Clogged sink

Its been 2 years since I moved to a foreign county to pursue my Master’s degree. Its almost everyday that I have an incessant low self esteem, which seems to have intensified in the past couple of months. I have tried getting into sports and part time dog walking which makes me feel better but as soon as I’m back home that feeling of dread resurfaces. I introspect, and almost every time I’m led to believe that the fault lies within me. My poor social skills. I cannot hold a meaningful conversation. I start avoiding people randomly. I try to listen, but the words they speak go in one ear and out of the other. I forget important details. I cannot, or rather, hesitate to stand up for myself. I lie to myself, a lot. Try to make it seem so that everything’s fine. I cannot voice my opinions and concerns.

Some of these behaviors stem from when I was a child. I was raised primarily by my mother and I did not see my dad for years at times who moved to the USA to support our family. My mother worked too. I used to be alone at home after school. Whenever I got into trouble at school I got into even more trouble at home when I tried to tell my mother about it. Whenever I was bullied at school and needed help they always made it seem like it was my fault. All they cared about was my grades. As long as my grades were fine, everything else was too. As you can imagine, I wasn’t doing too well. My younger sister was put into daycare at the approximate age range of 5–10 because my mother did not want my personality to rub off on her. On numerous occasions I’ve heard her tell my sister not to talk to me because I was a ‘loser’.

I shouldn’t be thinking of these things 10 years later, at 25. But I cannot help it. Because of these incidents I have a hard time conveying feelings to anyone who I am close to. Conversations appear shallow, I appear shallow for engaging in small talk. The only refuge I have is to make up an imaginary world built on lies where everything is perfect, a utopia in my head and I’m in the middle of it all. When someone asks about me, I struggle to juggle between the two contexts, the utopian world in my head and in real life. Sometimes I lie on instinct. It seems safer that way, because that way my words wont be convoluted by anyone else and used against me on a later date.

I’ve tried breaking down these walls with someone who is really close to me. Tried, but failed. Sure, she is super helpful and always makes me feel better, but in some ways my hideous inner self ends up hurting her. Right now the strategy we’ve adopted is to avoid sensitive conversations for the betterment of both of us because honestly we need each other. Hanging around for dear life, stuck at an impasse. But this is not a healthy relationship. I’ve never had a healthy relationship. I’ve tried to open up on numerous occasions before but it always changed their perceptions about me and backfired in some way or another. I hate being vulnerable. Avoiding situations that would make me vulnerable in order to compensate for the lack of control I feel in real life? Absolutely.

But despite my deteriorating mental health I know I’ll succeed eventually and become all that I had hoped for. Better than my parents. A generous giver. A wise teacher that would impact millions of students. I know I will learn to love life as soon as I start loving myself. This article will serve as a breadcrumb on the time dimension. I struggled really hard to put my thoughts into words. That’s why this article is titled Clogged Sink.