so samurai jack is one of my favorite animated series - and its final season kind of means a lot to me

for those who don’t know - samurai jack is about a samurai who gets sent into the future by Aku, this massive demon lord thing, and the goal for jack is to find a “time portal” to return to his own time, to defeat the demon lord Aku by striking him down before he laid ruin to the samurai kingdom, which Jack is a heir of (man that’s a very concise tl;dr)

he spends 4 seasons looking for a time portal, sometimes finding one - but in the end, Aku closes the time portal before Jack can complete his mission

Season 5… is where I want to start. What I’m about to discuss really isn’t a spoiler (ok it kind of is) but it’s important

Season 5, we find Jack has lost his samurai sword (and basically all of his samurai-ness), and has grown old. He’s still a massive badass - go watch the show if you’re interested in seeing Jack be a badass

pretty early on, he confronts himself about how he’s failed, and that there basically cannot be any more time portals, and that Jack should admit he failed his mission - there is no way to save his samurai kingdom

so we find this… thing. a younger version of Jack, in his head - telling him to basically go and kill himself.

Spoilers end here. He’s basically bothered by this ghost for most of the season. Jack has an internal conflict wanting to not give up on his mission to defeat Aku - but at the same time, there’s a part of him that understands that giving up should be an option.

The hard part here is the “giving up means losing all meaning in life - and thus, to protect one’s honor, one should kill themselves”.

I self-insert way too much into this series - because this is exactly how I feel right now.

Somewhere a little earlier in life - my childhood - things were somewhat smoother, and I had an outlook, or a plan in life.

I was in middle school, participating in a bunch of math competitions. It was clear I had quite the aptitude there, beating 10th graders while still being a 7th grader. I got weird honor awards and crap.

I was planning to survive high school, then apply to MIT. I was fascinated by computers, especially the Tor network, and learning about how the free knowledge available on the internet was not necessarily available to some people in the world. I was infuriated by how some nations had severe censorship, propaganda, and control over what its citizens were able to access.

I remember being caught by the dean (via someone in the IT department, who realized I was running tor bridges in the school network), and being questioned for my activities. I explained how this was a small mission for me, to understand the tech better - and also using the school’s network as an example of a censored network, and learning how to bypass it.

My classmates were interested more about how to use what I was using to play games during class by circumventing the outbound proxy the school had on the network, which limited us to a small number of sites.

---

My life got derailed right after. My dad’s work forced me to move to Japan, and I encountered severe bullying in the school I transferred to. People didn’t like how I was outgoing, how I spoke English fluently, and how I was socially out of sync with everything.

I became the scapegoat for a bunch of crap. I don’t even want to talk about it right now.

The interesting thing, and the toxic thing - well, it kind of… precedes the move to Japan, but

Even in the States, I was bullied for… existing. I was weird. I was over-talkative, too friendly sometimes, and had this weird habit of engaging people who I knew didn’t like me. I was interested in learning why - and wanted to figure out how I could also be their friend.

Name-calling, being beat up, ambushed by a kick in the nuts, all of the terrible shit was something normal for me.

There was a pattern, though. Once I had some sort of academic achievement, and was accepted into the “socially important” group of people - the bullying stopped. It became dangerous for me to do things like that to me, because what would follow was powerful people punishing those who attack me.

My security, my self-worth, my safety was only granted to me because of my credentials and standing.

It was the way I learned to protect myself - and also, it taught me something that haunts me to this day.

I, for some reason, decided I was “better” than those who would target me. Inherently. It was them trying to pull me down to their level, to subject me to their violence because they thought I didn’t deserve anything.

I got called many things. I despised everything the bullies did to me - and I slowly came to understand that I belonged somewhere “better” than them.

Come high school, university admissions. This was the reason why I sole-betted on getting into UTokyo - best university in Japan. I was planning to either pass the test, or commit suicide.

I got in, thankfully. I read a few years later about some kid who attacked someone with a knife right after the admissions test, quoting how he’d rather “remove” some of his competitors than fail the test. I… understood that logic.

My parents divorcing after the move to Japan was yet another volatile element in my childhood, and I was desperate to “re-certify” myself as one of the people of the “upper echelon” of society.

However… things only deteriorated after that.

I joined a traditonal Japanese cheerleading club after getting into UTokyo, and survived the harsh hierarchy and abuse there, just because I wanted credentials.

Meanwhile - the other more better off peers joined tennis clubs and whatnot, building their network.

That was my first fuck up - then I got depressed. I still tried to claw back by joining other school communities, but to no avail.

The depression got worse. I couldn’t keep my grades up, and had to give up studying economics, instead opting to go into the less competititve English literature department.

I basically doomed myself to never being able to get into the high paying, desirable consulting jobs.

I still tried to claw back. I joined startups, worked my ass off during the pandemic, joining internships at startups (now that I think about it, bad move), trying to prove myself in some sort of arena.

It’s been two years since I graduated (after staying an extra two years at UTokyo).

My resume is a fucking mess.

I was supposed to join the right club. I was supposed to get into the economics department. I was supposed to get into banking, or consulting, where I could uphold those social credentials that allowed me to be “above” everyone. I was supposed to swing my dick longer and faster than everyone, so my social status was unquestioned.

I am currently unemployed, with an entire stack of medical and mental issues. I’m thoroughly fucked.

I tried. I kept trying. I took a CTO role at an AI systems integrator right after graduating, then got booted because they decided they didn’t want to give me equity. I tried becoming a solo operator, and then worked myself back into depression. I just left another startup because I couldn’t keep up with the workload.

None of it got me anywhere. I don’t know what else to fucking do. I don’t know where to go, where to look.

I don’t trust myself enough to take on any of the interviews my friends tell me to take.

The ghosts inside of me - my younger self - laughs at me. I wrote an entire short story about how an older, desperate and miserable version of myself was put in a fictional room, with a younger version of myself, and an even younger boy version of myself. Torturing the older one for not trying enough - and then the older one blaming the younger versions.

It ended with the older one suggesting the younger versions to have fucking ended everything when they had the chance. To tie the noose and hang myself.

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I have no fucking idea what writing this out helps me to do.

A friend I talked to told me - that looking down on others, to make fun of them, to register them as below human, was the issue.

I tried, I tried to empathize with them, but I couldn’t find why they weren’t like me. I couldn’t find why they couldn’t have the achievements I had.

I may have been in a better position than them, with abusive parents who tortured me into the kid I was then, but then what?

Does that completely explain why I was ahead of them?

Why did my mom beat me, force me to go hungry, take away my things, throw me out of the house, in the first place?

Who the FUCK was responsible for the hatred that grew in me? The hatred that continues to consume me, the unbridled rage, the self-pity?

What the fuck do I do with my own wounds? People tell me to leave my past behind.

They always, however, sit in their high chair. Above all of the bullshit I had to deal with.

I don’t even have anyone who wants to fucking listen to me anymore, because I keep pouting, and I keep “choosing to be miserable”.

My therapist only tells me to focus on my “recovery” while ignoring the fact that I suffer from conditions I’m not even fucking aware of.

The only sane thing for me seems to just grapple with the idea of killing myself until I feel ready to do it.

I know that isn’t the way to go.

Yet… the only door that remains open, with delusions of safety, really any feeling of safety, is an ultimate end.

I despise how I’m stuck in my own skin to survive all of this shit.

Fuck you. Fuck everything. Fuck me. Fuck this.

I can’t even cry out of self pity anymore.

I don’t even know what to feel anymore.

What… am I past that?

I have a bit of a buddhist background. I have perseverance. I have compassion. I have loyalty. I have certain core tenets of myself.

But I don’t understand what to persevere towards. I don’t know WHY I persevere. I just do so because I remember someone telling me that it’s important, and that I have that quality.

I don’t understand what my compassion is FOR. I only remember instances where people manipulated me, and used me for my compassion.

I don’t know what to stay loyal to. I don’t know why I should remain loyal to anything, when I’ve gone through enough betrayal.

I don’t know what else I am. I don’t know what makes me myself.