It’s the feeling I dread most in human relationships. I don’t typically have this thought with casual acquaintances, but with family and romantic partners, I desperately want to be someone useful. Isn’t that right? I think it’s been the same with friends too. One of the important aspects of relationships with peers and partners is “fun,” so I’ve wanted to be an amusing person since I was young. Not like a comedian, just a fun friend—someone who’s enjoyable and comfortable to be around. I suppose that was my childhood deficiency.
I tried to discover a function I had already lost, and in that process, various rejections and failures accumulated. Around year 9 and year 11, those efforts seemed somewhat effective. For several years after that, I felt like I was sitting back again, accumulating the feeling of being left behind. Now it seems only rejection and trauma remain in my cells. Honestly, I’m afraid. Developing an ability you weren’t born with is, truly, quite difficult.
The Core of My Identity: Being Useful to Others
Either way, the sensation of “I want to be helpful in some way” is extremely important to me. It’s crucial in almost every aspect of my life.
For example:
1. Career perspective: My work must contribute to society
2. Family perspective: I must be a helpful presence to my family
3. If I have the ability, I want to give generously to friends, family, and partners—whether gifts or knowledge
If it only extended this far, it would be a splendid life philosophy, but it continues like this:
4. Receiving negative feedback = I failed to be a helpful being.
I don’t know how many times I’ve mentioned this, but “needing to be helpful” is almost equivalent to my sense of self-worth. And since I mentioned “self-worth,” it extends further:
5. I wasn’t helpful = I have no worth as a being.
I just took a deep breath after writing that sentence. Because it’s such a sad statement, isn’t it? Let’s set aside whether human beings actually have value to the universe or not.
Childhood: The Origins of My Need to Be Useful
When a new baby is born, people express such joy, don’t they? The baby probably won’t remember, but when children grow up a bit, adults tell them stories: “When you were born…” and so forth. But what I heard was shocking. My parents’ relationship was seriously strained, and when they fought and couldn’t resolve their anger, they would come to me and gossip about each other.
I was born with good language abilities, so I understood everything even then. My father was one thing (this was actually forgivable—he’s been endlessly good to me throughout my life), but my mother repeatedly said that no one was happy when I was born. Because my father’s income was insufficient, my maternal grandmother or someone called me a “bastard child”. As a child, I would cry whenever I heard that, because I understood what it meant. But when I grew up a bit more, she stopped saying it. I suppose that’s when she realised I could understand what she was saying.
My earliest childhood memories are of this nature. A poor, dirty house; parents whose relationship was so ruined one might wonder why they married; a strange and foolish mother. I was actually fine with all of this. Especially the house—although it was extremely narrow, dirty, and infested with mice and cockroaches, perhaps because I was small in stature, it had a certain cosiness to it. We even had a small yard! Well, it was just a few plants placed on the staircase leading up to the landlord’s second floor, which we called a yard. In any case, it had its charm.
The Pivotal Moment: When Cinema Reveals Truth
But my distorted perception of self-worth from birth was apparently quite painful. I lived without particularly realising this, until one day our family went to see the film “Gifted” (2017). (At the time, I really liked muscular people, so honestly, I went to see Chris Hemsworth.) I was in my first year of middle school.
There was an extremely adorable little girl in the film, and unlike me, she was incredibly smart. Especially when I was struggling with maths, she was a mathematical genius. Chris Hemsworth, who played the uncle, had a scene where he told the little girl something to the effect of, “You’re a very precious being. The whole family was overjoyed when you were born.”
It was shocking. I felt envious. Jealous too. It was a very impactful scene. My feelings were complex—sorrowful and sad—after all, it’s a pure moment of birth that I’ll never have, one that has already passed by. Honestly, when a baby is born into a poor family, aren’t they just a burden that ruins the parents’ lives? I didn’t have any outstanding talents either.
Anyway, I really envied that. It means most children from other families were born that way. Unlike me, they had such a warm starting point in life. There’s a clear difference between vaguely thinking “everyone must have been born like that” and experiencing it vividly through the visual and auditory senses in a film. While the film itself was really enjoyable, it was quite cruel for me.
Understanding My Need to Be Helpful
The reason I’m telling this story at such length is because this anecdote was a crucial moment when I began to gradually recognise my “desire to be helpful to someone”. It was an event that made me face my deficiency. So if I wanted to survive, I had to fill that void.
In truth, I don’t know if this is exactly how it works. It’s closer to piecing together thoughts I’ve had for a long time with fragmentary knowledge from psychology books I read long ago. But it makes sense, doesn’t it? So I think that through this process, I established myself as a “being who must be helpful”. Since it’s a deficiency from birth, I can’t go back in time to fill it, but by being helpful to others, it gets filled somehow.
Present Struggles and Breaking Free
Now, let’s return to the present, where I’m writing this depressing post on a blog with a foreign domain name where nobody knows me, indulging in self-pity. So currently, I really hate negative feedback (others’ reactions). It makes me feel useless. For example, when someone only looks at their mobile phone, or constantly says they’re tired while with me. Regardless of their intention, it all feels like they’re telling me I’m ‘not a helpful being’.
Then my energy is rapidly drained. ‘I’m already trying, but I’m not helpful to you. What should I do now? I have no more ways. Truly, there are no methods left.’ So from then on, for both our sakes, I stop seeing that person. Because we’re not helpful to each other.
I think I’m tired of relationships that require effort. Knowing that I’m somewhat lacking in interpersonal skills, I make an effort even with fleeting connections—to be a good person in that moment. If I don’t try, my deficient nature will be exposed, and I’ll be poorly evaluated. But I’m exhausted now. I want to let go of this mindset.
Why should I make such efforts when other people aren’t actually much help to me? I like people who have dreams and work hard. People with clear goals and something to learn from, people with ambition and motivation. There’s no one like that around me right now. That’s because I haven’t done much external activity in the past few years.
I was about to add an explanation to the sentence I just wrote. It’s because I vaguely think someone will criticise me. But I won’t explain. Why should I write sentences ‘proving’ my past life for someone who can’t even understand what I’m saying? It’s awful just imagining it.
I’ve always lived trying to create ‘something’ from ‘nothing’. It’s for myself. It’s also for my future family and the children I might have someday. I don’t want to waste energy on useless relationships anymore. I don’t want to receive negative energy from people with nothing to learn from!
To the person reading this, yes, I’m sorry. If you’ve read this far, please go to YouTube now, watch an extremely funny video, and forget this post. I’d like you to see something ‘beneficial’ from my blog. You shouldn’t be reading this kind of post. Anyway, thank you. There are probably some useful posts on this blog somewhere, hmm… not sure, but they must be somewhere. Alright then, off you go!