I wasn’t born. I was forged.

When the world broke...

Nighthawks (1942), artist: Edward Hopper, source: Art Institute of Chicago.

We come into the world with a naive belief that we’ll be extraordinary. When we open our eyes for the first time, all we see is love, joy, and tears of happiness. Everyone coos over us, praising how perfect and clever we are. And that affirms our belief that even the simplest thing we do deserves instant recognition. That’s how a child’s world should look.

Safe. Simple. Predictable.

We look up to our parents and absorb everything essential from them – their way of thinking, gestures, bad habits, perception of reality, language, and most importantly: the silent belief about who we are. We place our trust in them, naively convinced they won’t hurt us. That they are the ones meant to love us until the end. And that they’re leading us the right way.

And this is where our reality begins to crack. It’s often childhood that leaves the deepest wounds. We may fight them all our lives – trying to break patterns we never chose, but had to adopt to survive. For the doubters – there are scientific studies confirming what we’ve long felt in our bones: a child’s brain is like the rings of a tree – carefully storing every touch into fine layers. It draws a map we’ll unconsciously wander for the rest of our lives.

How unfair it is, when the world disappoints you before you even get a chance to be pure and naive.

I often ask myself: what kind of person am I? Am I a good person? And how do you even know if someone is good? Who gets to decide that? Who sets the rules? Is it supposed to be me who’s responsible for my own life? Or someone impartial?
Because how are you supposed to judge yourself when you’re rarely honest or objective with yourself?

How can anyone truly understand who they are, when they’re made of layers of unfulfilled dreams, disappointments, masks, pretenses, lived trauma, joyful moments, love, and the tangled threads of deep friendships?

I think each of us is a little ball of chaos sealed inside a jar. We can tap on each other’s glass, circle around, get closer – but we only truly meet once we’re willing to release the pressure that naturally builds up in life.

We are walking paradoxes. We want everything – only to find out it wasn’t even worth it. We overlook the tiniest things, where the strongest emotions and realizations often hide.

And doesn’t the pressure of society speak volumes about how cruel, envious, and self-absorbed we are as a species? Even when we live in a bubble of harmony – with families to lean on, loyal friends, loving partners, raising children with the best intentions – we still send them into a shapeless wilderness, where none of us are ever truly safe.

And I honestly wish I knew the answer: Why does society always reflect off its weakest links? Why does it feel like negativity outweighs the good? Sometimes I wonder how aliens from a utopian world would see us – with wonder, or with sorrow?

A cruel, beautiful world, woven from a spectrum of emotions – and sometimes, all it takes is a drop of luck to escape the worst possible fate.

It’s not just the world we have to deal with – we have to handle ourselves, too. And that’s where the world is both merciless and fair: we don’t get to choose who we’re born to. We’re simply handed a set of cards. So go on. Play them. You’ve got, roughly, a hundred years – if the world lets you.

And if you make it to the end – if you survive the world – the hardest part still awaits: surviving yourself.

Your inner critic.

I’ve already mentioned how a child’s reality tends to be naive. But the real cracks appear the moment that illusion bursts. When the world we built inside ourselves as something safe suddenly stops making sense.

The first real disappointment often comes in childhood. We perceive reality, but still through the foggy lens of our own trust. We grow up shaped by what we believe is right or wrong – based on what we see, what we feel, and what our parents pass on to us.

For me, the big shift happened when my family fell apart. Suddenly, overnight, a huge wave of instability swept into everyday life. And there was no room for the question “why?”

When one of your parents walks out of your life, you might start wondering if it was your fault. It can distort your understanding of love, of trust – and trigger a spiral of doubt about why people leave you.

I was always a quiet, thoughtful, and empathetic child – the kind that preferred to escape into imaginary worlds, places where I could filter out the things that hurt in the real one. And often, a quiet child becomes an invisible one.

Unseen. Unheard.

And because of that, it gets the chance to observe the world without the masks. With time, it learns to recognize what others try to “sell,” even when it doesn’t quite match reality. Again – it’s about the small gestures, subtle movements, tiny tics. We can agree that every person is unique. But emotions? They tend to show up in similar ways. You just have to learn how to read them.

Later in life, you come to realize you’re actually insignificant. In the grand context of global society, we’re just pins stuck into a single overcrowded pincushion. And amid all that chaos, we start to understand that importance is relative.

Opening up to people who aren’t willing to stay in your life – that was another test of character. It led to another shift within me. I learned to smile when I wanted to scream. Not out of courage – but because I realized it wouldn’t change anything.
It was temporary. And wasting energy on people who don’t stick around just isn’t sustainable.

Empathy is both a gift and a curse. It lets you sense how others might feel
and even predict how they’ll most likely act. But the curse? It’s the stream of emotions flowing into you that aren’t even yours. And not only do you have to deal with yourself – you have to learn to filter the burdens of others, too. And people? They can smell an empath from miles away. We give ourselves away in the way we look at people – deeper. We see through masks, hear the silence between words, sense the exhaustion no one dares to say aloud. We don’t miss the quiet sigh that tries to relieve the pressure of uncontrollable emotions.

To stay sane, I had to build walls around my core. To learn not to take other people’s emotions too personally. It was a long battle – because the trauma of abandonment doesn’t exactly align with the instinct: “Don’t let it get to you.”

“You can’t protect your kids from life, because life gets us all in the end.”
Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

And who am I now? At twenty-seven, I feel like I’m only just beginning to grow into adulthood. It’s almost funny to think we’re considered adults and responsible for our lives at eighteen – or that we’re supposed to choose a study path at fifteen. Even at twenty, I had no idea who I was. I was lost – in a new city, overwhelmed by an endless range of choices. Terrifying for a young person who had no clue how real life actually worked.

University helped me with that. It guided me to the delicate line between hunger for knowledge and analysis – while still honoring my artistic nature. I met so many inspiring people who shared thoughts and views I had kept hidden for years.
For the first time, I was able to relax – not only to explore my future possibilities, but also to start discovering myself. And let me tell you: that journey wasn’t gentle.

To hold up a mirror and look into a self that’s been suppressed for years – that’s not some poetic image.

If I had to describe myself, I’d say I’m someone who survived herself. Someone who found herself in the darkest corners. Someone who shines when she’s happy. I’m not good or bad. I’m a living, breathing paradox – accidentally bumping into new layers of myself, having conversations with them, trying to understand them. Accepting who I am. Because if there’s one thing my past taught me, it’s that suppressing any emotion will catch up with you eventually.

It doesn’t disappear. It transforms into something darker, something ungraspable.
And then it rolls right over you. It becomes your personal demon – one that stays with you forever.

I still battle with my traumas. And I probably will for some time. Awareness is a complicated process – and it can’t be rushed. Because the moment you realize and understand something, you immediately uncover another flaw you never noticed before.

But with every battle, you become stronger. Wiser. More resilient. You gain perspective and a sense of direction that helps you build a foundation for your own calm little bubble – the one you can finally call home.

Over time, you learn to recognize whether you’re truly living – or just surviving.
You begin to understand that adulthood isn’t just an endless to-do list waiting to be checked off.

Life begins in the soft release – right in the places where it used to hurt the most. Each day, the pain fades a little more. Not because you’ve forgotten your wounds. But because you’re slowly starting to accept them. And learning to breathe freely again.

Joy doesn’t have to be loud. It doesn’t need to be fireworks of emotion. It can be quiet and unassuming. Like sunrays on a chilly summer morning as you walk through the forest. Like the smell of coffee you sip slowly by the fire. Like the beautiful silence that settles in your chest and tells you you’ve finally found peace.

They are fragments of feeling, stitched together with chance.

My strength doesn’t lie in grand gestures. It lies in the words I let flow. In the courage to give shape to a thought and breathe life into it – a life that might touch someone else. In the act of returning to myself, again and again. Even when it costs me the whole day.

It’s not glamorous. But it’s the truth. And that truth defines me more than all the wounds I’ve ever received.

“Some of us never manage to get the chaos under control, so our lives simply carry on, the world spinning through space at two million miles an hour while we bounce about on its surface like so many lost socks.”
— Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

People often lose themselves in the opinions of others. They reflect what they think others want to see. Sometimes, that’s effective – but it comes with a darker side. Just like the character named Legend from Caraval, we become performers wearing masks that shift with each occasion.

And sometimes, we forget to take them off. Sometimes, we accept them as our own personality. And then the conflict begins.

Am I still myself? And what about the part of me that was forged by society? Will I ever return to who I used to be? Or is that lost for good? And when we’re betrayed by experience – does it give us the right to shift the world’s perception toward that same edge of despair?

Humanity is a beautiful, chaotic wind chime. Everyone has their own voice. And everyone is shouting what they’re currently living. It makes us unpredictable.

Uncontrollable. Breathtaking.

Because when emotion transforms into meaning, we open up a dialogue with our own consciousness. When feelings are retold through the simplicity of music, art, or writing – it gives us the sense that we’re not alone. That someone else is going through the same thing. That we’re not unique in this. And yet, paradoxically, we are. Because the way we perceive ourselves will never match the way the world sees us.

We’re often harsher on ourselves than the world is on us. The problem lies in the constant presence of our own thoughts – thoughts that convince us we’re the center of everything. It’s a strange defense mechanism of the complex organism that is the human being. Especially one with a deeply developed ability to think – thanks to our intricate neural network.

Ecology taught me to understand people in a way I never could have otherwise. We like to see ourselves as something more than the rest of Earth’s inhabitants. But the truth is – our emotions and behaviors are often so raw and primitive, it’s almost laughable to think we stand above it all. Assumption shapes perception. But when you look at the very structure of what makes us human, the differences begin to blur.

Accepting yourself is hard. Living with yourself – without constantly seeking distractions – is even harder. But eventually, you realize that being who you are is simpler than it seems.

It’s okay to have doubts. It’s okay to be afraid of your own identity. And it’s healthy to remind yourself that even though we may be older now – we still have room to grow.

Maybe precisely because we never stopped being that forged child within us.

If these words spoke to you, maybe the ones that follow will, too. If you decide to stay, I’ll be glad. But only if it feels right to you.