The People

NOTE: This is an essay for my Study Skills course. I gave it in yesterday, so I won't be getting it back till next week. Just wanted to see what you all think of it.

Welcome to my secret chamber, this is where you will come to know me, and of the people living inside me.

A few years ago, writing an essay about myself was a difficult task for me. It meant that I had to make a great impression on my readers and prove to them that I was one of the most dynamic personalities they would ever meet in their lives. And for that, I had to make up talents that didn’t create, and stories that never took place.

I had a hard time in middle school. I would like to believe that the reason for that were the people around me, but that would be escaping from reality, and only cowards escape from the realities of life. The real culprit was within me, a separate entity. It was the very common syndrome of low confidence.

Now most people may not agree that a simple case of lack of confidence is a syndrome or a disorder. But I would disagree, not because I have done extensive research on it, and neither because I am all knowing.

But I have experienced it, as many others do. The only apt way I have of describing lack of confidence is like insects eating away your mind and leaving big holes of doubt and decay in your ingenuity. At that time, I perceived people were my enemies. Everyone was always thinking negatively about me; the list began from my friends, to my teachers and even strangers. There was that girl in the store laughing at me, and the English literature teacher who never gave me a chance to prove myself. What I didn’t realize at that time was that it was the self-doubt laughing and pointing at me, and it was the self-doubt that acted as an obstacle between me and my teacher.

I can roughly divide my life till now into three stages. The first ten years of my life were spent very sheltered from the ‘big bad world’. I was fully confident of myself, and from as early as I can remember I knew I was going to be someone. I didn’t know who that ‘someone’ was going to be, and I still don’t know for sure but I am working on it. I wanted to be great, wanted to be known by all. I still have the same hope, but I have a more realistic approach to it.

Near the end of the very first decade of my life, a teacher let loose some butterflies with rainbow wings in the chamber of my mind. They still flutter around in my head, painting pictures.

All he had to do was appreciate the first essay I’d ever written in life. I don’t know if I’ll ever see him again in my life, but I will always be grateful to him. He was the one who made me realize my purpose in life—writing.

The second stage of my life approximately started when I entered my teens. It was cool being a teen at that time; I was now part of an ‘elite’ group. I knew everything, and I most certainly did not need the advice of my elders. I had a difficult time for the next few years. I became very temperamental, I was surrounded by kids of all kinds and backgrounds, and like others I was very confused about life.

Clouds of self-doubt hovered over me. If asked I wouldn’t be able to pinpoint either the exact time or the exact happening that led to this. Kids in class realized quickly that I was one of the weak ones, and they would ridicule me and basically make me feel really low. Now that I think of it, they too were probably suffering from in-confidence, and by teasing kids like me it gave a boost to their confidence.

Writing no longer helped. Whatever I wrote came out un-original probably because my personality itself lacked originality, and I was afraid to state my own opinions, because we all know that it is un-cool to go against what other kids are saying. I was writing what people wanted to read. So I complied, and so I became a carbon copy of the other cool kids, but I never really got the hang of it. Maybe that’s why I always felt left out, because I obviously couldn’t be someone I wasn’t.

I spent quite a few years immersed in self-pity, blaming everything. Then I was given an opportunity, my father was being posted to Islamabad. I was being given a clean slate, no one knew me in this city, and no one would know about my past years.

And so I began re-constructing my personality. I would talk to myself, coaching myself at every point in my life, making myself do things I was afraid of. I started from the simple things, like being able to go to a shop and talk to the shopkeeper. I slowly started coming out of my shell, and I was no longer afraid to look at someone in the eye.

It took some years, but I am proud to say that I am now very self-confident and am not afraid to face anything (well maybe we’ll skip bungee jumping). There are times when I’m afraid of something I think I can’t do it. But then, I have created an irresistible urge inside me to take up challenges. I don’t succeed in every challenge I take up, but I do have the satisfaction of trying.

I mentioned in the beginning that there are people living inside me. There are countless of them, and I’ve portrayed three of them. For most of my teenage years, I tried on personalities of others, but it was like trying on someone else’s clothes that never fit properly. The other people who live within me are my characters, which haven’t been introduced to the world yet.

Since I knew I had a talent for creative writing, I began learning all about it. I would read everything from books to the ingredients printed on a packet of crisps. A lot of people would presume that I’ve read Dickens and Shakespeare, but I haven’t and I don’t plan to either. Sad it is, but the Classics have never been able to capture my interest. I like to read contemporary fiction, and I am also interested in learning about psychological disorders. I would like to claim that I’ve read great books with big fat words, but I won’t. In spite of that, I’ve learnt what my audience wants to read.

I believe I can give my readers a private sanctum, where they can be anyone they want to be. I want my readers to befriend my characters, I want them to be able to leave this world behind and enter a different one. We all need a break from reality, after all.

A peculiar thing about me is that I like words. I don’t mean in the context of writing, there are some words I just simply like for no particular reason, such as mystical, redemption, mythical, despise, stellar, prejudice and so the list goes on. Words themselves are my inspiration. Most would call me a writer, but I like to think of myself as a word artist.

I know becoming recognized as a writer is probably the hardest challenge I ever will take up. But however daunting it may be, I am not going to step back and close the door to a world of incandescent possibilities. I will try, so that I can erase the blue that regrets bring with them.

In these twenty years of my life, I have learnt a lot and hopefully will continue learning. I no longer have the misconception of knowing everything. I will probably never know all there is to know, but I do plan to spend my life learning about everything I can.

One of my favorite quotes is as follows,

“Education is freedom.”

I wholeheartedly believe in that, and hopefully using my writing as a tool, I hope one day to do something for this nation’s education.

At the moment there are a lot of ‘I wants’ in this essay, but hopefully there will be a time when these wants will be mine, and I’ll move on to greater things, because after all we human beings have unlimited wants, don’t we?