At thirty, he still hadn’t truly gotten better.
As a child, he always thought he was different from everyone else. He believed that one day he would make it out, achieve great things, and become someone everyone looked up to. But when he actually reached thirty, he realized that life wouldn’t automatically take him where he wanted to go just because he had once been full of hope.
He was born into a family that wasn’t poor, but was always full of arguments. His parents’ troubled relationship, his father’s beatings and scolding, and his mother’s volatile emotions taught him early to read the room. They also planted a thought in his mind: he had to get out of there and never become like the adults around him. Later, he threw himself into being a good student and fought to get ahead. After high school, he went abroad to study, thinking he could finally change his fate through hard work and exposure to the wider world. But that bigger world didn’t welcome him right away. Instead, for the first time, it made him see clearly how limited, insecure, and far behind he was.
A first love that lasted four years dragged the years when he should have been growing into an emotional quagmire. His studies fell apart, the relationship lurched back and forth, and the pain of loving someone who wouldn’t love him back gradually pushed him off course. Later, he went through messy relationships, took internships, and worked odd jobs, never willing to let his life amount to nothing more than a fixed paycheck. Then, at thirty, he decided to start a business, hoping to prove himself anew by seizing the era’s fresh opportunities. Yet he still struggled with confusion, anxiety, and a reality that refused to take shape.
