Enigma
Posted: 30/09/2025
Sometimes I feel as if the most enigmatic person in my life is myself.
The past two months have been some of my most challenging. I've lost people I've considered dearest to me, an earthquake of university work has come by me (and there are more aftershocks to prepare for -- exams!), and I've realised yet again just how contradictory life is. No rest for the wicked as they say.
But I'm also reminded of how important connections are, and where I fail to recognise the importance of keeping them. I've almost always been a timid and deferential person, and I'm still trying to learn where I fit in with people's lives. I feel as if I wait for things from others expecting them to give it to me without being willing to give that myself, and yet I also seem to forget the consequences of simultaneously being overbearing and apathetic to those I know. As much as I try to live my life only doing to others what I'd like them to do to me, I also have to realise that I seem to come short in my interactions (or lack of). I often wonder at the callousness I sometimes feel like I have towards others and myself, and which I feel as if I hide this callousness behind timidity and also a lack of knowing who I am and being unsure why I feel the way I do.
And yet occasionally, I'm also told of the value I bring to others -- but I'm always surprised when I am told. That there are people who do enjoy having me around, who want me to come back next time, who seem to see something in me I didn't know I had. It makes me wonder so many things: again, of how blind I am to others but most of all to myself -- why I choose to participate, or not -- why others choose to help me when I feel as if my contributions have not been worthwhile -- how I seem to lack the connections other people have with each other, that make their lives feel so much more alive than anything I feel I've experienced -- why I constantly question my feelings and lack of them -- why I can't seem to love myself, for if there's anyone I want to understand, it's myself. Because other people tend to eventually tell you what they think of you in words or in actions, but my own person is stubbornly quiet when it comes to that (and yet it can be one of the loudest people I know, given I'm writing this and sharing it).
Is it healthy to question all these things? Since last year I've become sort of aware that my feelings are ultimately the essence of how I dictate my life and the way I act towards others. And yet sometimes I feel so awfully mixed up. It would, in some ways, be easier to somehow replace my feelings with concrete goals, to gain discipline, and ground myself in actionable things. But I can't imagine myself like that, and it's also why I feel inordinately weird and disconnected around people who have such knowledge of what they're doing -- I feel as if they're apathetic to life and people around them. And I'd feel like I'd lose my humanity if I became beholden to goals, not feelings. I'd no longer be able to enjoy something in the moment, because it's not all in service of some greater meaning in the future.
I should thank some of the people who have reminded me of my humanity recently and to who I feel like I owe obligations for keeping me alive this year. In no particular order: Tracey and Allan, Hanson (your love and generosity for the past two years has gotten me through the worst), Bevan and Sarika and her lovely mother Isha, Anna, Lucy and Rory and Daniel and Alec, the friends I made in ECON104 (the closest I've ever felt to being accepted), Joseph (both of you), Wynette, Ethan, Kael (still angry at your public law essay though), Isabela, the Dans, all of the UN Youth volunteers, the UC Makerspace staff, Eric (I would not be here if you didn't let me call you every week to at least process my feelings and actions, even if I couldn't understand them), Sam, Darcy and Alex and Abdullah who keep my sanity online, my Oma and my Canadian father, my parents. Just thinking about all the people in that paragraph made me realise how many people have been there for me -- I want to try and be there for them.
Benedykt