Translating Myself; An Attempt.

It's been a while. I feel ingenuine. I don’t know if writing this publicly will help, but I’m giving it a shot anyway.  

I messed up a part of my exam—so badly that it’s embarrassing to call myself an English student. Truthfully, I feel like an impostor. Like I don’t belong.  

Friendship feels like a dead language. I thought I gave it my all, but that was a lie. It was just a cover. Skills, internships, jobs—I’ve always expected rejection, so when it happens, I don’t feel the sinking void that tells me I’m not enough. 

Maybe I’ve trained myself not to care. Maybe I’ve just accepted that the system I "rebelled" against doesn’t fit me. Or maybe I don’t fit it. I don’t belong in the normal, the structured, the expected.  

Everything I have been fed and regurgitate somehow doesn't work. Everything feels like a lie. I have been born for this purpose. Get a job, make money, do good. Yet I can't seem to be any closer to it. I feel like a fool in this sense. 

The system doesn't seem to give me answers and the outside seems to feed me with insecurity I wasn't even aware was so deep rooted. My identity as this creative in pieces. I am nothing in the face of greatness and they do exist. They do so beautifully and undeniably. 

(This sense of pride, joy and love enters me as they work through their arts, it's the most beautiful thing. So honest and truthful. Casted away by society but picked up by each other. They exist.)

I can do nothing (I can do more) but sit and watch these hard working people in fields of theatre, film and music at a college level. They are so creative and working through their struggles one at a time. No excuse to be had. 

And it’s not that I don’t know my own shortcomings—I do. I wouldn’t choose myself either. But after denying it for so long, I’m left exactly as I was. No progress, no growth, not even decline—just stuck.

I’ve had opportunities within reach. Now, with AI and the Internet, I have access to more than ever. Everything I should learn has already been learned by something else. So what’s the point? Why must I struggle to acquire skills when there’s already something that knows everything?  

I don’t even like it, but I use it. Just like when I was younger, finding the smartest way out. Hard work was necessary, but working smart was always better. And yet, now, I have nothing. No skills, nothing to call my own.  

Instead of self-contempt and loathing, I know I should channel this into productivity. I should pick up new skills—after all, everything is so easily accessible. But I feel lost.  

And I see this same frustration, this same sadness, in the people I look up to. In the jobs I thought would give me answers.  

The only thing I know is that I want to be kind. But kindness doesn’t pay, and honestly, I don’t care. Or at least, I tell myself I don’t. Because if I truly did care, I’d go all in—I’d fight, struggle, go to the trenches and back to help.  

Instead, I parade as something greater than I am, hiding behind words in English when all I really am is lost.