You are a 17-year old boy, devastated because you broke away from your comfort zone – your closest friends. You’ve got to make new ones, and fast. It isn’t a competition, but you know how these things work; if you’re too slow, you’re left out.

The quickest ticket to acceptance is a common enemy. So the moment someone pisses you and the rest of your acquaintances off, you get your chance. Jump onboard and take the lead. Formulate a plan to make yourself known. Go forth and fight this common enemy. You are one of them now. What’s worse is that you aren’t even aware of your own plans.

And for the longest time, you’re pissed.

You learn to fight for yourself and protect your ideas. When something goes wrong, something else triggers in your head and you protect yourself at all cost. Correction: You protect your ego at all cost. You keep fighting for yourself, but then you reason it out with everyone around you. You make sense, that’s why you’re persistent.

And for the longest time, you keep telling yourself that you make sense, that you’re right. Somehow, you’re really sure you’re right.

At some point, you finally realized that you’re not always right. All along, you had been so cocky, so narrow-minded. You want to change for the better. And at this point, you realize your personality really needs work. You need to be a better person.

Being a better person means working on your flaws. Focus on your flaws and make them disappear. And fail. And blame yourself. And start to feel that others are blaming you, but in truth you are the only one blaming yourself.

Keep on trying to fix yourself and your surroundings, because you think things can be better.

And you start to hate yourself. So you make plans to revolutionise whatever goes on inside your head, or change your own behaviour, or do anything that makes yourself a better person deserving of people’s respect, and maybe love.

But you find everyone drifting away from you – your closest friends, your new friends, even your family. Something blocks you from getting to know new people. Something blocks others from you. You are all alone.

So just live it off.

Just think positive and it’ll all go away.

Your favourite character in a game says that problems are smaller when you look at it from a distance, so you shall look at it from a distance.

As expected, it all come back and bite, really hard and really soon. You can’t take this anymore. You seek guidance and help, and your helpline happens to have long arms.

You receive counseling. You admit that you feel like you’re losing everything, and that you think it’s your fault. He tells you to fix your life. You don’t tell him just how hard you’ve tried doing that.

You don’t try to think how things went wrong.

But you try to fix them. You keep trying. You wear a smile.

And when you go to him again, you finally tell him how much you suck. You’re the cockiest person you ever knew. You don’t listen. You think you’re the best. You shut people up. And you need to fix yourself.

But then he tells you, no, you think you overestimate yourself, but no, really, you’re insecure. He says you think you suck. And you do think you suck. The only thing you actually need to fix is to make yourself stop thinking you suck.

So for a long time, you do things you think you’re good at. Your life gets back on track. What you were losing, you got some back, and you let go of the others, because sometimes it’s not you, it’s the world.

Things get better. You meet people. You fight worthy enemies together. You build bonds. You’re at the top of the world. You have everything and you want more. You are who you want to be.

But what if it’s all an illusion?

You watch your friends soar while you stand grounded. And then you realize, you still suck. You haven’t changed. The world still looks down on you. And that’s not their fault. You deserve it.

But it’s okay – that’s what you tell yourself. It’s okay because you can live it off. What choice do you have?

And before you realize, you’re punching the bed. You keep punching the bed, but you don’t know why. Somehow, you know it’s suppose to make you feel better. But from what? There’s no one to get angry with. There’s no one you want to punch.

Which tells you the truth.

The person you’ve always wanted to punch most was yourself. And yourself you punched, again and again. You kept telling yourself that you suck. You never loved yourself. You lied to yourself, pretended to love you, but no, you don’t. The one you hated the most was yourself. The one you looked down on most was yourself.

It’s not okay at all.