Identity
I basically ruined all the friendships I had since I was a kid, and it is me who is the problem, not the people, although I kept myself busy to the point where I don’t feel it most of the time, alongside guilt and fear of making new friendships.
This question is by far the hardest for me to answer. I’ve tried for years, and every attempt was prone to failure. A big part of the struggle wasn’t just about identity itself, but about how strange my relationships were, unstable, confusing, always shifting. It’s hard to know who you are when the people around you don’t stay long enough , for you to see your reflection in them.
You’re just forgetful.
There is one attribute that almost all the people around me seem to know about, because I keep talking about it a lot: I find it difficult to remember both people and places, I forget things very easily.
I was waiting so badly to join university, high school had not been kind to me. It was not catastrophic, but it was deeply unpleasing. I did not feel at home there. I felt like I was passing through something I had to endure rather than something I could grow inside. I didn’t like it at all.
There is a famous Viktor Frankl quote:
“When a man can’t find a deep sense of meaning, he distracts himself with pleasure.”
This piece of writing was part of an article I’m writing, about how I would help someone answering the question of “what do I want to do”, where I discuss how to pick a major and what helps you to define the way you contribute to this world. I found the draft of the article to be very lengthy, I may expected the reader to be aware of different notions upfront, so I preferred this topic to be referenced here. As many of my drafts are pointing to it.