Introduction

I’ve had a (subjectively) rough year. After finishing sixth-form and starting my gap year, I recieved lower grades than expected, got rejected by Oxford twice, rejected by three choirs and had a mental breakdown. I’ve always been lauded as someone who is successful and someone who will go far, but increasingly I’m finding that my percieved self-image of future fame and fortune is not holding water when exposed to the adult world. I believe that I’m in the midst of my “fifth-life crisis” (lets hope it’s closer to quarter I don’t want to live to 100) and I’m initially going to use this resource to organise my thoughts, let myself vent, and hopefully clarify what the hell’s going on in my head.

The world does not give a fuck about me. Being adopted, I was always coddled and praised throughout my childhood, which I believe led to delusions of grandeur and a sense of entitlement that went unchallenged until the summer of this year. Not that I didn’t work hard–far from it. During my last year of school I was juggling football, cross-country, gym, grades, singing, piano and even a bit of interpretive dance. I’d suffered setbacks before, such as never quite realising my potential for table tennis, and not getting the GCSE grades that I thought I deserved. But to me they were just creases in the eventually beautiful tapestry of my life and would be ironed out as I improved. But the last three months have taught me that society isn’t me-orientated, and I’m no better than anyone else. My previous, externally driven mindset has been utterly shattered, revealing the fragile seed of my own self-love. As time progresses, I’d like to see it blossom into a strong oak, that doesn’t collapse at the first sign of blustery winds.

I want to be a person who is ok with whatever path I take, who loves myself no matter how hard I fall socially. I want to be a person who doesn’t care about social labels and status. There is still a long way to go, comparing myself to others is so easy due to social media and it’s a habit ingrained in my psyche over the past three years. Nevertheless I’ve got a lot closer to that goal this year since the breakdown and the ensuing ruminating about my purpose, and classic gap yah questioning of life and what it all means. To an extent, grappling with these issues is a never-ending struggle, but often the journey is better than the goal, and the intention as valuable as the consequence.

In the end, I just wanted to be special. I’m still terrified of being ordinary, an average joe who doesn’t excel at anything and dies without caring for any issues or causes. It hurts that I didn’t get into Oxford, and that I’m now branded a “reject” for daring to try. I want to be loved and appreciated and respected and it feels like I’m severely lacking in all those things in the wider world. Why wasn’t I prepared for this in school? I feel so lost seeing all my peers at uni seemingly having the time of their lives with their rosy path set out for them, while I’m stuck in the mire of self-doubt and loathing about my predicament. Make no mistake, I know that I’m very privileged in the talents afforded to me at birth, the fact I have amazing adoptive parents who have supported me and loved me as their own, and the luxury of spending two years at a private school. I think the course of this year and the rest of my life will be spent unifying the rational premise of the previous sentence with the heuristic, but fundamentally flawed reasoning embedded in my subconcious that plagues me with self-hatred and stereotyping of virtually all external stimuli. Ultimately I’m struggling quite a lot at the moment, and I need a safe space to write essays that aren’t subject to marking for once.

I guess this blog is an attempt at trying to rationalise my thoughts, and perhaps improving my writing/typing skills too. It’s therapeutic too, spilling all my thoughts onto the proverbial paper and seeing what comes out. I’m still very young (ergo inexperienced) and my opinions and judgements will reflect that. In the future I hope to see the progress I’ve made since writing this essay, because this feels like an important time in my life and it would be shame to lose the incipient ideas and self-image I’m cultivating presently. If these writings end up becoming public, I hope it will serve as an antidote to the self-gratifying, superficial world of instagram, offering a profound and honest representation of the events in my life. Finally, I hope to use big complex words to make me feel smart amid all the depressing subject matter likely to be splattered around this website, so if you think my vocabulary choice is pretentious (and incorrect), then you’re probably right!

Part of me sees this endeavour as pointless, just another lone voice shouting into the din of cyberspace. But my voice and ideas hold intrinsic value, and if my voice is interesting to me then the lack of validation won’t matter to me as much hopefully.

We’ll see.

Anthony