[ENG] I Stopped Pretending. And I Was Left Alone

03 Jan, 2026

I’ll keep repeating this forever: 2025 was not a better year than the others.
This idea that every year has to be better than the previous one is something I really don’t understand. Each of us has our own goals, our own fears, our own knots to untangle and everything that comes with them; so I believe that every year we should try to do something we neglected the year before, just to find some kind of balance nothing more than that.

As already mentioned, 2025 was fairly standard: a lot of new things, which then balanced out with just as many new paranoias and insecurities. So all the good things and all the bad things that happened simply aligned, resulting in a year like any other.

There is, however, one topic that stood out in my mind, especially in the last few months of this much-discussed 2025: solitude, side by side with my mental state.
Don’t get me wrong I’m speaking as a twenty-one-year-old who grew up with a very typical Italian small-town childhood, in a family full of highs and very low lows, and with a personality that’s anything but easy. The fact is, I spent at least two hours a day reflecting on my mental and physical state, trying to understand even if it wasn’t strictly necessary why a twenty-one-year-old should be alone. What follows are some of those reflections.

My character and its role in this story

I always start from the assumption that one of my biggest problems is my character itself. I don’t know where it comes from, which damn trauma it stems from (and a trauma doesn’t necessarily have to be something overtly bad), or which relative with a negative influence it came from but I can swear that I always try my best to fight some of the behaviors I’m about to mention. Sometimes, though, I simply can’t.

My character is one of those that, if it had a human form, would look like one of those obese American characters lying in bed because they no longer have the strength to move, constantly eating junk food and engaging in low-effort activities like playing video games or watching movies and TV shows.
It’s a character that gets tired very quickly of both activities and people: I last very little when it comes to human relationships (not sexual ones, just to be clear haha). There’s always that initial phase that gives me a massive dopamine hit: I really want to get to know you, analyze you, understand who you are, what you like, what you hate, and so on. And I inevitably end up ruining the relationship once I realize that this person is not cohesive with who I am.

The same goes for activities: I start a project, enjoy the first week of discovery, I’m fascinated by it, I spend entire days on it, I see no results and I quit.
What a sad person I am.

But let’s go back to the root of these reflections: is it my fault?
Yes.

Believe me, over the years I’ve tried to shift the blame onto the people who ended up leaving, or onto the projects I abandoned halfway through. But I simply can’t pretend that my own being has nothing to do with it. It’s obvious.

I remember exactly the period when I started realizing that something wouldn’t work even before it began. I would feel a strong urge to do it, but automatically my brain would say:
“Hey, what’s the point of wasting energy? You already know you’ll give this up soon, you’ll feel bad, and then you’ll start something else.”

I was always right.
And maybe finding this balance was a blessing. Because of it, I started focusing much more on myself and on the things I genuinely enjoyed at that moment, making sure I didn’t start new ones, but instead refined the ones that already existed.

Inevitably, everything mentioned above leads to certain social states. One of these is solitude.
The quiet kind. Not the one that eats you alive and drives you insane. More like a small blade lodged in your chest so thin that it hurts at first, and then maybe you get used to it. Maybe. I don’t think you ever truly get used to solitude.

Someone under one of my YouTube videos commented this:

“You’ll never fully get used to solitude, but I can assure you that solitude will be both your best friend and a burden you carry with you. In solitude you’ll find authentic moments, you’ll get to know yourself. Make good use of it, because one day this magic of solitude will be overwhelmed by responsibilities and everyday life, and the bricks of growth you’re laying down now will become the foundations of who you’ll be one day, ‘as an adult’.”

I agree.
So I’ll use this comment as a sort of explanation for something I’d like to say, but that would take too many lines and make this already boring piece even heavier.

I pretended to be someone else for a long time

This is a very hard truth.
Until some time ago, I believed that in order to find my place in the world, I had to shape myself after others: copy their behavior, their way of being, their clothes, their music, and much more.

Today I find myself exactly where I was before, unchanged. I’m made up of fragments of other people, scattered everywhere, and I feel like I’ll never be able to forgive myself for hiding from the world and making people believe I was something I wasn’t.

I pretended I liked noise, clubs, smoking, alcohol, and a life made of excess.
I pretended I enjoyed going out every night with a huge group of people, acting like a clown or an idiot just to get a couple of laughs.
I pretended to be tough, fearless, able to clash with the world and come out unscathed.

Spoiler: if you spent a period of your life with me, know that everything you knew was just a mask.
A miserable mask, worn to please you and the people around me.

I’m not like that. I hate noise, crowded places, getting drunk, smoking, going to clubs just to chase girls who want nothing more than a temporary ego boost. I’m not an idiot. I never wanted to make anyone laugh. I’m not friendly, outgoing, extroverted. I am not all of this. Not what you thought you knew.

I believe that pretending to be something I’m not hurt me deeply.
After all, how do you tell a kid in middle school or high school that if they keep being themselves, they won’t have friends? That their path isn’t videogames, clubs, escapism, and excess?

How do you tell them that their real passions are writing, reading, productivity; that they’d rather stay home with a warm cup of tea, writing thoughts and reflections about themselves and others?

You can’t.
You just have to let time run its course and let it inflict its wounds. When that happens, you’ll be able to talk to them and they’ll probably stare at an empty spot in the room and say:
“You were right. I’m sorry.”

Adults are always right.

The breaking point

There is a breaking point in this story. I call it a “rebirth.”
Not because I thought I had never truly lived before, but because the person who lived through everything up to that moment wasn’t really me.

There was a moment when I decided to intentionally ruin everything, just so I could strip off clothes that no longer fit me and start wearing looser, more comfortable ones.

The weeks following that big change were devastating: sleepless nights, barely eating, no desire to work, to train, to talk, to think, to play, to listen to music.
In short no desire to be in the world.

It was only then that I truly understood how things work, at least in my view.
To really live, you have to live yourself not others. You have to be bored, to face your own fragilities, your dependencies, and the critical points that surround you.

It wasn’t easy to argue with certain people, to cut out certain habits and activities. But right after that period of pain, I felt genuinely good for the first time. Aware that the problem had always been me and that realization never hurt.

If it’s been decided that, in order to live well, I need to have few things around me, that’s fine. As long as it’s the way I can truly live.

The tightrope walker

Following this story my story I developed a metaphor that represents how I feel. I can’t explain it any other way.

I wrote a few lines about it last month:

The way I see it, this condition of mine resembles a wire. A real wire, tight, suspended, without knowing exactly where it begins or ends. And I walk on it. Not out of recklessness, not out of desperation, but because it’s the place where I know how to stand. Over time I’ve learned balance, I’ve learned to feel the weight of my body, to correct myself when I waver, to recognize when it’s time to slow down. In this sense, I feel like an experienced tightrope walker someone who knows their craft and, above all, loves it. But experience doesn’t make you invincible. Even the best tightrope walkers, the ones who seem to never make mistakes, sometimes fall. All it takes is a moment: cold, fatigue, a distraction. And when you fall, there’s no net. No backup. No way back. This isn’t a warning or a lesson it’s simply how the wire works.

I’ll break it down now, maybe it’ll be clearer.

• Tightrope walker: me
  The person walking on the wire. Not for show, not out of recklessness, but because it’s how I know how to exist in the world.

• The wire: my solitude / my state of life
  Not a void, but an active, ongoing condition that has to be walked every day.

• Walking: living this way
  Moving forward without knowing exactly where it leads, without a clear beginning or end.

• Balance: habit, experience
  Years spent getting to know myself, understanding my limits, managing my character, knowing when to slow down or correct course.

• Experience: time spent on the wire
  Knowing what to expect, recognizing instability, not panicking at the first wobble.

• Wavering: moments of fatigue or overload
  Not obvious crises, but small shifts, micro-imbalances.

• The fall: loss of control / loss of clarity
  Not a moral failure, but a point of no return.

• No safety net: lack of a backup
  If you fall, there’s nothing that simply puts you back on the wire.

• Awareness of risk: knowing it can happen
  Understanding your limits doesn’t eliminate danger.

• The paradox: knowing isn’t enough
  Even if you understand everything, even if you know the wire, you can’t stop walking. Because this is how you’re made.

Conclusions

I don’t have solutions to offer, nor a moral. This isn’t a story meant to improve anything it’s just an attempt to explain how things are, at least for me.

I walk this wire because it’s the only place where I truly know how to stand. Not because it’s safe, not because it’s right, but because everything else has always made me feel fake, out of place. I know the risk exists. I know that even knowing myself, I could fall. Awareness doesn’t protect me; it doesn’t eliminate danger.

But it doesn’t offer me an alternative either.
Stepping off the wire, for me, would mean stopping being lucid, stopping being real.

I don’t know where this wire leads, and I don’t know how long it will last. I only know that today, this is where I manage to live best even accepting the weight and instability it comes with. And for now, that’s enough.

There’s only the wire.
And I keep walking on it.

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If you click it, you’ll be doing me a huge favor <3

Thanks again, everyone 🫶🏻

#eng #life #things