When someone posts to their social media accounts, we all want it to be perfect. To show the best part of ourselves that we want to show to the world. To stand out for just a little bit more than the rest of us. So we make our posts.
We post our stories about how happy we are in every picture we send on the internet. We even take photos and put them up with hashtags and tags and everything else that makes us famous for who we are. Okay, maybe the word 'recognized' would be the most appropriate word for that.
Anyway, we show them that part of ourselves to the point that... we end up lying to ourselves that this should just be the 'us' that people know. That's when the lies come. The lies start spreading like wildfire through social media until they become something that people don't care about as much as they once thought. And because there aren't any people who really know us at first, there aren't very many people who are interested in our story at all.
It happens to everyone eventually. Okay, maybe my description here turned out to be a little far away from what I actually intended to say. But back to the topic. This is me trying to say that as much as I want to be aesthetically beautiful and eye-catching as they are... I couldn't be that person.
That's my reality. And believe it or not, I've accepted that part of me a long time ago. But maybe I've done that rather unconsciously. With all that had happened in my life over the course of the years that I've lived in this world, perhaps I chose not to care. To harden my heart over the reality that my life sucks.
No big goals, no big dreams, no big actions. Just me going with the flow. Not with the flow of the world around me, but with the flow that still makes me think about this life that I have. Because life is never simple. Even if it seems that way. And yes, I've always known that.
So you could call it denial, I guess. Or perhaps something closer to indifference. Whatever you want to call it, it doesn't change reality. I'm here, living out a life full of hidden pain, too much insecurities, and lots of internal suffering as a result of it. Bad side of that, I've never let it out to anyone. Maybe except for my journals, I guess. But never to any person, even to my family.
Which probably means that I'm not as good at keeping myself locked in my little box as I would like to think. I don't want to hurt anyone, least of all my parents and my sisters. I've learned over time that it's better to keep things inside. Better to stay quiet and try to ignore the feeling that something was wrong.
It's been like that, even though I've reach 31 years of age last year. And so... now I don't know what to do to fix my life. I'm at a loss, to be honest. This is the truth about me, right off the bat. A complete, utter lack of confidence. In everything. Not that I haven't tried. I've tried a lot. But nothing ever seemed to stick. Never did it work. Nothing I did seemed to help. So I decided that I'd stop trying altogether. At least try and keep my head down.
You would ask if I don't feel envious about my classmates and friends finding love and having family ahead of me. Or seeing them traveling from various places and knowing that they were performing well in their business or job positions. Yes, I do feel envious. And trust me, I felt so envious that they had these things and experiences in life that... I never got to achieve at all.
But sometime after that, I'd be indifferent again about the news. It's like... I'm losing a reason to find my life again after all that lose and failures and disappointments. And I mean like 1-2 decades of such things happening in my life. I can't handle it anymore. No matter where I am or what I do, the pain keeps getting worse, and I just feel... hopeless.
There have been times that I wanted to run away and hide, to just close myself up somewhere and disappear. Like... that's all I could ever do anyway. Just... vanish. Trust me, you have no idea how many times I've wished for that. But in the end, all I could do is cry it out in silence. No one knew, and I don't think anyone would even come to know.
And besides, the tears didn't get anywhere. It made me sick and miserable in a different way. Because then I felt so dirty and disgusting by myself. And that's why I just kept hiding.
And while I did that, I lost the only thing that mattered to me, and that was myself. Now that I am 31 years old, I don't know if I should even try to find it again.
I lost myself somewhere along the way of writing other characters' stories and journeys. I lost myself when I ended up saying to myself that I won't commit to a relationship when I haven't been able to fix my life just yet. I lost myself when I let those opportunities pass me by, whether knowingly or unknowingly.
I want to know myself again. I want to find myself again -- even when I don't really know who I really am all this time. I was clueless of the things that I can do and that I could possibly achieve. All I knew back then was that I wasn't good enough for anything. Not even for the one talent/hobby/skill that I held on to since I graduated in high school.
My name is Florence Joyce A. Dongael and it's been 24 weeks and 2 days since I turned 31. So here's the question (mainly for myself). What do I have to do to change my life even for a little at the end of the 54th week of my 31st year in this world?
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