# Chapter 1 : The solitude years, identity, & becoming normal again.
*Am I a recluse?* Sometimes I think about whether I fit into the label of being a recluse or simply an introvert. When I actually did some self assessment, I was definitely both, withdrawing for pretty much social interaction and being quiet most of the time, feeling like I was in some type of bird cage wanting to be let out.
Having been writing here and journaling for 8 years, It has been helping me navigate myself a lot.I had some personal development that eventually molded me to be the person I am today that I feel like, this is it, I found my core personality & traits.
## You may catch me at my worst and if that was the case that you meet the shadow of who I was, know that I am striving to be better & thank you for bearing witness to my personal struggle.
Since I spent a lot of time doing inner work, self-reflection and shying away from society, I learned how socially inept I was. I had to learn in the most challenging way about boundaries,love, friendship and working with a lot of trauma that I had.
To eventually be normal again and be more connected to society. I had so many difficulties facing people eye to eye, talking to them, connecting to people, being fine with being rejected, hated or even disliked.
My solitude years definitely had done a damage to my ability to socialize but that won’t stop me from constantly improving and being better. At the same time, it altered the way I perceived myself that I thought I had energy for prolonged solitude. In fact, I like being surrounded by people in moderation, being an observer in the whole grand scheme. I didn’t mind talking to strangers for hours.
## Unlike before that I didn’t know my own boundaries and struggled enforcing them, this time I learned how to.
When you grew up to be a people pleaser, it’s easy to constantly say yes and being afraid that you’re actually hurting/disappointing them. In the end, I learned that there’s a better way to navigate all that. It’s to communicate what we wanted to say, what we wanted to do and even why we didn’t agree or reject the invitation. In the end, this is our life and I learned to have some respect for the time we’re already given.
### Why am I doing some type of quest and journal to eventually be normal?
Look, I finally shed and tore other’s priorities. I tore all their expectations of me, their priorities that they put on me and eventually reached this point in life when I am starting for literal 0\.
\> And when you’re living up to someone’s priorities out of habit, ritual, you’ll end up loathing yourself, just like I did almost these 2 (two) decades living up to someone’s priorities rather than mine.
I am not running away from myself, the worst and the good side of me. I am not intending to work against who I truly am. While it’s not sexy to start over at 28, I am getting somewhere this time and maybe it’s going to be another journey. I’ll never know but one thing for sure, there’s a pattern in my life that I keep seeing.
Just as everyone around me said, life is like riding a ferris wheel.
So,being normal like everyone else around me, they have a proper job, some type of responsibility and for me, I want to get back to academia, whatever it costs and even if I have to get a 2nd or 3rd job. I am ready to do that all over again. At this point in life when I am starting from literal 0, being uncomfortable is something I have to be friends with.
I realized that during my isolation, I was shutting off a lot of doors to connection, friendship and even finding it challenging to maintain it all. While trying to live a lot more normally, I learned that there’s a way to maintain all the friendships I make and set boundaries.
People can be difficult to navigate but for sure we can’t always please them. I used to have a scar of friendship in the past. I didn’t know what my grave mistake was but it ended up straining our friendship. That made me have some type of distorted idea about what friendship is and made me scared to actually build real connection.
When I eventually got out of my shell and learned to drop my ego, I found it so liberating that actually it’s ok to struggle like everyone else. We all struggle one way or another, being sneered at, being rejected etc. But having some type of resilience is what is going to set us apart from others. This is what I lacked before and I am re-building mine again.
This time around, I don’t know where it would lead me and I am keeping that way with this quest to be more normal and myself again.