I have always felt there was something off about the world as a child

Do you know that feeling when you are trying to concentrate on something, yet it escapes your attention the moment you get a glimpse of it?

I have felt that way as a child, I would not or perhaps refuse to understand or be incapable of doing so, when I needed to understand what was it wrong with the idea of the world and the slight feeling of wrongness I have always had, at least a certain time until my very late teens or very yearly 20s.

What if I told you that the teachers were just like that, the neighbours were just like that, everybody was playing or rather not even seeing or feeling, or perhaps not noticing what is supposed to happen or what was supposed to be?

It felt… It always felt as thorn in my thumb, there was something about it, but I could not see it, or identify it. It was just there.

Even writing about it, it rather concerns to an extent, or be it better expressed, uncomfortable.

What if I told you that to find an answer, you need to question all you know and feel inclined to hate yourself, the world, and your country just because of the place where you were born?

What if I told you that to find the answer I had to endure something a child shouldn’t have? I had to endure something you wouldn’t for your child.

I was born in a place in Central Asia, and in no particular terms will I state where exactly. You may find it out by yourself or via investigation, but despite that, that would remain to be somewhat unpleasant for me. Shame? Wanting to escape reality? A decision to be something else?

I am not entirely sure, but it does not pain me as much as it used to. Permission is given, if you desire to do so, you can do so. It’s a place that starts with K and ends in n. You are welcome!

You see how it didn’t narrow your search down exactly. I have always had a problem with that ending of Stan. I have always had an invisible problem with the history that was fed to me in the schools. Yet it is the same schools, but higher up, that would awaken me to the truth.

When I was little, I would often not understand why the surrounding adults would behave the way they did. It was not only of kin or blood but also of complete strangers that I got the impression from.

It used to take me 2 hours to get to my school and back. While the ride in a car my father would give me improved it a tad bit, the ride itself was unpleasant enough that I wouldn’t mind to walk instead of being in the seat.

I would sometimes scam taxi drivers into giving me rides and then hoping out at the destination as fast as I could. To this day it surprises me how a 12-year-old kid can start doing daring things if the need arises.

But I remember the drivers, I remember the anger. I remember running. Every single time.

I would never pay for my ride share of city PT. I would always pay for my rideshare of village PT. One was always dirty, horrid, smelly, unpleasant, full. And it is the one I had to pay for.

In schools, educators presented me with these heroes and stories of this and that, and something always felt off about them. It never really seemed real, and I didn’t want to study it. That was the case for the national language I had as well. It felt… made up. It felt as if everybody was playing along a game that was foolishly simple, completely invisible, yet I could feel so starkly, yet I couldn’t describe in a single word, or know what it was.

The teachers, the stories, the feelings.

Towards the end of high school, without knowing much math, not knowing what fractions were, and knowing very little English, I had to do something, to make something of my life, and that’s when I met math more intimately. The circumstances? Let’s leave them be. It started as a fear of being left behind by my peers in a group full of smart people, a feeling of complete stupidity and inadequacy. It made me mad, it made me feel raging. I never wanted to feel those feelings again, I never wanted to be the dumbest again. I never wanted to feel that despair again.

Most of my life, I was told I was going to become nothing. That I had dead eyes, and that my parents would buy their way out for me. Which was a peculiar statement: they were not that reach for most of their lives, and I was usually doing even worse financially for my pockets.

I know how it feels to be in the room, to have people look down upon me, for teachers to refuse to teach me, for rotten people, of which there are many, to make me feel incomplete.

I know that feeling of cheap dentistry in a cheap building full of dentists, every single one of them speaking like fools, or rather speaking in a way a ghetto outcome would? It always felt offensive, stupid? Or, better to say, it felt like a place you wanted to leave and never come back to it, a mix of boredom, embarrassment, disgust mingled together. And yet the people who would go there were just like that. A simple ask for the direction to the restroom would result in strange looks and as if money pulled out for a beggar answers.

That’s the way it felt to be around most people in my childhood, early on, all people.

Oh, how young I was when the first time the thought and plan of disappearing would come into my mind. Never came to fruition despite coming too close, and I am thankful for that.

Year after year, understanding comes, this world is full of outcasts, this world is full of people that try to be, but never are. Or rather, the context they live in is warped enough that they never care to change.

Nonetheless, coming back to institutions of the education. People say “Indoctrinated”, but they often times don’t understand what it truly means. All of us initially are, and almost none of us escape it. Despite my managing to do so, it alienates you, not unites you.

What was the truth I wanted to tell you? Oh yeah, in Central Asia the countries lie their souls out and sell them to create a narrative that legitimizes the government. And that’s exactly what happened there. The entire history, identity, culture were destroyed by soviets so deeply that what has been created was completely new. The only parallel in the world where the change came not as an evolution, but as a complete wipe out, with a complete replacement by an artificial alternative, is the indigenous communities of North America. They are the only ones who can resonate, and even they come short on that.

What if I told you that someone completely wiped out, fabricated, and replaced the entirety of the culture, understanding, and history? Though food may have stayed the same, they replaced the language, the national wear, and everything else, rather than changing them.

And what if I told you, that experiment ran so successfully that those who underwent it, don’t even realize and have not a single whisper of understanding what happened to them, or why they have that strange soul wall in the back of their mind?

Having been dead for a very long time, they possess no ethnicity. They have no culture; the Barbie doll version of the original culture has replaced the original. They have no understanding or any kind of connection with their ancestors. If they feared losing their way, they would be horrified by what happened to the later generations and what ensued down the timeline.

And yet, at the collapse of USSR, instead of starting something right. Doing right. Being right. For the gods’ philosophy, for your understanding, for your sanity. They instead used the very illusion that was created, reinforced it, in later years built upon it, and ultimately used it as a justification for their legitimacy.

You notice how vague my answers and questions are? That is exactly what you think they are, I can’t express the plain to the masses. They should not and shall not understand what I write. Tall poppy always gets cut down, won’t happen to me, I am no martyr.

The preceding statement precisely explains why the language itself is unstable and why later enactments were insufficient and imprudent, even under the most optimistic assessment. And yet nobody knows, nobody believes, nobody tries.

They talk about what they were, what they are. About the legacy and what their ancestors did. Who their heroes were.

How foolish, the very heroes they believe in are the very heroes that were invented and made up by those who wiped the slate clean. The very people they used, or they admire were the ones that created the cage they are living in right now.

It is one massive charade. And no one will ever change it, no one will ever awaken besides a select few. Are there more like me? I highly doubt it, I might be the very last one to know.

Why not spread it? No, I am no martyr.

Most people rely on their motherland to be the anchor they associate with, they go abroad or wherever they are in the world, they speak the mother tongue they were given.

Yet… I completely despise mine despite knowing it to an extent, and would rather burn it and recreate it. The moment I hear someone utter the familiar sounds, I rear to get as far away from them as I can.

Why? Why would I feel myself that way?

Because it reminds me of what we have just discussed. Because it pains me. Because it makes me feel inadequate again. It makes me feel I have to be like them. I am not.

Either I want, or I don’t neither is an answer anymore, for I know the truth. To belong is to bear the crushing weight of all that and have your logical statements collapse, or to not belong, which would mean associating with those who don’t understand. Who did it for the wrong reasons?

I was stateless in mind from the moment I turned 12. Or rather, from birth of my mind? I am not sure, but that was birthed early and decisively certainly.

That would explain all the hate I felt and feel towards those of my origin. That would explain why… why…

They are never smart enough to be good anywhere, there are a few, but so far and in between there are almost none. The rest? Retards, abominations. Not in physical shape, but in the mind, in the spirit. That’s what it does, not knowing. It takes a toll. You get born into it.

Oh, how fiercely they defend their language, or how fiercely they defend their culture. How fiercely they defend the A***i.

Fools… What fools…

And nothing will change, asymmetry in relationships takes precedence over symmetry. Know people, buy people, bribe people, don’t lobby, hunt and put people down. A great strategy indeed. To be as they that are.

No way to build something inside, yet living inside, what choice am I left? Going outside and out and out and out as far away as possible.

I used to want to be English? American? No… no… even that is gone now. I am left with nothing but my mind and soul. There is no anchor but my dreams. There is no anchor but my creations. There is no anchor but my ventures.

A conundrum. Indeed.