u/After-Shelter

I don’t assume many will see this, and I’d likely prefer that to be the case, but an urge inside of me possessed me to stretch my little thumbs and get to writing in my notes app, and post it for the chance that maybe someone out there relates to my exact feeling and that maybe I am not alone, this might also not be the most coherent essay I've written, as I’m mainly just dumping my thoughts, but ill try to fix it up here and there to make it readable lol.

For some added context I'm from a country in the Middle Eastern that's near the Gulf (not trying to be specific for privacy reasons). When my parents were young they had both gone to America to study at University, they hadn't known each other before, but both were enrolled in the same school, and had met each other on campus gone to the same one (this was back in the 1980’s) and the experience must've been so great that they stayed there for a while too (initially wishing to stay indefinitely but that didn't end up working out) before returning back home with an infatuation to the country. While they never manifested their wish of living permanently in the US, the idea was built up around me and my brother (although more in me than my brother). My parents believed largely that America (at that time) was and would continue being the greatest country (a land of Opportunity), so I was placed in an American school in my country, learned the English language first, indulged in English literature and American movies as a sort of culture starter.

My whole world essentially revolved around this idea that one day I'd leave my country to someday live and work there. This for me caused a whole host of issues, one being that my arabic was not as good as others, especially other students during early school times (what's considered elementary and middle school) and I would often struggle to communicate with others or need help with arabic based classes (every country has its own dialect so its not as easy to just learn arabic itself and apply it). It made me feel very isolated as a kid in school, my group of friends was small and filled with people that I could talk to easily (a.k.a people who knew English pretty well, despite being an American school, many still struggled with english all the way up to high school), but that still truly never made me feel whole as i never found anyone i could relate truly relate to. This issue existed even outside of school, primarily with Extended Relatives (uncles, aunts and cousins), I had no relatives my age, all were either way older or way younger, so i was never really connected to either side of my parents families, but even if there were it wouldn't have mattered much, as my parents never really brought me around to the family gatherings/outings all that often when i was younger, all this just further isolated me from everybody, it developed in me this fear of being judged for not speaking arabic, which just grew stronger the older i got, whether it was in high school, family gatherings that i was now forced to go to.

Another issue I faced was a loss of connection to my culture, I could never really get into a lot of things others were doing at the time, as I had both little knowledge of my culture and traditions. I was often left alone by my parents and that did not change when it came to these important dates and big events, being by myself I had neither the capability to celebrate nor the understanding of how to/why it was important. This gave me a lot of identity problems as while I was legally considered a born citizen of my country, I still never felt like I belonged with others, I struggled to even call my country home which caused me to not appreciate it as much as people around me had. I guess the one positive out of this is that a lot of people in my country have this strong, almost blind patriotism, that somehow magically blocks their brain from any criticism or doubt about their country, which I never really had, it allowed me to see problems and have opinions that a lot of other people considered taboo. Another issue I personally had as well as a result of my upbringing (and this may sound odd but it'll make sense) was a fear of being intellectually inferior to others due to my lack of Arabic speaking skills. This was a big one for me personally because I'd been considered a very gifted child, I had excelled in school far more than other students had, while amazing in most subjects I did exceptionally well in math and science. My parents did not shy away from mentioning this to everyone they knew about how smart i was, and so when i would meet people or even extended relatives whom id been presented to by my parents to as this genius, all this person would get is a kid who could not communicate well with them (again because of the arabic issues), even the attempt at conversation would leave me feeling this sense of intellectual inferiority to others because I could not meet the expectations set upon me.

Eventually I graduated from high school, and got accepted into Georgia Tech for computer science. I was ecstatic because I'd finally be able to live in the US for a while and stay here permanently, but after some time I felt more disappointed as I hadn't really connected to the country as much as I thought I would. I was a lot more social, and made a lot of friends, but still felt as if I was an outsider. My graduation neared, and I left feeling defeated, but at the same time oddly optimistic, around that time i became determined to get better at my countries dialect (whether through podcasts, videos, streams, news, etc…), and relearn how to write arabic, of which I’ve since improved alot at, i dont think im quite ready to return home now, but i will be soon (especially since im also preparing to study for my masters).

PS: I just came to say that i dont hate my parents as one would imagine, they're not bad people, quite the contrary compared to many others in my country they're very polite and generous, but terrible at parenting.

A dream I had last night that I wrote down: old sandy rustic giant box, bright neon colored signs, blurry faces on long people, me my friend and a masked man want to climb to the top, to the eye, have to make a risky and big climb, we jump, land, climb on repeat, being watched, burning sensation, we make it to an opening to the outside that’s the rest of the climb, the bottom is more sand falling into an abyss, there’s nothing else around, a blue sky blending into the black, the sun didn’t hurt my eyes, we continue the climb until we get to where the eye is, grab it and slash it in half, whole place goes dark, the platform where the eye was way high up is now lowered to floor level, everything is silent for a bit, then screams, things slip my vision, lots and lots of eyes, panic, but a colorful door is at the end of the darkness, run for it, look back for friend, masked man kills friend, looks towards me, I enter and close the door in a hurry, narrow white bridge leading to an elevator, everything else is foggy and dark, only two buttons in the elevator, up arrow and down arrow, press up, elevator goes up, then the elevator shakes, i feel it falling down till it slams, im still, elevator door opens, no colorful door to be seen only the thin white bridge, slowly hear footsteps coming from the darkness, masked man walks out of the shadows, takes his mask off, I see flashes of faces, burning faces, faces with pale white skin, horns and big black eyes, faces with maggots, then I wake up with stomach pain and need to use the restroom

Dream Talk: (I should note I don’t quite remember all the details of the dream, and that the post above is a fragmented version) Upon awaking, while I sat on the toilet seat, immediately took to my notes as usual to write my dream down but at first I wasn’t exactly sure what to make of my dream, I’ve thought about it for a while and I think the box sort of represents a cage I feel in my life, it could be a represent the a social cage for my social anxiety, a cage of comfort to protect me from my fear of failure that I wish to overcome. The people in the dream are interesting too, one of the things I recall most about my dream was their blurry faces, idk why but when I think about that moment i almost feel as if those blurry faces were staring right at me, looking at me with contempt but also another feeling of praise and warmth, I struggled hard to remember that exact emotion despite my vivid memory of the visuals of it. You could say the companion choice was a bit odd, one a friend the other an anonymous man wearing a black mask whom seemed to willingly join me and my friend in reaching the eye (to which I have no idea why, I’m not sure if my mind ever cared to explain or if I simply just forgot why), maybe he represents a blind trust, despite having a bit of social anxiety I do tend to allow people to be close to me a bit too quickly/easily, which makes it worse that I’m constantly paranoid of the possibility of an act of betrayal that the masked man just so happens to engage in when he murders my friend, but I just can’t figure out exactly why it is, that when he takes his mask off, his turns into flashes of multiple grotesque and creepy faces, possibly to taunt my willingness to trust people more easily than other people typically do? There’s also that eye ( one I had seen before, but not in real life but rather a video game, I’m not sure if this is at all any important but it shared a striking resemblance to the eye of death in dark souls remastered, maybe because I had just recently finished a play through idk), for some reason my mind made it very important that the key to an escape was to get to the eye at the top of the giant box, my assumption is that we’ll I hate being judged and I hate being looked at, so of course it would be an eye, this point is even stronger after we’ve slashed the eye, because in the darkness, among the screams all I could remember seeing in the dream were giant eyes dashing past me (could be implying that in breaking my fear of being judged or watched I’m just adding further attention to myself) and then finally there’s that elevator, my saving grace, I press up thinking I’m safe then booom, I’m not I just go right down and plans of escape are over when I’m caught by that dude, like I’m trapped forever or maybe I don’t deserve escape, maybe a part of me doesn’t want it.