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sableaire · 7 years

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Hi. I'm studying Jap Lit for 4 years. Fall term always goes fine bur when comes spring, I always fail. I'm still taking first class lessons this year. We have a jap culture community, I am the president this year. Tho everybody hate me and thinks I got the job bc I'm close to the Professor. I may not be a good student but I'm very good when it comes to bureaucracy and paper work. I know what to do, how to talk, I get shit done. I was working alone but now I have vices. 1/// ++

Dear Anon, rest assured, I received all parts of this ask. However, in hopes of respecting your privacy, I am only including the text from this one here. I hope that you don’t mind.

Before I respond, I would just like to shed some light on the approach you can expect from this response. Offline, I’m just a normal university student myself. Perhaps one day I will be a professional mediator or counselor or therapist. However, in my current form, I am unqualified to present any firm suggestions, strategies, or solutions.

As such, this response will be my perspective on the details you have chosen to share with me. I know for a fact that sometimes, emotions can close a person off in their own head, and they might not be able to see a situation from a different angle. I also know that it can be hard to believe other perspectives that don’t line up with your own, so as you read on, please keep in mind that:

I am a stranger on the internet, and I have no reason to lie.

I am not so kind as to say platitudes just to make someone feel better.

I, as a person, pride myself on never saying something I don’t mean.

So please read this post with the assurance that everything that I write is something I perceive to be the truth. I hope that this will be of some help in figuring out your path. More below the cut:

Rather than chronological order, I’ll be addressing themes that I have personal experience with first, as I feel as though those are the points in which my perspective will be most valuable to you.

You mentioned that you feel as though you don’t deserve the people you have around you. You specifically mentioned a non-family individual as well, who would have no societal obligation towards you, and so they are specifically choosing to spend time with you.

I know that when your mind is constantly telling you that you’re not worth people’s time, it’s difficult to think otherwise. After all, at that point it’s your conscious mind vs. the rest of it, and the rest of it has the advantage in numbers and is shouting louder than that one conscious voice. It’s hard to talk yourself up or think of yourself as respectable or valuable.

In the past, I struggled a lot with thinking that people only stuck around with me because they were too polite to tell me to stop bothering them. I didn’t bring it up for a long time because I was afraid that they might say no and then resent me for making them lie to me. I won’t co-opt this post for that long story, but basically, I brought this up to a friend, and skipping past the middle details, at the end she told me that she’s not so nice as to waste her time with someone she didn’t enjoy being around.

And in my experience, that’s true. Other people will have other opinions of you, whether or not they coincide with your own, and the nature of people is that they will not associate with people in their free time if they don’t enjoy being around them. If someone is choosing to hang out with you, respect them, their intelligence, and their autonomy by accepting their decision as a person .

Of course, that doesn’t mean that your value rests in the opinions of others. This mindset is specifically to address the feeling that you don’t deserve people who are choosing to spend time with you.

Another point that stood out to me amongst your asks is that you “feel like a failure” - specifically, you said that you “feel” like one. Though you may not realize it, that’s an important distinction to make. Feelings are not reality - merely a perception of it. Just because you feel like a failure does not mean that you are one, and it’s an extremely good thing that you make the distinction, even if it’s unconsciously.

I’m sorry that one of your vice-executives are overstepping her boundaries. That’s inappropriate of her and unfair to you, but I can’t offer my thoughts without more specific details, in this respect. Was there a time that you were excited to be president of this community? Any feelings or grand plans that you might have had? Rather than worrying about this vice-executive’s options, if there was a time that you enjoyed the idea of the presidency - or even just the culture community as a whole - maybe try to get back in touch with those initial ideas. If there was ever an aspect of the community that made you happy, try to not lose touch with those first feelings.

Also, it’s important to remember that things like becoming president of a culture community and getting a summer trip to Japan (I’m assuming it’s related?) don’t come out of nothing. Even in instances where there is favoritism involved, putting someone in a position usually means they are investing in that person because they see some sort of potential there. It at the very least means they’re confident that the person won’t run the community into the ground.

You mentioned academic hardships and concerns regarding your future. It sounds to me as though you grew up, then, with people telling you that there’s a specific path and order to success - do well in school, get in a good college; do well in college, get a good job; do well in a job, get a good life - does that sound right? If not, I’m sorry for making an assumption. I may have been biased towards that reading because this is, again, something I struggled with in my own life.

But regardless, you seem to be someone who takes their studies seriously, which is admirable. However, I know because my own academic background was hyper-competitive (Korea, woo), this also means that every failure feels like a blow. This is especially worse if you were a successful child because adults will always compare you to yourself, as though something went wrong as you grew up, when it’s really that experiences have shaped you and the world taught you and your mind different priorities. Sometimes that priority is reducing stress, which may manifest as lack of motivation. Sometimes that priority is keeping yourself safe, which results in anxiety. All this together can make an academic failure seem like the end of the line.

However, it’s not. No matter how scary it may be to wander off the paved path - the one society tells you is safest - who doesn’t wander off into nature once or twice? Maybe it’s a forest. Maybe it’s grasslands. Maybe it’s the beach, who knows. But saying that going straight from high school to university is better than taking time, taking it at a slower more manageable pace, is about as stupid as saying that the paved path is inherently better than nature.

If you’re struggling academically, that doesn’t mean that there’s something wrong with you - it means that there’s something wrong with the way you’re approaching the problem. Maybe you’re doing too much at once, or maybe you’re taking it too fast. Maybe you’re taking a more aggressive approach to academia when you should be pacing yourself for a long match.

If you find a different strategy, you can find the solution that’s right for you. For some people, it’s finding assistance through the school, be it through extra time for assignments or delayed exams (possible if your school gives assistance for mental illnesses). For others, it might be taking a break from school for a bit and coming back later. Only you will know what’s right for you. Definitely ask around for information to seek out your options, but the final choice should be yours and yours alone.

You also mentioned a dream, and god, what a good dream. If you’ve been following me, you already know that I love languages myself, so I think wanting to be a professor in a related field is an amazing goal. However, it seems that you’re having your doubts about its feasibility.

In my view, you’re only 22 years old. It may not seem like it because we’ve only been alive for about that long, but in the grand scheme of things, 20 years old is really, really young. Assuming nothing happens, we have decades to achieve our dreams and find satisfaction in our lives.

There are many professions that aren’t aging very well. There are too many doctors, too many lawyers. As technology advances, there’s less and less need for certain professions. But language - as technology advances and different countries interconnect, there’s only ever a growing need for language! Be it to learn another language, to translate between them, to understand how they form and relate, or to conserve a dying language, there’s never an end to the need for languages and their related professions.

Everyone deserves the opportunity to do what they love, as long as that desire does not harm themselves or others. Your aspiration to be a professor is nothing but beneficial, and it’s an admirable dream. All I have to say about it is that it’s alright to slow down. You mentioned that you don’t know whether to pursue your dream or to go find a job now - they’re not mutually exclusive.

You can take time trying other jobs for now to find your financial footing, and then you can go back to school, maybe get a graduate degree. There’s no hurry, and you don’t need to become a TA in your 20s, a professor by 30s. And with the advent of the internet, you don’t need to rush to become a professor to teach either - especially if you struggle with interpersonal interactions, you could try offering tutoring or private lesson services to work with people one-on-one, or you could try teaching an online class.

This is getting kind of long, and I’m not sure how helpful I’m being, but I would just like to add that in my freshman year of college, I had a lot of reason to think about the nature of depression, unhappiness, and desire to die. I came to the tentative conclusion that people despair most when they don’t have someone to share their suffering with, to talk to about their genuine hardships and petty grievances and unhappy moments.

You mentioned that you’re tired of acting like you’re okay. Well, of course you are, if you have to keep it up all the time - I don’t blame you for being tired, and I don’t blame you for wanting it to end. However, there are ways to bring it to an end through living. I encourage you to find someone in your life whom you can drop the act around, someone who you can talk to about how you feel. I can’t say who this person should be, as I do not know the people in your life, but it’s important to have someone in your life, in the physical realm, not just online, whom you can talk to honestly about your feelings.

And that can be scary - after all, who would want to spend time with someone who just feels bad all the time, or maybe your thinking is more that people only like you because you seem like you have your life together, and once they see beyond the facade, maybe they won’t like you anymore– see, that’s the part that I can relate to, because I’ve been stuck in that spiral of thought as well.

It took time, and it took patience, and it took a lot of conscious thinking. I had to psych myself up to it, and I made a lot of contingency plans and emotional failsafes before I could bring myself to take the chance with a friend of mine. Now they know how down I can get sometimes, how irrational my fears can get, but we’re still friends, and perhaps closer for it. That initial honesty lets me be more honest with them on a daily basis, and they return the favor.

Opening up to the people around you is a sign of care and a show of trust, and the people worth your time will recognize that.

You also mentioned that you struggle more mentally and emotionally in the springtime compared to the rest of the year. This sounds to me like you may want to look into Seasonal Affective Disorder. I would definitely recommend getting a professional diagnosis, however, and even if I am wrong, a professional may be able to help you relieve those symptoms. I do not know what country you are from nor what your community’s opinion is on mental health issues, but regarding this and some past events you have mentioned, someone who has finished their study and obtained a license would be far more helpful than me.

To close, you asked me a question regarding death. I can’t really answer the question you asked me specifically because of my view on death. Ultimately, my view is that death is not something ‘deserved’ or ‘undeserved’ - it’s not a blessing nor a punishment. In my view, ‘death’ is not ‘freedom’ either. My philosophy on death is complicated, and I don’t plan to shoehorn it into this post. However, I do think this: Death is the ‘final change’ of Life.

As long you are living, change is assured - that’s the nature of life, the ups and downs. The world doesn’t stand still, and people don’t stay the same. Nothing in life is constant except that things will change. However, change just means opportunities.

Death, however, no one living knows anything of death. All we know is that it means we stop living. For as long as you’re living, both changes and opportunities are assured. We don’t know what lies beyond living, and so to me, death is ‘the loss of assured opportunities’. Death means that maybe there are no more changes, maybe there are no more opportunities. It’s a ‘maybe things won’t get worse’, but it’s also a ‘maybe things won’t ever get better’.

I wish you luck with everything, Anon, and - oh! Enjoy your trip to Japan. If you don’t feel like you deserve it, well, think of it as a lucky opportunity and enjoy it thoroughly. Does a person who wins a lottery ever truly deserve the winning ticket? No, they’re just lucky. So if you think you don’t deserve it, enjoy that trip and learn from it as if it were a sweepstakes win and make it worthwhile.

Use the trip to give yourself time to reset. It will be a new experience, and new experiences are what stimulate change in our lives. So go, have fun, and if you don’t feel like you deserve the trip yet, go and take in the sights and the cultures. Learn and appreciate more than other people might. Heck, you’re in a culture community. I would say you deserve that trip more than some other people who would only want to go to Japan for the shopping and nothing else.

In any case, I’m sorry this is so long, Anon. I hope it was helpful in some capacity, and if anything was instead counterproductive, I apologize. Even so, I hope things improve for you soon. Please tell me how your trip to Japan goes, too!

#Anonymous #//suicide ideation #response #long

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