I am shy
and have social anxiety and also, I am a foreign student in a different
continent from my own.
First let’s
say how shy I am. An example that I always remember and that still makes me
feel ashamed (and that always will) is when I was in secondary school and I was
like 12 years old. My father gave me 100 pesos to spend (a little less than 5
euros) and I accidentally dropped them in the floor of the classroom and the
teacher picked them up. He asked repeatedly who was the owner of the money and
no one said a thing. I was twisting in my chair, trying to be able to say that
they were mine but I couldn’t. The teacher ended up shrugging his shoulders and
keeping the money.
And I still feel terrible about it. Why didn’t I say that
money was mine? It was money that my father gave me, it was his hard-earned
money but I didn’t say nothing and someone else kept it.
And that’s
one example of my shyness and social anxiety. I got to say that nowadays I
would definitely reclaim that money, but sadly for me my anxiety has new ways
of manifesting itself.
I don’t dare to do things that apparently no
one else does: like going into a store without buying something, taking a bus
without having the precise change in my pocket, ask for directions because, obviously,
you have to know where you’re going.
And all of
this because many times I assume that everyone, excepting me, knows what they’re
doing. That there’s a secret code about living life that everyone knows and I
have to pretend that I have it too. And this makes my life harder of course and
also makes me act in many stupid ways.
I have
almost no experience living independently and I’m old enough for it to be embarrassing.
Knowing this, I do wonder why I decided to come to live alone when I’m already
awful living in my own country with my own language? I came here hoping to have
no choice but to do things, to have no choice but to react, to have to work to
live, to have to truly study, to have to talk to people.
I know that
I’m privileged. Many people are shy too and have social anxiety but they can’t
give themselves the luxury to hide behind their parents or their friends when they have to
face the world. They have no other choice but to face life on their own because
no one else is able to or willing to do it for them.
To summarize,
it can be said that I’m dealing with my life crisis with my parent’s help, I’m
trying to be “independent” with my parent’s money and support. And honestly the
only thing that I can hope is that it’ll help me to actually be a productive
human being after, to pay to my parents everything they’re doing for me, to
become a person who’ll be able to be independent and make her own money.
I’m aware
that being proud of being here, to have this opportunity, would be extremely
stupid. The merit is not mine, not even close. It’s my parents merit, they’re
the ones who are able to give me this, the ones who have worked their entire
lives and the ones who support me. At least I can have the conviction of not
being stupid enough to believe that I’m superior for this.
If someone’s
reading this you’re probably judging me and I can’t blame you for it, but I’m
happy for finally been saying this.
