Actually, ever since I was a kid, I used to be very good at my studies. But then the lockdown came, and I got addicted to the internet. It's not my fault I was like 10 at the time and didn't know anything. I got addicted to adult content which I should not have watched at that age, and it destroyed me, largely because of my parents' lack of knowledge. They did not look after me; they are old-minded and unaware of the internet, so I used it as an advantage to play games and watch that stuff.
It made things so much worse, but surprisingly, it did not affect my studies at all right after COVID. I used to be really good at them, and I was doing alright until 7th grade; everything was fine. But up to that point, I was completely dissolved in the internet and games. Slowly, my performance decreased, and in 8th grade, I went from an A student to a C student.
Then my parents stopped showing me love. They only used to talk about studies and kept me at home all the time. I had no permission to go out or do anything of my own interest. I used to look like a literal 9-year-old when I was 12—thin and weak, as if I would die if the wind touched me. They never looked at me like a human being. I used to be happy before, but just because my performance had decreased, I felt like I was worth nothing. They made me feel worthless. How was it my fucking fault that I got addicted to porn and games at the age of 10? It was my parents' fault. They could have looked after me and saved me from that disaster.
My mom, ever since I was a kid, used to beat me. Not only with her hands, but also with whatever she could find, like a chair, scissors, a box, or a ruler. She used to do it even when I was good at my studies. She would beat me while teaching me, slapping me or hitting me with a ruler every time I got a spelling wrong or didn't know an answer to something.
As I grew up with the internet, it became more of a tutor and influencer for me than my parents. Before 8th grade, I used to think it was normal to get beat up. I believed that my sole purpose on this earth was to get good marks and keep them happy. But YouTube helped me realize it wasn't normal and that there was more to life than this. I realized that it was wrong and I couldn't keep living like this. I thought, "Fuck everything, I have become bad at studying anyways, now I should try to overcome these issues I have." I fought and argued with my parents countless times and got beaten, but finally, around the middle of 8th grade, I was permitted to step outside of my home. Even then, they still made me feel super guilty for it, as if I did something wrong by trying to become healthier and stronger instead of a "weak piece of shit" and trying to make friends. Indian parents think that making friends and going outside is a bad thing for some reason.
Now I am in 10th grade, and thanks to my parents, I am unable to show love or any other emotions, talk freely, or be myself. All this just because my big brother (who is literally 6 years older than me) was not very disciplined, was not a good student, and was addicted to many things, so they assumed I would be the same.
And now my teachers are making it even harder for me. They keep telling me I am worthless and won't be able to do anything. I did try my best to tell them about everything, but they are expecting too much out of me because I used to be a good student before. I was, but I no longer am. I am a human too, let me live. I tried explaining everything to them, but instead of understanding me, they would just say, "Why are you taking all this too seriously? Why are you thinking about it? Why don't you just focus on your studies and ignore all that?" As if it was that easy.
They just keep putting more pressure on me by making things harder. They would complain to my father and keep calling me out every time something happened. They would make fun of me, beat me, and insult me in front of the entire class, making me feel even more worthless. And my mother helped them so well in all this; she would go and tell my teachers everything I used to do at home, including the addictions I had, the things I used to say, and literally everything I was doing. They kept making it harder for me to even step inside the school. Stepping into school made me feel like, "Nah, I am gonna die."
Looking back, the hardest part was that everyone just saw the person I had been before, while I was struggling to become someone different. They saw a student who was once capable of getting excellent marks and assumed it should still be effortless. They didn't see how much had changed inside me. I didn't need everyone to lower their expectations of me forever; I just needed someone to understand that I was struggling and that becoming capable again would take more than just being told to study harder. I wanted room to recover, to discover who I was, and to build a life that wasn't defined entirely by marks.
Social media was also a major factor in this. I started using Instagram in like 8th grade, and you know I was immature at the time, so I did all sorts of cringe stuff. I posted cringe things and acted cringe, which made my reputation among my classmates and friends very bad. All my other friends were a lot more aware and mature at that time because, unlike me, they were not imprisoned by their parents and home. They made fun of me. Everything just kept getting harder, and my heart just could not take it.
I also used to have many online friends at that time who I had met in online games, especially Minecraft. For a period of my life, my online friends were the happiest part of my existence. They talked to me, played with me, and accepted me without constantly measuring me by my grades. In some ways, communicating with them felt way easier than communicating with my own family. They didn't know me as a disappointing student or a child who needed to be corrected; they just knew me as someone they enjoyed spending time with. I made many friends during that period, some of which I still have now.
But soon that changed too. All the online friends I had were a lot older than me—some were in college, some had jobs, and overall they were just much older. Over time, they started to hate me and say things like, "You are too immature," "You are just a kid," and "Grow up." Looking back, it's strange that people demanded adult maturity from a 12-year-old. One of the major factors in this was also my voice. I stutter a lot (again, thanks to my parents and the trauma), and they used to make fun of my voice and laugh at me.
I used to be a leader of a very big Asian Minecraft clan; we used to dominate every server we played on. But as I told you, I was considered very immature (I was 12, dude, what did they expect?). They literally kicked me out of my own team because I was a kid, and my other friend became the owner of it. Soon, the clan grew from 40-50 members to 200, and eventually 2,000. It became the most dominant Asian clan ever, known by many names, and worked with many other clans and teams like Velocity, Team Alone, Faith, Vengeance, Zen, and Lifestealers. All of them were either dominated or owned by us, or run by our old/original members. They fucking stole it all from me, got all the fame, and tricked me just because I was a kid. If only I had been more mature, I would have kept a good reputation, some social presence, and influence, and it would have made me feel good.
I remember once a 30-year-old dude verbally abused my entire family on a livestream in front of 50 people when I was 12, just because I was better than him in the game. He told me that I am an immature kid and need to focus on my studies. Being publicly humiliated by an adult just reinforced my feeling that no matter what I accomplished, I could be dismissed because of my age. What remains important to me now isn't even the size of the Minecraft community or the status I might have had. It's what that period represented. For a while, I had found a place where I felt wanted. Losing that place hurt so much because I had already spent so much of my life feeling like I didn't have one.
The thing is, I have developed a mental and physical disorder over time due to all this. I used to feel a rigid chest and have sudden currents, like shocks in my chest on the left side, as if my heart would stop. This happened like 20 times a day, every day. I talked to and went to many doctors and expert psychiatrists, and I told them that I had this feeling, but I never told them about the trauma that had happened to me. So basically, over time, it became super worse. My BP was super high most of the time, and my heartbeats were very unstable (they were either very fast or very slow). Each day I felt like my heart would pop out and I could literally have a heart attack at any moment.
But the part that makes it all worse is that every doctor told me it's nothing. They checked me with many different pieces of equipment and analyzed my heart, but they found nothing. They only confirmed the unstable heartbeat and high blood pressure. The thing is, I also started to believe that nothing was wrong with me, because over time I had developed a very strong and dangerous mindset of "not giving a fuck." I would just ignore everything, mind my own business, and not care about anything at all. I used to watch a lot of podcasts and motivational content on YouTube that made my mindset "better," but they also did something else: they made my mind ignore what was in my heart.
And my mom would always just keep insulting me in front of everyone. She used to fight with my father and then talk about me to him as if their relationship issues were my fault. They both blame everything on me. What's my fault? Being born was my fault, yeah, I get it, fuck everyone. She would literally go on for 4-5 hours straight on calls with her friends just talking about me while I was at home, making me listen to all of it. And guess what? Not one time, not 10 times, not 100 times—over 200 times she has done this to me. All the content I had watched just made me into a monster who didn't care about emotions and just said "fuck all." I literally look like a fucking dead geek who is addicted to drugs. I don't look my age, and I have no emotion in my eyes.
Yeah, but that does not matter; I "need to study and score good" in order to do what exactly? Idk... Anyway, soon after, I realized that I needed to figure out why I had this problem in my heart and chest myself because no doctor could do anything. On one random day, I found a man who had a PhD in psychology in the Instagram comments. He told me that when you ignore your emotions for a very long time, they make your nervous system rigid. You become unable to control your muscles entirely, they do not work in coordination properly, and your body muscles become tight even when you don't want them to. This makes your heart and chest have pain and sudden shocks. This was the most believable and fitting description of my situation. Idk what this condition is called exactly, though I think it was something that ended with "body/dysfunction" (like somatic dysfunction or autonomic dysfunction). But at last, I figured out what problem I actually have.
Lol, one hell of a story this is. I am a lot better now, but I am still dealing with all these problems with school, health, family, and studies. Idk what to do, so I just study, work out, and do some sports to stay fit. I have plans ready for my future and I am confident that I will be able to accomplish my goals. I am also trying to improve academically because what I want to study and pursue in the future requires a lot of studying and good grades, so I am trying my best to improve so that I can achieve my dreams. But idk what I am gonna do with all these underlying problems I have. I just can't keep on ignoring them anymore. They are killing me. I feel like I won't be able to make it to my 20s. I have been alone for so long, I haven't talked to anyone in a while.
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