Alright, folks! I don’t know if you’ve noticed this but this blog is basically me going on a rant to my younger self. By ‘younger’, I meant me up until later this year. I was an idiot, I am still an idiot but at least I’ve learned a thing or two and finally am able to accept all the bullshit and move past it.

Here’s another thing I did. I thought I was so damn different from everybody else. I thought no one can relate to me or any of the shits I was going through. I thought the feelings I was experiencing were so unique to me and myself only that it was almost impossible someone could even remotely understand me. And that’s bullshit.

Hear me out.

What makes us humans are emotions and feelings. They connect us as a species. That’s why the music industry is huge, that is why the movie industry is huge. They toy on the shared reactions we as humans have towards something, and I will say this, that is one of the most beautiful things to ever happen. Do you know that feeling when you’re watching a movie and you’re tearing up, you look across the room and you see your friends tearing up too? Or when you hear a good song and you have goosebumps all over and you share that look with your friend? It is that feeling of warmth when you know someone can relate to you, someone understands how it feels.

But when you detach yourself from that universal feeling and convince yourself that it is unique to you and you only, you’re putting everyone else outside of your box. So you sit there, alone, not knowing who to turn to. It’s a subconscious thing, I believe. For example, even if you talk to someone about how you feel, but you have that mentality that they don’t understand to what extent that feeling is, you would feel like they’re not helping at all. Subconsciously, you reject whatever it is they’re saying because in the back of your head, there’s this chant “no, you don’t get it!” going on.

I remember a time when that was my mentality when dealing with a problem. That I was so different from everyone else and that I had such unique problems and I was in denial. I didn’t think anyone could understand how I felt, so I never talked about them. I didn’t think anyone could relate. It hurt and there were times I felt like I was alone. It was that narcissism and ego that made me feel like I was such a unique snowflake and that I was different from everybody else and only I experienced feelings with such intensity.   

And maybe I was right. They don’t understand the intensity of my feelings because everyone goes through different things in life and reacts to them even more differently. That much is true. But whatever it is, that raw emotion I was and am going through, the essence and baseline of it is universal. I experience it, same as the next person. And I can connect and relate to one another through that. It is something that we share with one another and no one can take that away from us, especially ourselves.

And that’s the beauty of language too (bila budak BEN berbicara). There are metaphors, analogies, similes and whatnot to help me explain, to help me tell my story so that everyone can try to see themselves in my shoes. And facial expressions, gestures, all of these body languages are my tools. People understand that. People can relate to that.

Realizing that now, I am less afraid to express myself or vent to a person because I know that they can, on some level, understand me. And that’s good enough. It eliminates the loneliness and pain of not being understood at all. It gives me a space to share a thought. It challenges me to try and explain something in words people can understand, to make my voice heard, in a way. And really, that’s the reason I started writing this blog in particular. I just wanted to let things out in hopes that someone will understand. A few people told me they did and that was enough to tell me that I did something. I connect with people and try to understand them by learning more and more about myself as the days go by.

Trust me, it’s more comforting to think that people understand and that you’re not dealing with the pain alone. You’re not that different, and that’s a good thing.

-Nik.