So why do you think I’m in college right now - studying, learning, developing, and all sorts of things?

A lot of the answers from other people would have been because they just need to get the diploma to get an edge out there in the bigger world. Simple. They go to school because they need the technical knowledge to pursue what they want, to become the person they want. They seek it out from the courses laid out for them, following a set of steps from those who already knew and creating new ones for themselves.

Well, if you ask me, that’s not all that there is for me. It’s not just the knowledge to know the theories behind the concepts that I will be encountering in the industry of my chosen profession. It’s not just the skill to be able to keep myself afloat in the sea of colleagues and rivals, or to be at par with the rest of them and not to be lost in the mediocrity. I’ve come this far - not just to learn how to draw, to take photos and videos, to put them together, or to write - but also to learn to love myself a little better.

To be honest, I’ve never really seen myself as anybody. I’m just someone hanging at the edges of oblivion, too drowned in the moonlight to even recognize the sunlight. Sure, I try a lot of things, do a lot of things. Except they’re mostly just tiny bits and pieces of information I’ve explored, pit-stops to the entirety that I call a “self”.

I simply just want to create.

But it’s because of that curiosity that had lead me here, to understand that what I want the most out of my life is the ability to experience the things that can be experienced, that my most important strength is to dream.

Cliche? Too sentimental?

I know. But that’s only one step in the long process of staying alive and in being human. Because having the skills to survive doesn’t necessarily guarantee anyone that they can, in fact, survive. Having the tools doesn’t automatically grant anyone the ability to use them. Even if I know what I want and I have all the resources I need to make it happen, I still won’t be able to do anything under the sheer force of a self that refuses to cooperate.

This is why, as I make one little step forward and make a seemingly insignificant progress, I clear my head and tell myself that this is enough. I say this as I forcibly keep my sense of doubt in check, where it can’t bite at the fragile foundation of self-worth that I’m trying so hard to build.

That is why it can get quite frustrating when the world knocks on my door and tells me that what I’m doing isn’t enough. And trust me when I say that it can go so far as to say that everything I’ve built so far is nothing, as if I haven’t been telling that to myself so many times about every single thing.

Can you imagine that? Trying so hard to survive, only to be told you don’t exist the right way, if at all.

So I’m going to say it now: I may tell myself I’m a worthless piece of crap who probably can’t survive, but no one is allowed to insult me other than me.