bunk bed. Normally the middle child gets the stigma of feeling left out or overlooked, but that wasn’t really the case with me. In fact, I think it actually pushed me to work harder to establish myself so that I could be proud of who I was by just being myself.
In my house, my brothers and I had a pretty interesting dynamic with one another. My older brother, who is one year my senior, carried himself as a bit of a leader, always the first to make a decision and to try new things because he was the firstborn. My younger brother, who is three years my junior, strove a little more to be accepted by the two of us; because of the bigger age difference, it was harder for him to be able to do the same things we wanted to do. Because of all of this, I feel like I learned early on what each of their different needs were and how to peacefully make everyone happy. For example, one Christmas, I remember our parents buying us each a WWF action figure. When we opened them up, my older brother proclaimed that he had been given the best figure and showed it off to the two of us, so I joined in his excitement to make him feel happy with what he got. When my younger brother and I opened our figures, I saw that I had one that he would have liked more. Just seeing the expression of disappointment on his face made me realize that although I didn’t care about the character he had, I knew he would be happier with mine, so I traded with him. My older brother was happy, my younger brother was happy, and I was happy that they both felt the love and respect they needed in that moment.
It started to become clear to me that doing the right thing and helping others made me feel good about myself; knowing I could make small sacrifices that didn’t hurt me long-term made me realize that there was something to humility and sacrifice.
When I started going to school, my parents instilled in me the importance of doing well academically, so I made it my mission once again to aim to work hard so I would stand out. I remember in elementary school, I would try my best to win as many awards, certificates, and plaques as possible, I even had a bit of a feud going with another girl in my class over this. She had the same dedication and drive as I did to succeed to the best of her abilities, so we both made sure to enter every contest, write every essay, and create every art project possible just so we could be recognized for our achievements. During one awards ceremony in the fourth grade, the two of us were called up to the stage so many times that we decided to stand in the aisles instead of sitting down, just in case we were called up again. It was an adrenaline rush for me to be recognized for my achievements, I knew that deep down inside that this was exactly what my parents wanted from me, and the last thing I ever wanted to do was let them down.
Once I reached middle school, that started to change a little bit. The kids I hung out with weren’t bad, but they certainly didn’t make it easy to uphold my perfect student image. We pulled lots of pranks on each other without any regard for how they could get us into serious trouble. Whether it was jumping across the lunch tables or having wrestling matches in class, I had quite of a bit of explaining to do to my parents whenever they got a call from the school. In some ways, a lot of it was harmless fun, but one thing I knew was never to do anything that would get me in serious trouble. Nothing scared me more than getting suspended or expelled from school. If I ever met that fate, I would have had no clue how to explain it to my parents.
By high school, I was so set in my ways of never letting my parents down that I avoided anything that my parents told me not to do. When my friends started drinking and smoking, I turned it all down because I knew my parents wouldn’t be happy with me. If some of my friends were cutting class or ditching school, I told them I couldn’t do that because I wasn’t allowed to. By the end of the year, I had even been awarded the perfect attendance award, along with four other kids who seemed equally as obedient as I was. What’s also interesting is that my parents weren’t super strict with me at all. They laid down ground rules but were very nonchalant about enforcing them. I think what was really happening with me was that my sense of worth and acceptance was completely tied to how well I did and what they would think of me. I didn’t spend a lot of time asking myself what my purpose was simply because it had been laid out very clearly—do what your parents say and make them proud.
One question in college that changed everything
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“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”
Things seemed to be going extremely well for me until I started college. Just like in school during the years before college, I relied on my parents to help me define my path so I could know exactly what I had to do to succeed. When it came time to pick my major, I really had no clue what to focus on. I had lots of different interests at the time, but no clear direction to follow, so I asked my parents what I should do. Since I enjoyed designing in Photoshop and creating websites, my parents suggested I go into the computer engineering field. I thought that made sense, so I took their lead and signed up for physics and math my first semester there.
I knew things were going to suck from the very first day of classes. I had set my alarm clock to a radio station, thinking that would be the perfect thing to wake up to in the morning. The very next day at 8:00 AM, I heard a Backstreet Boys song start to play as I woke up, sang along in my head, and then drifted back to sleep. When I woke up again, it was already 10:30 AM, and not only had I missed my physics class, I was already halfway into my math class. I rushed out of my room and ran to class, thinking to myself, I can’t screw up this early on, I just can’t. Waking up late that morning ended up being the least of my problems, however; as I dove deeper into learning physics and math, I realized I just couldn’t keep up. The topics and material we were covering were not only too hard for me, I felt so disconnected from the class that I just felt sick to my stomach about going. Was computer engineering the right major for me? Had I made the right decision here?
I had never been steered wrong before when I followed my parents’ lead, so why did this all feel so wrong to me? By the end of the first semester, I was placed on academic probation for getting below a 2.0 GPA. I received an F in my physics class and got a D in my math class, which left me wondering if college was right for me. Deep down, I wanted to be there, but I knew something had to change. I felt depressed, I felt worthless, and worst of all, I felt like I was disappointing my parents. So early one morning, when my roommate had left for the weekend, I woke up early on a Saturday, opened the shades to the room to let in the sunlight, and then asked myself the most complex question I’d ever asked: why should I go on living, and what is my purpose for being alive?
I told myself that if I couldn’t find an answer by the end of the day, then I would simply end it. I couldn’t imagine a life without a purpose.
I sat there for hours, thinking and thinking about what I could do and what my purpose was, and it wasn’t until later in that evening that the answer finally hit me. My purpose in life is to experience it, and the reason I should go on living is to share it with others. I felt like the answer was so incredibly simple, yet it was something I had never thought about before. For my second semester of college, I knew I had to break from my current path. I needed to define for myself what success would look like, and I needed to do it for one person: me. I changed my college major to “undecided” and enrolled in philosophy classes to start from the ground up on recognizing how I could create a path for my new purpose.
That wasn’t the only thing that changed for me, though; as time went on, I suddenly became more open to the world around me. I started to notice the squirrels running by on the grass, the way the sun set over the buildings on campus, and how each and every person was someone just like me, trying to find a way to be somebody great. I felt connected with everyone and everything, and I knew at that point more than ever that I didn’t have to make my life revolve around someone else’s approval, I just had to live it for me.
