Several weeks ago, I had a rather unpleasant conversation with my mother. She asked me whether I had ever said anything about my non-existent romantic relationship to a cousin of mine—the same cousin I told you about in one of my older posts. For context, she recently got married to a guy she met at work and moved away to a different time zone.
It's just natural that I wanted to know what brought her to this point, so I fired back with more questions, and it turns out that my aunt (the very mother of this cousin we're talking about) might have said something about the fact that I was still single. My mother put two and two together, albeit inaccurately, assuming that I talked to my cousin, and then she talked to her mother.
I, for the love of God, don't even talk to her that often, so whatever it was that my aunt said, it must've either come from me or her own conclusion. Long story short, the most important takeaway from this conversation was: if anyone asks about it, just tell them to give you their best wishes. Now, where did this come from?
All this time, whenever people asked, "Where's your boyfriend?" (assuming that I am straight) or "When are you going to get married?" I would frankly answer, "No, I don't have one," or "I don't know, I'm single." Apparently, these were not the best answers.
When it comes to stuff like this, I should've opted for open, ambiguous answers. It turns out that the more you answer with honesty, the more people shower you with questions. Asking for their best wishes, however, would simply shut the conversation down. I have to admit that it's a clever move, but then she said something that doesn't sit right with me to this day.
Partner, wealth, death—we don't have a saying in any of these.
That was the moment I began rethinking my entire life. I once heard that every single thing in life happened the way it was meant to happen, down to every single drop of water from the sky above. That is just another way to say that life is linear, that we are nothing but passing figures in this staged act called life.
If everything was predetermined, how much freedom do we really have as a human? Whenever I wish to do something, am I practicing my birthright or simply acting out yet another premade decision? Is there any fragment of me in this reality that I'm living, or am I nothing but a badly written character?
Do 'I' really exist or am I truly just another 'she'?
Another thing came up this morning—this time, it made me rethink my entire career. For the longest time, I have been referring to myself as a 'content writer' whenever people ask me what I do for a living. That is only partially true.
The truth is, I have been ghostwriting for people. I help them turn whatever it is they want to talk about into something consumable by the public. I always write for others, never for myself. Their wish is my command, and you won't even find my name on the credits. It kind of hurts, sometimes, but that's what you get for being a ghostwriter. But you can't put 'ghostwriter' on your resume, can you?
In my career, too, I don't really have a saying when it comes to what I write. If my clients don't like what they see, I will have to scrap everything and write something new, something that sounds better on their heads. To hell with originality; you don't even own what you write.
This is the exact same reason why I keep struggling with the impostor syndrome. I never truly know what I'm doing. I never truly know if my readers (that aren't technically mine) enjoy what I write, if there's anything they don't like, and so on. When things are bad, I'll have to take the blame for not meeting my clients' expectations, but when things are good, the appreciation never reaches my end either—for I am nothing but a passing figure who writes stuff on your behalf.
The only piece that I truly own is this blog, but now, I'm not even sure if my thoughts are truly mine and mine only.
Perhaps I am just a badly written character.
Update (10/7/2021): I'm currently learning about existentialism, and the more I read about it, the more I realize the flaws in my logic. I'm probably going to write another post to counter my own arguments, so stay tuned (if you wish).
