Main image credit: Hypno Plus (https://www.briandcruzhypnoplus.com/)
Did I look at myself as a third wheel and a person with absolutely no meaning and value in the world? Yes, at times.
I will never have my own biological kids, so I felt I could not contribute to society in that way, too. But hey, even an appendix, once considered completely useless, turned out to be a useful organ and home to all kinds of good bacteria.
There must be something worthwhile about my existence; there must be. I kept repeating that in my head.
I don’t want to spread any negative energy, but I would like to share with you one situation where my thinking turned bad. These were potentially my saddest thoughts, and they occurred about a year and a half after my mother passed away.
I sat down at my computer desk, I stared at the screen for a few minutes, and then I decided to open up a blank text document. At that time, I was a part-time journalist, next to my normal job, but this time I wasn’t going to write anything mixed martial arts-related.
Instead of that, I decided to type down the names of people who were close to me, and I gave all of them a certain number. The numerical value, from one to ten, represented the level of sadness the individual would be struck with if I suddenly died. Number one meant that the person would not give two shits about my permanent absence, and number ten represented an unbearable amount of sadness.
So I wrote out the list, which turned out to be depressingly small, and I typed out the values. Most of the names received values lower than five, a few had six to nine, and I think only two or three people had a ten.
Then I decided to add it all up, divide it by the number of participants, and that way, I would have the average digit. After I did that, the final number was five, and five would mean you would feel some sense of loss, but after three or four weeks, you would already be able to live your life without dwelling on the fact that I am gone.
Boy, my self-pity, unlike me, was going places. And you know what, that average number seemed about right. I was typing those digits out with whole honesty. I stared at them; I felt uneasy by the realization, but I saw it as the truth — and we all know that the truth hurts at times.
At that point, my sorrow told me what I should do. For the first time in a long time, my thoughts sobered me up, and things became clearer than ever. It took some figuring out after that, but I finally knew my next move. I needed to get out there, I needed to collect more of those numbers, I needed a greater sample, and in the end, I needed a better average value.
That’s what everybody should strive for. If you want to be valued and, in the end, missed, come out of that shell and expose yourself so people outside your family don’t forget about you.
Recognize and React
It’s a horrible thing to get lost and lose control. It’s tough to feel like life is a dull, painful, endless cycle or a tape that rolls and rewinds over and over again until everything finally falls apart.
The feelings of this matter should certainly not be ignored, and if some of you do feel this way, the issue should be seriously reviewed and looked at and preferably shared with some other individual or a group of people.
I know sometimes it seems like silence and isolation are the most comforting and soothing options during our rough periods, but I strongly advise people to share their troubles with their loved ones. Or just pick up a phone and call them to hear their voice, to talk to them about anything.
That’s the beauty of talking to friends — those conversations need no particular subject to be interesting, beneficial, relaxing, and enjoyable. You just feel good after these interactions, and not even a silence is awkward.
Note: This is a section from my book, now available on Amazon and soon to be exclusive on Pegasus Publishers.
Inush Digital 