I hid this from Substack for Seven Months. And 7 Years from my Life

a tug of war with self esteem

There’s a trail I take on my commute to work and on the right side of it, sits a neighborhood and their backyard clustered and merged in this snuggly, cozy way. On the left is an open field with large but spaciously separated trees. A school is on the right of the field. Since this year’s summer, it has been filled with kids running about on the blacktop under shades of big willow trees, the largest of the bunch in the middle of the school. It reminds me of my childhood when self esteem was the last thing I’d ever think about - like those kids who all had but fun on their minds playing like that.

The trail last Winter

If I experienced the equivalent of that type of fun right now, like a 20 years old version of fun - hanging out in the bar or doing roadtrips - I don’t think I would enjoy it as much as a kid would running under those shades. It’s almost a year since I’ve taken the trail five times a week, and they have always been filled with laughters and little crowds. It makes me crave those times of innocence, but also a time when I was oblivious to any insecurities. I sort of built them up over the years. It creeps me out how vividly I remember them building up, one event after another. For every year of my life, since I was in my early two digits, I can deduct a point off my self esteem’s scale of 10.

I can see where they come from and where they plague now, but that part of the story is one I’m all too familiar with. As much as I noticed these flaws, I never went ahead to fix them. They just didn’t feel bothersome. I had a life to live and insecurities wasn’t one I was living. I didn’t want to victimize myself either. It felt wrong and stupid. Was I that weak? Certainty not.

But recently it’s been a different story.

A few days ago, I played basketball with friends, and got absolutely no fullfillment into it. I got so frustrated with everything that I took a walk in the middle of that session as if telling myself and others what I’m even doing there. On this walk and the walk on the way home I attacked myself. Just why can’t I have fun? Why can’t I seem more confident? Why do I change my voice, why fake a timidity when I know how I’m really am by myself. I know I’m not like it there. I’m not like myself, but it seems the situation is forcing me into a costume I can’t escape. And I know I’m in this costume and it hurts and sucks, I can’t breathe and say what I want to say and think what I want to think. It molds my limbs and than it does into my head and brain. I know them well already but it feels like I’m starting over in some way, or “maintaining” my friendships rather then building them. These are questions and walks I walked several times, dozens of times, heck hundreds of times in my life but yesterday was a day when I got a years worth of those “times” dumped into the span of two hours.

I wore a costume here too, on this platform, Substack, for several months, hoping I’ll get some fulfillment out of writing my interest and hobbies. And I did, I really did, but something felt off. Now I realize this.

My happiness came from external factors.

It did not come from personal achievements and relationships, but simple objects and activities I found “fun.” While I played the piano, learning a song for all the odd vanitical reasons and such, and writing for the sake of writing beautiful prose, and reading because it looked cool, I failed to brush my teeth every morning. I stayed up late until 4 am scrolling away, practicing away because I hadn’t done so the previous day because I was lazy and unwilling to even have “fun” on these hobbies of mine. Even as I write this, my brain and hands incline to purplish territory to sound smart and write smart. Every time I write, it is like another battle in of itself so I don’t lose my voice and the way I think. So I spend much of my time “recovering” and “rebuilding” the “skills” I lost.

My happiness became distorted. Hobbies are for self fulfillment as you all know, but for me, they were desperate happiness generators constantly in need of oil changes and maintenance, always running in the most efficient way possible. One slip up and malfunction in the machine struck me hard and in turn, I struck myself hard. One mistake made me doubt my entire palette. It deteriorated my confidence.

When I did achieve a level I was happy with, now was all about maintaining that. I had to ensure I stayed “good” and well machined and maintained, because my happiness depended on being “ good.” All while, my sleep schedule was in ruins, my teeth horrendous, my clothes smelly dirty, weeks without wash, my desk a messy jumble, and my life, a whole cacophony of random paths leading into random whereabouts with a whole lot of random directory signs pointing to random places.

I never wondered if I was even happy. To me, the definition of happiness was how good everything was. I did not need to think about how happy I was as long as I wrote well, played piano well, talked well. If I wrote well, it meant I was happy. Isn’t that all that mattered? You can see how my hobbies have completely grown a sword at its handle.

My confidence and esteem changed so violently. It was volatile, like the tide of battle shifting as if all the battles of WWII were Stalingrad. The gap between change and recovery was unbreathable. War ended one day and began the next. Most of the time, it didn’t end at all. Just when i thought it would, another shell exploded in the air, already littered with gunfire. There was never a point in time when a Christmas truce stopped all the fighting and gathered peace amongst all the bloodshed.

One day I stood at the peak of myself. I felt so great. I loved how smooth conversations flowed and how I talked, how my words fluttered out and carried myself. But one sleep later, I was back to where I started and scratching my head at the end of day. Sometimes attacking replaced that scratching. The next day, I was again all smiles and laughs. And the next, back to where we started.

The common theme for me is recovery in my life. Not recovery for a better future, but recovery because of I’m not good enough.

It took a while to see these patterns. They emerged a while ago, but in the dark and never turned the corner into the living room where all the morning light shone. I had to go there myself, with a candle in hand.

When I did, it wasn’t reliving at all. But at least I was aware. I tried various types of light sources in my life, ranging from the first candles, into reading lights you’d snip on a few snuggly pages, than lanterns, but nothing worked better than well… a flashlight(duh). That flashlight for me, was actually a korean drama.

Because I was so invested in maintaining my interests, I never got around actually consuming them.

That day, I remembered Youtube and reels had gotten real boring. I actually found myself deleting the apps, because they had distracted my “maintaining” schedule for all my hobbies. The only consumption node I had going for me at the time were books, which I read to “maintain” my writing hobby, and Netflix, on my phone. I hadn’t touched the app in a couple of months but it reminded me of several nostalgic memories of watching Korean dramas. One was a drama named Hometown Cha Cha Cha.

I binged the thing in 2 weeks. I figured it a nice break from reading.

It takes place in a fictional coastal town in South Korea known as Gongjin. While I adored the the plot, the setting, and the romance, I was more so immersed into a character there, the male lead named, Hong Du Sik. The villagers called him Chief Hong, and for good reason. Du Sik goes around town taking up various jobs and duties for those needy for an extra hand, getting his hands full of work. It can be in a grocery store, or a fish market, or a music bar, or a korean jjimjilbang (bathhouse) - it did not matter. He was the expert of town and the man of the house. At one point, he showed off his wallet of accomplishments and licenses, from his shoulders down all the way to his toes.

Dusik loved reading. He loved carpentry. He loved cooking, surfing, pickling, fishing, fermenting and aging various wines and teas. He played Go like some sophisticated, wise elder. It seemed he was good at everything and had the hands and gloves for any given situation.

But what I took away most from his character was how loyal he was - not only to his dear neighbors, but to his values. Sincere, straightforward and direct. He took it as short as it needed to go.

Rest days were times for himself. As much as he loved being the Handyman, if help caught him on a rest day it would be in the form of a fish he’d rile up near the beach.

If he wasan’t fishing, Dusik wailed around on the surfboard on either a Monday Tuesday Wendy theusesday Friday Saturday or Sunday.

Since Hong stayed true to his values, he found it effortless to reject or simply not be the “nice guy.”

Unlike Dusik, I’ve lived a whole good 7 years betraying what I thought I held dear to me. Honesty Integrity, Love, Compassion, these were desirable traits and values which sounded great, and which you wanted in someone. So I exuded myself in the way of a noble, very nice guy.

But I never practiced these traits. I slumbered them with my own company and “practiced” them with other company. My own deceptiveness scared me, and almost in turn, I scared myself away from others quietly.

When I detected the tiniest bit of resentment or annoyance among my relationships, I amplified it ten fold and sweated the whole rest of the day and the night thinking about them. If a friend nudged me in an odd way, if they made a harmless joke I didn’t understand, I took it as if it came from a stranger.

On one of his rest days, Chief Hong sits on a tall boulder right on the shoreline where the water crashes below, and reads a book. He brought one of those foldable chairs webbed together by fabric, a fishing rod, and I believe a bucket. There’s a slight gust that flaps the pages as well as his hair. The song “Romantic Sunday” plays in the background that I always thought Chief Hong could hear it too because of the way he’d gaze at the page and than the sky.

In another scene, he lays down on a boat he had pulled up to a hill somehow, like the many mysteriously impossible things he’d done and gazes at the stars. I have seen scenes like these and thought about doing things like these but for whatever reason I never did them. I read and watched several people whether it be Youtube or movies, out in the boonies looking at the dark. I read comic strips of Calvin and his pet tiger, reading comics under their neighborhood trees while Autumn left down piles of leaves as pillows. I felt a sense of relatability to them, as if I’ve done them before, but infact, I’ve never. I only dreamt of doing it. My days in reality looked like work, get home, rot in bed.

Somehow with Chief Hong, it makes me want to do it.

Just by seeing the way he dresses, the way he carries himself, acts, works, and the values, he holds tells a lot about his self care. He has a lot of interests and passions, but he does not serve them. He finds time to work on himself through improving his internal state and by seeking enjoyment out of improving his limbs and his head and whatever he can control with his brain. I’m sure there are many other characters who hold these traits, but I related to Hong the most upfront.

The occasional piano, the video games - things we invest our energy outward to, is fun, but without self, especially inner improvement, self improvement as a whole can never stabilize.

I set so much on improving that I don’t take the steps to implement. It’s as if I’m constantly refining my prose and my writing style without ever writing a novel. Now where would that get me?

So that’s it.

Working on your self, your internal self, including self esteem and respect.

I want to return to the time when I was child uncaring and playing ,striking up conversations and holding them whenever he pleased and said whatever he said without given thought. Someday I’ll look at those trees and pass through the trail for commute with only a longing for nostalgia rather than a comparison of the past, and someday those basketball games will finally be about passing the ball and shooting the hoop instead of a passing the ball and hoping it was a good pass so I don’t dread the look of judgement on my teammates faces.

Thanks so much for reading. There will be more to come about my struggle with self esteem, social anxiety, and perfectionism.