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Hello everybody, I hope you are having a wonderful day.
Over my time here i have gauged that im a lot younger than most of the users here. Im a teenager, I still go to school. I've had a privileged childhood. My parents are goverment workers overseas and I have spent a big portion of my childhood moving about, it's a double edged sword. I've never really had constant friends or people outside of the family I can trust, on the other hand I have gone to a variety of international schools and a privileged backround.
Onto why I am making this post, I know i sound stupid but I feel like a hollow from dark souls. I feel so out of touch and empty and alone, just shambling through the days. I have also strugled with my sexuality and just being kinda fluid in that aspect. I have never really been allowed to dick around. It's always been super straightfoward. I have always had to be a certain way. I don't know, but I have ended up feeling like nobody. Just another one. My family is also close to moving back home and that has been stressful asf. I just feel like i am walking through a faceless world with faceless people. An endless ocean of monotony.
Hello ~kai,
Its nice to seem some other young folks round here. I am also a teenager (16) and I totally get the feeling
of living through a faceless world with faceless people. Everything seems so dead and monotonous nowadays.
Yeah, I think I get that, I think I understand what you're talking about. But one thing is — it /is/ possible to build an identity of your own. And you're going to /grow/ and /change/ in directions you never even thought you could. Gods know I've changed more times than I can count.
And it feels like everyone's hiding deep inside hard adaptive shells. Because I /know,/ I've /seen/ that people are deep and kind and beautiful, but you can't even touch that, they just retreat into narrow socially-acceptable paths — I've been thinking of finding more free and genuine places, but I have no idea where! And I can't even fault them, because I'm the same way, just gradually clawing my way out of the pit of the endless game of fitting in.
The glimpses I've caught of connection, though, have been wonderful — and if I know anything about the world it's that it /will be/ possible for you to find them, it really will be.
Howdy ~kai,
I cannot add anything useful for your situation, I'm afraid.
But I would like to point out, that this thread has been one of the most surprising for me. There is ~kai with a peculiar situation in their life, and out of the blue there are several, who know the pain and are in the mood to answer. Fantastic! Thank you all!
Moving is stressful and sucks when you're moving down the street, much less to another country. There's no sugarcoating that. And having a privileged background doesn't help either. The only silver lining is that you've made friends before, so you'll do it again. (And I say that as someone who was a criminally awkward teenager.)
This may be a controversial take, but imo, nobody is anybody when they're around their family. If you've had that sort of steady family life, your relationship with your family is so calcified with the years of living with them and the lifetime of awkward family moments that you'll basically never feel that euphoria of friendship that you can get just hanging out casually with some friends. (I guess all I'm trying to say is that you can't really dick around with family the way you can with friends. So if your time is mainly spent with family, it's not super surprising if you feel like a cardboard cutout sometimes.)
I may not be able to provide some of the wisdom of others here in the pub (I'm only 25, young-ish pub patrons represent!), but I can say for sure that those faceless people will surprise you. Maybe not all of them, but in my experience, at least a solid 30% are great, interesting people. (Probably much more.) Everyone has an inner world and people only remain faceless so long as you're unable to see and feel that inner world. And sure, some may be simpler than others, but you'll always find that they're more than they appear. And that includes you, even if you feel generic and hollow right now.
You'll move, settle in, and find more friends whose personal brand of weird matches your personal brand of weird. Who knows, maybe you'll even be forced to explore your fluid sexuality a bit more? (It really can be a doozy to figure out.) And if nothing else, you'll probably be off to college before too long, where you and everyone else will be thrown into the same boat all over again.
As for how to start relating to people in the new place: I don't know. It _is_ scary and difficult. And it'll take time. And in my experience, it can be kinda soul crushing to have that time before you manage it. But you'll manage it. If this was an actual pub, I'd buy you a drink, seems like you need one.
I empathize with your story, ~kai.
I'm 40 now, but when I was growing up, I moved almost every two years to somewhere new because my father was in the military. I could never put down roots anywhere, and I learned early on that making friends was pointless because I would inevitably have to say goodbye forever in a very short time.
The only constants for me were my immediate family and my schooling. I ended up focusing most of my energy on school and excelled at all of my classes. However, I didn't really have much of a life outside of school. I just read and spent time alone. In the end, I graduated from high school with honors, but I felt empty inside. I had mastered the game of school, but I came to realize that those accomplishments were only meaningful to me and my ego. If I didn't use my life to make some kind of difference in the world, then I wasn't doing much except consuming resources and taking up space.
This existential crisis led me into a long depression that lasted for about 18 months. In that time, I read philosophy, learned about alternative religious/spiritual paths, and spent a lot of time sitting outside in nature, contemplating birds, trees, clouds, and stars. I finally dragged my butt to go speak with a therapist on campus at my university, and she gave me a book on cognitive behavioral therapy. That really helped to jump start a new way of thinking for me, and by the end of my freshman year, I had made the decision to transfer schools to the opposite side of the country and start fresh with a new perspective on what I would need to study in order to be able to make a difference in the world after all.
Many years later, I graduated with multiple college degrees, including a Ph.D. I had made a great many friends and shared meaningful experiences with them. I had participated in activism around the issues that concerned me. I was able to explore my sexuality and come out to my family and friends. And I eventually built an off-grid homestead in the mountains with my partner, where I live and work today. I really did find a place where I felt like I belonged and could put down roots.
Your story will be different than mine as everyone's life is different in so many ways. But what I would want to share with a younger version of myself when I was feeling depressed and adrift in my teens is this: Life has meaning when you give it meaning.
s:
Life has meaning when you give it meaning.
You can't control everything and everyone around you, but throughout your life you will be presented with options and choices. What you choose at these decision points will shape who you become and how your life plays out. Recognize that however much you've learned about the world, the amount that there is to learn and experience is truly vast by comparison. Let that bring you some humility in the present moment and also inspire you to seek and discover more each season. You have the power to chart your own course though sometimes the weather will push you off it. Just keep learning, growing, and steering your way forward toward your goals. That is how you give meaning to your life.
All the best on your journey.
Don't worry too much about being too young...
...or you'll soon become too old
That said, it's natural to feel uprooted. Specially at your age and circumstances. I only remember change, change and more change since the 70's. And the trend is only accelerating.
I love how in Firefly the crew belonged to the ship. /Yes, Firefly! the best space-western series ever and ever/
This is your time to explore (and meditate) and grow, from today to the day you return your soul. Just remember you have invisible friends around here.
I was the one left behind. I went to an international school where people who moved around every 3-5 years put their kids, and I always gravitated to them, because they were always the most interesting. They were always the nicer ones, too.
Seeing them leave one by one broke my heart. I decided to no longer have friend in my teenage years.
Anyways, the point is: there was something to be broken for me. There might be anchors you aren't seeing. Maybe you can regain contact with some older friends? Maybe you can try to put your trust in a friend you had in one of those schools?
The other point is: I've regretted cutting friendship from my life in my teenage years. The phasing out of that was super awkward, and sometimes a bit humiliating to be honest, but that's where I met some of my best friends. On the other hand, I don't regret any of the stupid stuff that came out of my mouth as I was clumsily stumbling out of my shell, even when I unintentionally hurt people or made a fool of myself, because it was what I had to do to connect with people. I fact, I'm proud for that boy.
Interesting. I am a lot older than you (late 40s) but my best friend has a similar background to you.
He struggles to have an identity because moving around forced him to fit in to whatever surroundings he found himself in. He became a chameleon.
Only now is he starting to find his true identity... to like what he likes, to not like what he doesn't like, to want and not want things, to have opinions about stuff that might be unpopular, to set boundaries and educate others how to treat him.
I don't know if this matches your experience at all (of course, if you're not changing to fit in, you might feel like you don't fit at all... your "faceless world with faceless people" sounds a bit like that might be the case?)
But it's worth building an identity. One way I heard it put is: Better to be hated for who you are than loved for who you are not.
I may have missed the point totally, and in your situation right now some of this stuff might be impossible... but I thought I'd just share his story. (I, too, had no identity but that's because of emotional abuse from my mom who didn't allow me to build an authentic 'Self').
I hear you on struggling with sexuality too. I have come out three times in my life... the last time was literally a month ago. Each time I crept back into the shadows because being straight was more socially acceptable. (But my soul died slowly).
Whatever happens, good luck... this stage WILL pass, and whoever you are right now, and whatever you want or don't want, you are OKAY to be that person, you are OKAY to want/not want whatever you want/don't want.