Dear Friend,
I don’t really know where I should start with this one. Honestly, life has been very not that easy for me. I was planning to write you the continuation of my previous blog, but unexpected things erupted very suddenly, and I needed the time to process my thoughts and emotions through it all. A couple of days after I posted last teenage-year, things just went out of control. I don’t really know if I should write about it in detail because I am afraid that the person that is involved in the matter would not be very happy about it. I don’t want to cause another chaotic event, so I am just going to talk about it in an allegory way. I guess this post is going to be quite different than my previous writings because I am trying to make the story vaguely as possible so you can understand my philosophical thoughts while you don’t really get the bigger picture of what happened last December.
I used to be no one. I mean I do think that no one is a nobody, but still, I was that no one. I mean I wasn’t the main character. I wasn’t the typical girl who people notice at school. I wasn’t that bright of a kid because despite all the courses I took outside school, I was still failing most of my classes. I do have some ‘friends’ back then. Well, the friendship that I used to define as one. You see, not everyone wants to befriend that big, not-so-bright, butch, and inarticulate kid. I don’t know about you but growing up as a tomboy kid (still am btw) wasn’t that great at all. A lot of the kids used to call me all kinds of names that I still remember now. There are a lot of perks of having a great memory but remembering all those terrible things that had happened in my life isn’t so great after all. I read the Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck for a while now and that book really helped in understanding how I coped with all of that back then. Which is what I am going to write you about in this blog. Well, sort of just a speck of it. If you haven’t read the book, I surely recommend you read it.
Do you know what did I do when those reckless immature kids said mean things to me? I ran away from my true and real feelings. I pretended that I was okay. Everything was fine, and I was stronger than every single one of them. I got angry all the time towards a lot of people. Basically, I was having some anger issues at a very young age. I didn’t exactly know how to cope with the problem rationally and healthily. I mean what do you expect right? I didn’t have anyone to talk to because I couldn’t admit that I wasn’t okay with myself. If you are lying to yourself, how can you be genuine to other people? If you don’t feel the real feelings that you are having, how can you express them to anyone else? I think I did have some potential candidates who can be great listeners to me but as I ran away from my deepest and truest feelings, I just couldn’t talk about it with anyone else because I didn’t know what I was feeling the entire time.
As I reflected on my past years of diverse lessons and the immature-reckless attitude that I had, I realized that I was doing that because of the high expectations people had of me. Environment such as schools, families, and other comparison statements people told me to have a high impact on it. Those “You should be more girly”, “You should lose your weight”, “You should be like that kid who always got a good rank”, “You should study more”, “You should be calmer”, and other frontal opinions like “Why are you so ugly?”, “Why are you so loud?”, and “Why are you so big?” really change that soft 10-year-old kid you know. I mean I am talking about it now not because I want your pity or judgments toward my story, I just want you to understand that all these things happened and although it might sound too mediocre today, it was pretty saddening back then. I remember I always acted like I was this strong little girl who didn’t care about what others told me but, I know deep down that little girl was suppressing her true emotions just because she didn’t want other people to think that she is a crybaby or weak and vulnerable. I don’t know how I had this mindset planted in me when I was a kid, but it just happened the way it did. I suppressed my emotions for years. I mean even though I did try to stand up for myself, not everyone wants to listen to that no one right? Even though they did try to listen to me, if they don’t try to understand what I’ve been through, listening to me isn’t exactly as therapeutic as I thought it would be.
Long story short, I went to high school and that mindset was still implemented in me. I am not trying to play the victim here. I mean, yes, I’ve been bullied, but I will not sugarcoat myself and say that I have never verbally hurt or bullied anyone. I was that bad too. Well, I guess based on the present ethical dictionary I have, I was bad. I hurt other people and I used to treat other people like shit because I was feeling like shit all the time. I was telling myself that I was ugly and stupid. People called me fat and I hated myself because it is what I felt. Although biologically arguing, everyone has their own body percentages of muscle and fat but due to the high standards of socially constructed norms in society and the marketing strategy of the capitalist, people just assumed that having higher percentages of fat in your body than others is bad. Therefore, you must change yourself because society hates that you are not fitting their high-absurd beauty standards. I was reading Plato a while ago about form and it was really enlightenment about what people presume is real and not. I guess that’s true, all of us were born into a society filled with socially constructed definitions of everything.
If you are confused about these deep philosophical thoughts that I just mentioned, let me give you some examples so you can have the bigger picture of why everything in this world is socially constructed. First, let’s talk about what is socially constructed. Constructivism is one of the theories about life – well basically everything – that believes in historical evolution that changes over time due to the acceptance of people. Well, I am not going to give you any references here because I am too lazy to do so, so if you are still confused about the theory of constructivism, try to search for it on Google. Alright back to the topic. Yes, I do believe that everything in the present is socially constructed. What news you heard today? Socially constructed. That phone you have today? Socially constructed. What famous people do you admire so much? Socially constructed. Beauty standards? Socially constructed. Everything and I mean everything is socially constructed. Do you want to know why I was bullied because of my body? Socially constructed. Why? Because when we were a kid, we didn’t have the capabilities to think like adults. Well, some adults. We didn’t exactly know how to formulate questions and arguments from our own ethical and idealist beliefs. Therefore, when adults shoved us with information regarding the good and the bad about life, we just conveniently accepted all of that. We were dictated about what is right and wrong from the start.
Most people said that having a bigger body is ugly, so then all of us just slowly accept that information as a fact. That ‘fact’ that came from the normal ‘routines’ of people slowly implemented in our brains which created that electricity in every generation to label ‘fat’ as ugly. I don’t really get why people keep on labeling things in every era, but I do understand why it happened. Have you ever wondered why and how humans could be so sure about what things really matter in life? Without social expectations, do you really know what success really is? These days people just assume that success means you have a big house with awesome cars and your perfect family. If one day, people don’t have any standards and liberalizations on what success really meant, do you still have the definition of success that you have right now? Let that sink in for a bit so you could reevaluate your level and standards of success. As kids we were told that having low grades is bad, so then when our teacher gave us an F, we panicked and hide our test results so we would not get punished. Why it is bad? Because if you have low grades then you wouldn’t have a good rank in your class, which means you won’t have the opportunity to get into a prestigious-amazing school that could help you in getting into a great-high paying job. Why it is bad? Back again to that success labellization, if you can’t get into a high-paying job then you won’t get that amazing life everyone is longing for. Funny, isn’t it? Your whole life has been dictated to reach that dictated standards and routines by society. Makes you wonder what you really want in life without people’s expectations.
Back to the story, do you know what I did back then to handle those people? I didn’t care. Well, I pretended that I didn’t care. Deep down, I know I did care. I care tremendously about what they had labeled in me. I just didn’t have the courage to express it. I wasn’t being honest with myself. I wasn’t ready to accept that. I wasn’t ready to accept that I gave other people to control what I believe I was. I gave them the ability to put high expectations in me and tried so hard to reach those expectations because I wanted to satisfy everyone. I wanted to be accepted by their standards. As they didn’t like the way I was back then, I tried so hard not to be myself because I wanted to have that sense of belonging everyone is longing for. Ironic, isn’t it? Living your life to other people’s expectations they put in you. Makes you wonder, do you even know yourself if you live your life without giving other people the command to control you.
Long story short, I ate 5 times a day anyway. I wasn’t accepting my truest and deepest emotion, despite my little suppress feelings urging me to get out. I didn’t want to admit that I deeply care about everything. I didn’t have the courage to be vulnerable. I just suppressed those emotions, feelings, and thoughts without having the grit to change anything about it. My mindset was a wreck. My body was unhealthy. As I didn’t change, things just never change. I stayed in that mindset for years and I play the victim all the time. Instead of changing my habits and realizing that it is the right thing to do for myself, I just questioned things like: “Why everyone is feeling great while I feel miserable?”, “Life is so unfair, why I was born this way?”, “Why no one comes to save me?”, “Does anyone ever care about me?”, “Am I really this pathetic?”. Well, these questions are the reasons why I didn’t change myself sooner.
The victim and marathon mindsets were the reasons why I was stagnant in my character development. Marathon here means trying to run away from your truest self. Running away from your feelings. Running away from your intuitions. Running away from the present moment. When you keep running away and playing the victim all the time, you will never find any solution to your problems. I was reading Mark Manson’s book again after two years since I read it for the first time in 2020 and honestly, re-reading the book has made me reflect better on his philosophical thoughts. In his book, he was explaining how you should always solve your problems no matter what. You can’t give other people responsibility for your miserable state. We are all living on this earth with our own problems and giving other people the obligation to fix your problems isn’t the healthiest way at all. Back again to my first argument, don’t expect too much. We should agree that sometimes or maybe most of the time you are disappointed with yourself as the reality didn’t reach your expectation, so how can you put expectations towards other people? After all, other people are another form of thing that we can never control. What we can control is ourselves. We can always control the way we see things and occurrences that happened to us. Whether it is bad or good, we are responsible for our reactions toward it. You are responsible for everything that you have gone through. Through every decision, every thought, every response, and every single person you surround yourself with.
Therefore, instead of filling your life with negative thoughts, complaining about how your life is unfair, and how everyone should treat you differently just because you are ‘different’, you should change the way you look at life. Billions of people are living and breathing in this speck of dust in the galaxy called ‘earth’ and every single human in this world is struggling in their own way with their own problems. Just because you are feeling bad doesn’t mean other people don’t feel bad. Just because you feel like shit, it doesn’t justify you treating other people like shit. Adding the point that we can never compare our struggles with other people as everyone has their individual level in coping with any problems and sadness. Therefore, I’ve learned that I am not special. I am never going to be extraordinary because everyone is extraordinary in their own way. If everyone is extraordinary, doesn’t it make me ordinary? I’ve learned that I shouldn’t make my problems and happiness dominate others’ because after all, I am just a human and I have my problems but so do you. I realized that the world isn’t revolving around us, and certainly, other people don’t exist for us, they exist for themselves. All of us are revolving around the world trying to do lots of things just to make ourselves fill fulfilled and alive in search of our purposes. So, instead of those pathetic questions and thinking that you must be the center of attention all the time, you should remind yourself that you are somebody but at the same time, you are also a nobody.
With love,
epi.
17.04.22
[23.13
Jakarta, Indonesia
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