From as far back as I can remember, the thought of living a mediocre life felt both dreadful and inevitable, like a fate I couldn’t escape. While my family and friends saw me as someone blessed or “lucky,” my reality has been shaped by a string of disappointments and an endless series of unfortunate events. I can still vividly recall the excitement of receiving my first Android phone during college, a moment that should have been filled with joy. Yet, in a cruel twist of fate, it turned out to be the one device among thousands with a broken Wi-Fi connection. I managed to get by with it for years, and over time, I think I’ve grown accustomed to it, the mediocre life.
Lately, life has felt like a constant struggle, tangled in the complexities of emotional abuse. Even as I endure the chaos by wearing a mask of normalcy, disguising my turmoil behind a laugh that hides the storm within. Privately, I find myself quietly humming, almost pleading, as I sing, “Please, please, please, let me get what I want. Lord knows it would be the first time”. Yet, time and again, my efforts to move forward only seem to drag me back to where I began. Letting go has become the theme of my life a lesson I’ve yet to master, despite all the heartbreak.
Even as a child, I struggled to answer the question, “what do you want to be when you grow up?” I had no vision for the future, no grand aspirations. Looking back, I wonder if some part of me instinctively knew that dreaming big might only lead to bigger heartbreak. It feels as though my life is an endless test, a penance for reasons I don’t understand. And while others might mourn lost dreams, I’m left grappling with the endless trials that have overshadowed the idea of dreaming altogether.
There are moments when the weight of it all feels unbearable, and I long for an escape final, complete, and unshakable. It’s not that I want to give up, it’s that the pain I carry feels too vast for anyone else to truly comprehend. Even those closest to me seem unable to grasp the full extent of my daily battles. I find it difficult to put my struggles into words because they feel too raw, too overwhelming to share.
My life have been a pattern of falling short, of settling into a mediocrity that feels almost predetermined. Achieving greatness seems as far away and I can’t help but wonder if this is my fate , perhaps a result of some unknown karmic debt. With every new setback, the thought of simply letting go of stopping the fight becomes harder to resist. I sometimes imagine an afterlife where I’m neither punished nor rewarded, but stuck in a bland, unremarkable limbo. Deep down, though, I fear the truth that I belong nowhere, and maybe I never truly have.
