts into words so that I can later look back at myself. Either way, I seem to be unable to get past what I thought my mind had gotten over.
So to those willing to hear me out, let me tell you a few vague things about myself. I live in a strict family where success is rewarded and failure is punished. To not be able to achieve something the first time had always been taught to me as a moral failure through life.
I have five siblings, one older brother, one eldest sister, and three younger sisters. In my whole life I had never been truly separated from my siblings until I was taken to a 'trip' to the country where my family originated from… to understand their customs and beliefs.
'Is this some sort of holiday or am I staying in this country to do work?' Was the first thing I thought as my prim and proper self robotically went to do everything my mum told me to do. The only problems I had were when they told me that I am allowed to rest.
They said we would only stay there for a month, yet one month became two, and two months became three. Until the moment of reckoning, when I was told to stay in this foreign country with family members I had never met before while they were leaving to go back home by themselves. This was basically where my mental breakdown all started.
Now you may be thinking about how much of a softie I am. My mom left me in another country with other family members and yet THAT was enough for me to lose my cool? What kind of child sticks to his mum this way?
Well, my counter argument is that my mum wasn't the reason I had a breakdown.
People go through different phases in their life after leaving secondary school. First they go to college to get a degree, then they go to university so they can get a certificate that can net them a high paying job.
College went well for the most part. Although I didn't get the results I wanted, it was when I started to go University did the weight and pressure I felt at home skyrocket tenfold. I had always been a guy who becomes tunnel-visioned when concentrating on one thing too hard. It had become a disadvantage in some cases yet somehow was convenient for studying.
However, every time I came home, I was unable to do study no matter how hard I tried. Whenever I'd go into my room to revise the work I was given, I'd always be pulled downstairs by a voice that told me to take care of my younger siblings, who could never get along with each other. I told my mum that I didn't have time and needed to do my homework, but was instead put into deeper straights when I was expected to get a driving license even my younger cousins were able to get.
My theory test, my university work, and the fact that I couldn't get out of taking care of my siblings no matter what I said piled on me. I was stressed and had no way to overcome it. Perhaps, this would be the time a normal person would go ask a friend for help, but the only problem was that I didn't have friends I could talk to anymore.
Throughout my entire life I had been 'unlucky' when it comes to trying to balance my family's expectations of me and what society expected of me. In college, I still had a few particular friends who entered the same institution I applied for, but University was different.
I knew no one, I couldn't socialise due to fundamentally lacking in that area even at a young age as a result of my persecution complex. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't accept strangers outside my social circle and would always be suspicious of them that they are conspiring against me. This kind of mindset was birthed from being bullied too often by a number of people at once rather than one person in particular.
There was even a time I became absolutely fearful of people after I was beaten up by someone my brother antagonised by stealing a phone. The kind of trauma I felt made it so even the slightest touch from someone who wasn't 'family' would make me lose the strength to stand properly. I didn't hate people, I feared them.
But even with this, don't I have siblings and family members I could talk to?
The only problem with that is not only did I have an inferiority complex towards both of them. My older brother was the social and confident one, my eldest sister was the intelligent and wise one… leaving me as their youngest brother to only be both their shadows.
I didn't hate them. In fact, even though my sociable brother had always made my life hell with how he'd antagonise people who would look for me to beat up when they couldn't find him, I knew it wasn't his fault…
The way we had been raised was under the notion that people only fail because they don't try hard enough and that morality fit to what benefits us. Our mum hadn't always been emotionally connected with us since they believed that fear was necessary to control us and make sure we wouldn't take a wrong path.
Little did they know that they inadvertently showed my brother the wrong path by not understanding that a self-serving approach to what's right and wrong will ultimately lead to having a son that's purely selfish.
It was a complex set of circumstances, but ultimately it led to me having a brother that was some sort of 'sociable delinquent' who hung out with the wrong crowd at a young age. He got into fights, didn't ever do as he was told, and always acted impulsively.
I on the other hand was considered the exact opposite of my one year older brother. In my youth, I may have been bullied due to having illnesses and my timid personality, but in end I fit the mould for a 'good son' in the eyes of my mother. I always did as I was told…
And when the going got tough for me in university and I needed someone to talk to, I suddenly felt extremely alone… The only friend I had was my older sister, but the more I cared for her, the less I wanted her to be burdened by my problems as time went by.
It's an ironic mindset. I felt lonely and isolated because there was no one to talk to, but I wouldn't talk to the person close to me even though they would have been willing to hear me out.
I was too emotionally unstable at that time and wouldn't think logically. I saw my sister as the Sun that brought rays of sunshine in my life and my mum as Planet Earth, the person I couldn't never be independent from no matter how hard I tried.
I couldn't talk to my cousins since my mum would go ballistic if anyone told her off for anything or told her the methods she used were wrong. They aren't exactly the kind of person who listens to reason even today.
You either win or lose in a conversation, something so ingrained into my mind that it could never had occurred to me what compromising was. You either win or lose, you're either right or wrong, it's only one or the other.
This brought me down to my lowest point when the time came where everything my teacher at university would say in our course sounded like gibberish to me as learning about hardware wasn't easy.
Then I reached my breaking point. I couldn't talk to anyone meaningfully, nor could I make a friend who could advise me on what to do in such a situation. To the point suicide even seemed like a viable option with how depressed I was from bottling up my thoughts all the time. I'd smile in front of my family members, but on the inside I couldn't do anything about the knowledge that I was going to 'fail'. I was going to do the morally wrong action of failing my exams.
Therefore, instead of talking to others, I used mental tricks to make it so I'd think less. To 'think less' had always been a thing I had always been told to do whenever I'd express myself, and that's exactly what I did by telling myself dumb stuff like 'chocolates equal to happiness' or 'I can just die when everything's over'.
And guess what, I was too much of a whimp to follow through with my suicidal urges and had to live with the consequences of giving up on my education and focusing more on distracting myself from sadness.
I didn't want to feel sad, so I watched funny videos in my free time. I wanted to feel I had a purpose while also getting closer to my older sister who was gradually growing apart from me, so I started writing as a hobby despite hating it to my core. After all, the biggest failure of my college years was being dyslexic and only getting a C Grade in English Language rather than the full course that also involved literature.
When I finally came to and my family found my results had been extremely poor to the point I didn't even attend my exams. I couldn't even say anything because I knew personally well it was my fault.
Compared to anything they could say to me, living with the knowledge that I was a 'failure' made me want to die every time it was brought up. This all turned into a very pessimistic personality that couldn't ever see any hope in ever growing out of the word 'failure' tagged into my skin.
Suddenly, I started actually disliking my brother for the first time as my mum would actually praise him despite how he dropped out of secondary school (high school) to run off who knows where to become independent.
I tried applying for jobs and going into interviews with a smile on my face, but my pessimism couldn't be hidden no matter how much I followed the advice of Work Programmes I went to. Every time I would be rejected from a job, my confidence plummeted by a great amount.
This wasn't helped that the first few weeks of finding a job was followed with me regularly visiting my grandma so they could ask continuously if I had gotten a job already every single week. Every time I was despised for not having a job despite being a guy, the word 'Jobless NEET' became the only thing I could associate myself with.
Could I achieve anything? Can I even do work?
These questions made me lower my standards of myself as I didn't want to fail again. As long as I could do the job, I'd apply for it. Trial and error isn't something I knew of as failure was never permitted…
Even more ironic, huh? I didn't want to fail my University finals, so I didn't even go the exam, resulting in me not getting a grade. I didn't even want to 'fail' in basic interactions and embarrass myself, so I avoided them like the plague.
It was only on the internet that I could truly be myself since no one knows who I am. Even now I am clueless in how to use Social Media and Instagram since it had been banned at home for being the reason a lot of people get stupid thoughts and do stupid things…
But even as I lived passively without trying to change anything in my life, other people would still make decisions regardless of my opinion. The older sister I believed in so much suddenly ran away from home to another country to get away from home and become independent. Starting to see the pattern here?
My mum, being the person who lacked understanding of me the most despite living with me, thought I'd also become like my sister and try running away from her as well. So she took my phone and sent me to another country to learn about my origins… but also to get married… which I was told about only at the time where I had to either agree to getting married after a month or not.
Of course I refused it despite my mum giving me the two choices like always between 'Yes' and 'Yes'.
It suddenly occurred to me at that moment that they weren't giving me any choices, and I confronted them about it, which lead to them getting my uncle to come and explain how I shouldn't say things like that or become like my sister who became the 'disgrace to the family'. What was the difference between my brother leaving home to be independent and my sister doing it?
From what I was told, it was because my brother was a guy that it was okay and they couldn't forgive my sister since she was a girl who left home this way. Even my previously absent father who remarried twice after leaving my mother suddenly called for once and acted like he never left in the first place. He talked about how her actions were disgraceful despite not having raised her. It was my mum alone who took care of the family.
I was really angry when I had been left alone in another country not because I felt alone, but due to feeling that I had finally been abandoned by everyone I even held any semblance of a close relationship with.
First my dad walked off without a word before remarrying, not once but twice, which made my relationship with him something that could be turned 'On' and 'Off' at a moment's notice. Then my older brother left without a word to become a shop assistant who knows where in order to get freedom, causing my mum to put more pressure on me.
Those two people could be forgotten over time, but the last two people left me literally a few month's time, one after the other. My older sister knew she could trust me with anything, but she didn't tell me anything before leaving for another country. As for my mum, who I thought was the only person I could trust since there was no one older than me at home left to abandon me without a word, I was actually fully tricked by her come to my origin country and stay there for year without sny proper explanation,
'Everyone had abandoned me…' Were my thoughts as I talked to the relatives I actually knew that had come to this country to talk about how I wanted to go back and how my mum did wrong by tricking me, but all the answers I got were empty words without meaning.
I knew my mum wouldn't budge on anything once they made a decision, and my entire world finally fell apart when my mum told me I was her 'worst son' for telling my uncles to talk to them. Even though I had basically turned myself into a robot who'd do anything my mum said except getting married when I don't have a job, I was still called their worst son at the end of the day…
At that moment I became disillusioned, everything my life stood for and all those things I thought had meaning were revealed to not have mattered. The only person I cared about the opinion of the most didn't even trust me to not plan some kind of 'escape' from them. I started refusing to talk to my family members in my origin country and even truly believed their words.
I was their worst son… The 'failure'... The only one who couldn't get a job… My pessimism turned into depression as I'd randomly start crying from remembering my regrets and would even start seeing illusions of the good old times every now and then.
And finally we're here, to the memory I was talking about in the beginning of the blog. To say there was any progress in my mindset even after months went by would be inaccurate. I thought I was making progress by objectively looking at what happened every now and again, but that only served to me to twisted to the point my uncle thought I'd gone crazy when I first met him.
It was only when this uncle said that my mum was wrong with the method they brought me here did I finally calm the heck down somewhat. Even the vague idea that my mum could be wrong and someone else acknowledging that fact for once was what saved me.
This happened a few months after when one of my uncles came over to do some work and see how was doing at the side. He wanted me to love the country my father's family were at and the religion I was taught while growing up, but his words only made me nihilistic in the end. Saying the 'trails' I went through being the work of God only made me feel that even the celestial being that created the universe doesn't like me, and on top of that, due to not having proper faith in God, aren't I already destined to go to Hell no matter what I do?
In essence, my life became living solely to pay back the eternal dept of being birthed by my mum and going to Hell once I die. Now isn't that a depressing mindset to have? But oddly enough, I was unable to feel there was anything wrong with living my life like this.
I had always been taught to 'think less', so how can my uncle's argue if I thoughtlessly made my point of view on life so twisted? Morality no longer seemed black and white anymore, but why did I feel I regressed?
And now, a long time after they left, my thoughts have become more normal after meeting my mum again and realising that any normal person looking at mum from an outsider's perspective would have known that they weren't worth putting faith in. I talked to my sister briefly for once after a year of not contacting her due to not having a phone, yet I couldn't bring myself to ask these important things I wanted to talk about over the phone… The subject of how I felt after she left was too heavy for me to talk about in messages.
I… regret so much in my life… I also can't bring myself to put faith in anyone anymore. All I can do is find work and hope these problems will sort themselves… I may be a coward… but I can at least say that I 'attempted' to change my family… and ultimately failed to do so…
I no longer feel angry or depressed anymore, but I feel like I've lost something that made me who I was before I came to my origin country. Is it a good thing or bad thing? Maybe I've matured a little. Though in the end I know that I can never become the person I once was…
That's all I have to say. Good luck in your own battles in life and I hope you have a better time than I do!