S E L F -A N A L Y S I S

Jason Leigh N. Aquino

Eight pages of self-analysis. I feel like my life is so

uneventful, I dont know how Ill be able to write eight

pages about my it and how it possibly affected my

current psychological state.

I guess Ill start with the very first thing that I

remember. The earliest memory that I can think of was

when I was three or four years old. It all started in

darkness; I didnt feel cold nor warm, there was

nothing. Suddenly a light started to slowly emerge from

the center of my vision, while the darkness slowly crept

to the corners of my eyes. I felt cold below me; it was

the cold hard ground on my feet. I was in the kitchen of

our first home grabbing a hot dog to eat, oblivious to

the fact that it was raw and hazardous to my health.

Despite everything being so big, I didn't feel the

slightest sense of being small. You would think that your

first memory would be something special, happy,

traumatic, or dramatic, yet this memory is so mundane

1
and holds almost no meaning to me other than it being

my earliest memory. Perhaps this isn't my earliest

memory, maybe I had forgotten about it, but if I try to

go further back, there's only nothingness.

Back then, our family wasn't particularly well-off. My

mother and father married young. My mom was fifteen

years old when she first got pregnant with my eldest

brother and my dad was twenty-three years old studying

medicine. They got married a year after then conceived

my second eldest brother. Two years after, I was born.

My dad had to support our family while studying

medicine. Studying to become a doctor isnt the easiest

thing to do in the world, especially while supporting a

wife and three children. I have always been impressed

by the fact that he was able to support us while finishing

his medical studies and specialization. I didn't think that

he had any sleep back then; he had to spend most of his

time studying and work, but he still made time to bond

with us. I have a lot of good memories with my family

because of him. My granddad had a similar story, he was

orphaned, neglected by his adopted parents, and had to

2
sell balut to finish his schooling. He supported himself

through college then became an engineer.

I never made any close friends when I was young. My

family had to move a lot because of financial issues. We

moved almost every year or every other year. It became

hard for me to connect with anyone. My brothers are

different, they somehow still learned how to make

connections with other people. I envy them for that. I

was so frightened whenever a new school year started.

Everyone knew each other, had a group of friends of

their own. At some point in grade-school, I somehow

made a friend. He was always alone like me. His family

was poorer than mine; he had nothing to eat during

lunch, so I shared with him what little money I had. A

year later my younger brother was born. We had to

move again because it was getting a lot harder to live

in Manila with three kids in early childhood and an

infant. I never got to say goodbye to my friend; I don't

think that I even wanted to.

When I was in fourth grade, my dad had finished

his studies and was then working on his specialization;

3
he was earning a bit more, enough to enroll me in a

private school. At this point, I didn't know how to talk

with other children. I was afraid of them, I didn't talk

to them, no one approached me to do so. I was now an

outcast. An outsider. People saw me as a target and

started bullying me verbally. Isolation has made me an

easy target for their pastime. Not knowing what was

normal between children, I wasn't aware that they were

bullying me. I even thought that their bullying was just

friendly banter. I willingly gave them money, did what

they want, and even laughed at their jokes about me. I

was fat and overweight, so they called me names that

closely relates to pigs. I moved to a new school after

that, but I was still an outcast. People made friends with

me, but they just betrayed and bullied me.

My family had moved again, but now I'm in high

school. I again somehow made a friend. He was

Japanese, and his family was more well-off than us back

then. Our friendship lasted for two years. Near the end

of our friendship, people accused me of being friends

4
with him because of his money. But that couldn't have

been farther from the truth. His family was more well-

off than mine, but he never actually had money, so I

was even the one who treats him from time to time. I

cried in the middle of the class. I hated everyone in that

class, even my teacher, even my friend. After that, I

started avoiding making friends, started, I started

avoiding people. I stopped going to class. Sometimes,

the feeling of people being around me was so

unbearable, especially during breaks, that I ate my

lunch in the comfort room. If it weren't so utterly

disgusting in there, I would've spent most of my time in

there. Whenever I had the chance to get out of school,

I would spend my time in a computer shop. And when I

didn't, I was just thankful that my parents bought me a

game boy. I was kicked out off of several schools, but

because of money I still somehow graduated from high-

school. My parents are great, but they are so lenient

that they never actually punished me for that.

Starting college was not easy for me. I skipped most

of my high school and had never actually studied,

5
making college so much harder for me. I took computer

science. I was passing my programming and English

classes, I even excelled in them. Having no foundation

on math subjects, I failed miserably in them. My father

and grandfather finished their studies with many

hardships; and then there's me, with all the support my

parents could have given me, failing in college. It

destroyed whatever little confidence I had in me. It

made me feel infinitesimal. I felt like I'm the dumbest

kid in the school.

Being an outcast and a failure, I started to

contemplate about killing myself numerous times. Did

you know that the best way to kill yourself is to shoot a

.44 magnum at the base of your upper mouth or the

stem of your brain? Aiming at the sphenoid will only

render you blind, not dead. But I could never bring

myself to do it; my Christian upbringing has taught me

that suicide is a sin. It has put the fear of God in me,

the fear of eternal damnation. I've always hated God

because of it. God created life, created me. He made

this world so asphyxiating and trapped us here. I envy

6
those who were never born, the ones in the darkness.

Theyll never be trapped here. Theyre free.

Feeling trapped, I started to at least try to make this

cage a bit more pleasant for me. My family went on a

vacation in America; we stayed there for six months. It

changed my perspective. I saw that even in first world

countries, life isn't easy. Coming back, I felt a little bit

less depressed. I started losing weight, from 270 pounds

to 157 pounds. My dad even got me a gym membership

in Nuvali. I went back to school, enrolling in AUP as a

MedTech student aiming to be a doctor like my dad. My

dad would not be around forever, so I have to start

thinking about my future.

I never told my parents about my depression. They

joke about the fact that I have no friends, and I try to

laugh, but humans are social creatures. I always feel

hatred and envy no matter how much I've accepted the

fact that I'll always be alone. Hatred for the fact that

friendship is superficial; envy for the feeling of missing

something that I don't get. All the books that I read, all

the movies that I watch, all the games that I play, they

7
all seem to be human connections. Forming friendships,

meeting a lover and fighting for them. It feels poignant

whenever I think that I will never have those feelings.

Now, when people try to approach me, my kneejerk

reaction is to push them away. I build a wall with books,

music, and video games to make approaching me very

hard. And Whenever I form an interest towards a girl, I

try to punish myself. I never cuss, except when I talk

to myself in my head. It's all verbal, but sometimes I

even physically hurt myself. I've become overprotective

and abusive of myself. I destroy whatever self-

confidence that I have to protect myself. It's ironic that

hurt myself to protect myself.

Before writing this, I got summoned to the guidance

office because I've been missing my gospel class. I told

her that I've been getting migraines in the morning, but

in truth, I hate that class. It reminds me why I'm

trapped. She accepted my lie and proceeded to talked

to me about my psychological evaluation since I'm a new

student. She showed me the results, which I have seen

before, and explained to me that I got the maximum

8
possible score in the OLSAT exam and that being

isolated is common for people like me. That line was so

absurd to me that I almost couldn't contain my

composure. Even with physical proof that I am capable

of something great, I can't have myself accept it. No

matter what 'evidence' is shown to prove otherwise, will

always feel like a convoluted and cruel trap. I will think

little of me.

I miss the time before my first memory. The time

when I was in darkness. The time before I existed. That

was the only time when I was not trapped. I was truly

free.