Three and a half years. Three promotions. Two hundred fifty-six percent wage increase and counting. This has been my story in the corporate world. A coveted story of a once brooding political science student craving for power in the real world. An inspiration for watchful parents wishing that their child is me or will be like me.
I had been wanting these events to happen to me too. I might say that I have surpassed my own expectations, notwithstanding structural limitations and emotional incapacities. I am here above the ground when the whole world is crumbling into hell. I am touching rainbows and grasping the clouds while the whole world is getting tired of staring how I glide through the clouds. But am I with myself?
Life could be a struggle of getting what one deserves. I admit wholeheartedly that I have been reaping what is due to me: Prestige, authority, wealth, fame, opportunity, body. Overestimation, underestimation, complacency, greed, numbness. Despite playing under the sunshine, and despite dancing in the rain, why can't I be happy?
You might be right all this time. I should not be here. This is not what I want. I might indeed be different from the rest of the people I know. I could really be an anomaly, an exception to the rule, a deviant in the crowd. If I could just believe everything you have said, I might have convinced myself long enough to have the strength to leave these walls that I have built around me.
But I don't want to believe in you, since I would love to deny that you know me too well. You can't possibly be too confident to know that everything you have been telling me are the best options available. You can't be too right, neither in control. You can't see my spread of choices because you are not me. Yet why have you always been so correct in handpicking options that would make me better-off? Am I wrong all this time to suspend my trust in you?