Considering the past that I had,
Love was and is one of my biggest insecurities to date
It starts within the family and within myself
I grew up with self-deprecating thoughts
I grew up in a family that relied on me for guidance
Somehow, I became the adult needed in the household
With English technically my second language
I had to translate words
I didn’t fully understand
My childhood was a mess
No cartoon network
Only cable
No internet
Only dial-up connection
No computer
No gaming consoles
Nothing
With gaming being a strong passion of mine,
Not being able to do what I loved
Really pissed me off
I grew up with reasons to heavily dislike my parents
Some could say I hated them
Was no one’s choice,
This was just how our life was
Middle school happened
Somewhere between 7th and 8th grade
Being told I was ugly every day
During High school years,
I was told
“you don’t know how to talk to girls”
I lived by those words for a while
Years of living by those words
Insecure about who I was
I had no one to fall back on
Not my parents,
Not my classmates,
Where do I go?
Because nowhere is safe
I can’t trust myself either
Telling myself constantly
I need to do better
I need to be better
Living in a typical Asian household,
If my grades from school were not 4.0,
I would get disciplined
At “home”,
I’m already getting scolded for grades
For not doing any chores at home
For not helping out with dishes
For not helping with cooking
Then I go to school,
I got nobody to talk to,
I got people telling me I’m ugly
I got people telling me I can’t talk to girls
I got people telling me I was a pussy
There was no one to guide me
Other than my emotions and thoughts
The voices telling me,
“You’re never enough”
“You have to do more”
“You gotta do better, that’s not good enough”
These were the only thoughts I had
I was living in depression for so long
I dismissed the idea when it got brought up
I remember when a high school friend asked me
If I ever thought I had depression and
I remember I told him “no”,
Not fully understanding my situation
Then in 2018
I hit my lowest point
My only “fun” environment was tennis and
The coach made some of my teammates cry
It pissed me off
I started a petition,
Brought it up to the school and tried to get the dude fired
This was the end of Zhushen by the way,
This is something I’ll never forget
