Of course I aspire to be like them. I’ve been raised in the same world as everyone else. I’d like to have a career. I’d like to be loved. I’d like to lead a happy life. I’d like to live my life well. That’s all anyone can hope for, but yet it raises the question of what is a well-lived life. The definition depends on how one sees the world, I guess. When I think about my life, I have not lived it well up to this point and I’m not sure if I ever will. As I see it, a well lived life means living a life to its fullest, embracing people, emotions, change and actions. It’s about going forwards instead of going backwards or staying stuck. It’s about engaging in the world around you, it’s about discovering yourself, as well as other people and the world around you. It’s about letting the world touch you instead of hiding from it.

I’ve hidden myself my entire life. At first, it was because I was really shy. I was a child that was shy and silent. I didn’t talk much, I was nice. Which is why people liked me, because I didn’t cause any problems or conflicts. I was well-behaved and I always thought before I acted on impulses. I guess, I was much more of an observer than anything else. To some people, I might have seemed boring. That doesn’t mean I couldn’t be less uptight and have fun, when I was with the right people. I always tried to do the right thing and to be good. For some reason that has always been a part of my DNA. I wanted to be right, I wanted it to be good. I followed rules more than anyone else. I was a well adjusted child.

Then I grew up to be an adult. Things changed. The way I perceived the world changed. There wasn’t right or wrong anymore, though I never stopped aspiring to be good, aspiring to be right. I never stopped being well adjusted. But I started to leave my shyness behind, I got more relaxed around people, not fully though. I’ve started to realize that I had too high expectations of myself in my head. Things that I wanted to be, how I wanted to be perceived, but yet I never would be any of that. It’s difficult knowing that you are never going to be anything of what you desperately want to be.

I’ve had people in my life. I’ve had social relations. Yet I’ve spent most of my life alone, by myself. To the point where I can relate more to the lives of fictional characters than to real people. I can’t say I am experienced. I’ve sheltered myself for most of my life. I haven’t really lived. I’m in a state of apathy that makes it difficult for me to get up in the morning, but I get up in the morning, but yet I am having trouble to turn my life around and to make the aspirations that I’ve been fed with by society come true.

And I ask myself why I want to live a life how it is presented in the media? There’s always sadness and pain hidden beneath the surface. There is no absolute happiness. Why do everyone’s values, hopes and dreams have to be mine as well? Why have I been raised to want things that I’m not really sure of if there’s really anything to it? Why do we constantly evaluate our lives and the lives of others based on what we are led to believe is a good life?

But I mostly consider myself a social misfit, because to me, most of the things that people care about seem so random and meaningless. Going out, drinking alcohol, dancing? Random hook-ups? The never-ending search for love and recognition? Competing with each other? Getting angry at each other for trivial little things? What for?

I care. I do not not care. I want to be like everyone else and just live, but yet I feel so far far away from everyone.

Since I intend to be blogging about some heavy stuff that is on mind, I intend to stay anonymous, as I don’t really want for everyone in the world to know me, just in case if there is actually someone reading. That’s why I will call myself Ben, which is obviously not my name. If I refer to people I know, then I will also give them other names, just to protect myself and them, even though I am quite aware that I am blogging about private stuff in a public place. But hey, the internet is an enormous place, I could be anyone, right?