Who I Was and Who I Could Have Been

2025-09-08

I've been dealing with feelings of despair yet again. For me, it's been hard to distinguish between what outcomes of my life were a result of poor decision-making and what outcomes were a result of my mental illness. I look at my life and see how much I've truly fucked up—all the benders, missed opportunities, failed ventures. It makes me wonder why it all went down the way it did. One thing that I get upset about is that I know that I'm a smart person. Basically everyone I've ever met has called me smart at some point, so at the very least I can safely say that I am perceived as smart. When I was younger, it was a source of pride for me and I tied my intelligence deeply to my identity. But now that I'm in this position in life—not gainfully employed, in a bunch of debt, bad credit, living with my parents, no "successful" ventures, still (kind of) a drug addict, pushing thirty—I feel a lot less pride about my intelligence and see it more as a curse than a gift.

I feel like there was this big expectation of me, as is the case with a lot of smart people, that I would become this super industrious and successful person. People might have thought that I'd become a successful business owner, have some hot shot job, be a widely published and cited academic, or something like that. Instead, I became a disillusioned rebel after graduating high school. My first two years of college showed me just how much bullshit there was in the world. I began to figure out slowly that most of society was a racket. I could go on diatribe after diatribe about what's wrong with x, y, or z thing but essentially, I found out that all of the things that people expected someone like me to be were not what I wanted to be at all. I don't want to live in that kind of world. So I dropped out of school and decided to work more in dangerous fields. I was more risky in making deliveries as a bike messenger. I sold drugs because I wanted easy cash and to never run out for myself. I had my psychotic episodes happen and I kept getting sicker and sicker. Nowadays people don't see any kind of potential—they just feel pity.

I think of what's supposed to happen with me. I think of good and successful things I could do for myself and for others, but I don't really see anything that could happen that I'd feel good about. Most vocations are a joke and truth be told, I don't think I can muster the strength to do anything that's considered "real work". I thought about becoming an electrician with the union and was really set on it for a little while. I started the application process and did my research. I tried getting myself to get up early in the mornings (5 AM rise) and only kept it up for maybe two weeks before I messed up my sleep schedule yet again. That's when I knew it wasn't going to be in the cards for me and that I shouldn't try, so I canceled the application and am trying to find out what the fuck I'm supposed to do. I've been lost for so long and I don't know when I'm going to figure it out. I don't know if I will, and that scares the shit out of me.

My mom was telling me the other day: "If you didn't get sick, you could've become anything you wanted to be." Truthfully, I don't think I would've stacked up to be much at all regardless.