I started this year so positively that I couldn't believe how well things were going despite every Chinese fortune teller warning the people born in my lunar year about what a piece of shit this year is going to be. And then, bit by bit, I broke, not because I experienced the shit that was forecasted, but because I realised I was the shit in the forecast.

When I was still schooling, my parents would repeatedly let known to my siblings and I that the "people out there" are bad; they would do what they had to as long as it benefitted themselves, stooping low enough to manipulate and dominate. I was never new to any of that.

But having been in environments where everyone tried to be nice to one another, I was able to convince myself that I was more or less a righteous, "correct" person. This past year in which I was surrounded by people who are less careful about how others feel made me realise that I wasn't. Instead of learning about the "people out there", I finally got to know the person in there. I guess that is why I broke. I hated myself.

And yes, I know I take things too seriously, but that is part of my genetic makeup or neurolinguistic programming or whatever else it is.

I also realised a few things, the first being that everyone is a bad person. When we quarrel or fight or debate, I tend to question myself. I always felt like I was wrong, and because of that, I tried harder to convince myself and the other party that I was right, therefore becoming more angry. The truth is, we're all wrong and we're all "bad", because nobody is all good. We're both good and bad, as old as it sounds. There never is an answer to who is right and it hardly matters how things could've went instead. I pondered and pondered but everything I pondered was irrelevant.

The second realisation is that by letting all these self-doubt break me, I'm letting it rebuild me. In alchemy, this is a process they call the Black Phase, in which we let external forces (the "fire") break us down, and then we let internal forces (the "water") break us down even further before we finally proceed to the White Phase, in which we start to separate the relevant substances and the "mess".

These past few weeks had been difficult for me because I suspected something went really wrong when I was really young because I had been having lots of symptoms of childhood trauma. Also, I couldn't remember much of my childhood. Everything seemed to point that direction. I tried to remember and bits of "clues" returned to me. At one point, I got kind of obsessed, but fortunately, I just snapped out of it and decided to leave it hanging for a while and just be happy.

One result of this intensive reflection/obsession was my third realisation, which was so obvious: I want to heal people, not entertain them. So, I guess it's goodbye media and hello psychology. Let's see where that goes.

So, yeah, let me just be laidback and composed and free of myself. Hopefully, soon, I'll be able to be happy without trying.

Labels: future, personality, rants, reflection