I have four papers and two finals today and I am bugging out so hard. For one of my papers, I basically had to write about myself and then follow up with theories explaining certain things. So I decided to write out my story first and then plug in the theories... Which I thought would be a good blog. What is this blog going to be about? It's about who I am and why I turned out the way I did.
When I went around campus to see how people view me as a person, I would hear “oh, he’s a great guy.”, “ A real sweet heart.”, “great person to talk to if you are ever in trouble.”, “He’s so involved and really mature.”, “I love this kid”; in general, I am perceived as an all-around good guy that can seem to do know wrong. I find this a little bit humorous, in a bittersweet sense. For if someone took a look at who I am three years ago, or any time prior to those years, those would be very different words. How different? All I have to say is that I am a three time suicide survivor, suffered anxiety neurosis, and severe depression; surprise? I’m a firm believer in the idea that “your past makes you who you are today”. I don’t necessarily believe that your past defines who you are, but instead it is the foundation of how a person turns out the way they do.
Growing up, I grew up in a pretty rigid and brick schedule environment. Self- expression was not tolerated in my house hold and anything that was not approved by my parent’s approval first was taboo. In short, I did not have a typical American childhood. In retrospect, this is not really too surprising. I was the first born male in my family. In the Asian culture, the first born, especially the son, is supposed to be their treasure. So they will do anything they can to nurture their pride and joy to become something they can show off to the rest of the world as their trophy. It really did not help that my teachers, tutors, and coaches saw me as a quick learner; me always wanting to make my parents happy didn’t help with my upbringing either. As far back as I can remember, my “friends” were always screened by my parents to make sure that they were going to be good influences that would promote a mentally stimulating environment. If that was not the case, they would tell me to not be friends with them anymore and make sure I do not stay in contact with them. On that off chance, that they received my parent’s approval, I would always be compared to them. My best friend was my biggest competition. To make sure that I would be able to catch up with my best friend, every day, every hour was booked with extra classes, swimming/tennis/piano/violin classes, and Chinese school. If I did not receive a satisfactory report from my educators, I would be disciplined or scolded. This was my parents attempt to make me a “better son”. By the time I was 7, I had learned to be terrified of my parents, to never trust my educators, to keep everything to myself as long as I could, and to see myself as nothing more than a failure.
When I was thirteen, and got into high school, I had not acknowledged that I had depression and anxiety yet. I would have already hallucinated shadows crawling out of the dark corners to stop and stare at me, wondering how much easier would it be if I just walked into traffic, drowning myself into angry and angsty music to find solace, running away into my books to go and dream that of myself as a knight in the olden days; the escapes would only last for so long. Sleep was a luxury to me, and my thoughts would never allow me to sleep. I had always assumed this was normal and I would grow out of this; since I had learned that during puberty, everyone goes through hormonal changes. I just had to tough it out. By my second year in high school, I had already made the three attempts at my life. It was painful and lonely. I had wanted it all to end. I was about to make a fourth attempt, but something unexpected to me. In my Chinese school, the place I had hated the most, I found my savior; my kung fu teacher. I’m not too sure if he noticed my mental state, but he took a liking to me. In my kung fu class, if the master takes a liking into you, that means he tends to pick on you; meaning I became the demonstration for the audiences and other students whenever he wanted to show the effectiveness of a technique or stance. So one day, he took me up to show people how to spar, he would always call it “free fighting” , apparently, I was doing a lot better than he expected in holding myself against him. So he decided to do a fancy combo kick. A kick to my neck, followed up with a spin drop kick to my chest. I was flat on the ground. Instead of looking worried, he goes over to me, looks at me, and asks with a smirk and hand out, “you okay?” in that moment in time, he had saved my life.
He gave me a reason to stay alive. Instead of always pining for my parents expectations, which I would seemingly never would be able to do; and a goal I was giving up on, my new mission in life, was to become strong enough that one day, while he’s still in his prime, to be able to do the same exact thing to him one day. Soon after, he disappeared to go back to China to take care of something. Always hoping he would return, I would train to show him how much I have improved. I never heard of him again until recently. I had learned that he became the honorary president of the Kung fu association in China. I was still severely depressed and anxious, but because of him, I never made another attempt at my life again.
After High School, I was accepted to multiple colleges. I chose to go to SUNY Binghamton because I saw it as an escape from “home”; an escape from my parents. That was the biggest mistake of my life. My depression and anxiety only grew worse. I would always be haunted by my thoughts of failure, going through relationships where I ended up either jilted or cheated on, not really knowing what I wanted to do with my life, except for the dream of eventually being a super hero or knight one day; I had turned to alcohol and sex. It was the only thing that I seemed to know I could do correctly, and I would use that as my escape. When I thought things couldn’t get worse, my insomnia had turned into hypersomnia. I would sleep up 14-15 hours a day and I never wanted to wake up. Soon after, I came back home and ended up in therapy and in Brookdale Community College.
Two years have passed since that time, I am graduating with a degree in psychology, my depression and anxiety have finally gone into remission, I have a normal sleep pattern, became the president of the Asian Club in my school, ended up in Dean’s list, became a hyperactive member of the Student Life Board, and finally found true relationships that weren’t there just for me to be compared to, but people who I could be around and be myself. And as of fall of 2012, I will be a student in Rowan University pursuing two degrees; psychology and public relations. Going through all of these things, I have learned to finally accept myself for who I am, and to use my past to make sure that I can cope better with whatever the future holds for me. But more importantly, I had found myself.
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