The Identity Conflict.

I'm back!

Well, you asked, "Haven't you been here the whole time?"

No, I really haven't been here until the first week of July.

It's a bit too late for a story time, so go to bed. If you're a night owl or a nocturnal being, continue reading my first attempt to explain how I think using past and present life experiences.

I have two completely different sides to me. I mean, I have unlocked two different versions of myself that never coexisted until this year. Hold that thought. I will return to this.

To date, I don't believe I have ever been understood, and the few who did led to certain unique experiences that I can never forget. Many others liked me, probably because I was smart or maybe because I was weird, but they didn't understand me.

My brain worked differently, and that haunted me. I was never able to express myself, and whenever I did, it sounded gross, like I was exaggerating. This haunted me. I was either called foolish because I was kind without considering myself, slow because sometimes I am so deep in thought that I don't even see the need to act, a monkey because I was so jumpy, or stubborn. Yeah, I would agree that I was stubborn. Very stubborn.

I was stubborn because I couldn't process my emotions well. I was also stubborn because I was angry that people didn't see what I was seeing, probably because I found it hard to describe these things.

Then, I started working on a new version of myself. A new identity. Let's call these two identities A and B, respectively. What does this even mean?

Identity A had been long gone and non-existent for some years now... or so I thought.

Until last December, when it resurfaced and took over after I fell ill. I believed it resurfaced because the last time I experienced that amount of pain was when it existed.

He was very emotional, unapologetically kind, obsessed with books (whether he could understand them or not), interested in all things nature, and loved experimenting with even the most bizarre ideas.

He attracted people very easily. I still don't know how he does it... Okay, I recently figured it out 😅. If you knew me after I became an adult, no matter how well you knew me, you don't know him.

If he looks good, why destroy him, Victor 🥲?

For me, he wasn't. He had no direction, was very chaotic, and was easily controlled by emotions. He could be very constructive one minute and then become extremely destructive the next.

He was hyper-focused, hyper-sensitive, hyper-everything... But he is actually the smart one; Identity B is not. He is the brave, fearless, and very confident one. Identity B isn't. Naruto partly reminded me of him.

However, the amount of havoc he caused in the past (often without even realizing it) was alarming, and we (Identity A and my brain) had to address it. Consequently, I spent much of my teenage years dealing with this. I had certain dreams that the kind of chaos Identity A regularly emitted could jeopardize.

Or so I thought.

Even though the energy was mostly positive, people often focused on the negative side of things. Essentially, I told myself one night that I needed to create another identity that was wholly logical. And so, the journey began.

It is incredibly hard!

In fact, I almost gave up at some point. It was the kind of project that is so crucial to your mission, yet you can't talk about it because you will definitely face opposition. Of course, opposition was a norm for me (I encountered it daily), but it would negatively affect the energy I needed to put into this.

To become 95% logical, I first had to identify all my emotions. Yes, every single one. The strange part was that I didn't need to understand them. Afterwards, I implemented techniques to suppress them completely. This was actually the second hardest phase, because suppressing them meant they must never surface again until I chose to acknowledge them.

I experimented with my new identity after the initial phases, but it kept collapsing. The original identity was far too strong. It underwent multiple iterations. There was even a point when it became toxic and dangerous, leading me to do despicable things I never imagined I would do.

It was WAR!

Let's take a moment to talk about some of my friends who knew me when Identity A still existed.

I still have a few friends who know Identity A. They are mostly friends I made in junior high school. My senior high school days were mostly spent experimenting with the second identity, and those were very scary times.

One of these friends and I haven't seen each other since junior high school (though we still chat occasionally after reconnecting online about 2-3 years ago). Yet, she happened to be the only friend (along with one other guy who I haven't connected with since then) I couldn't stop thinking about even after I successfully transitioned into my second identity.

Maybe because I feel she wouldn't like Identity B. I will pause on this for a while too.

There were also about four teachers whose memories I couldn't forget even after transitioning into Identity B. Two were from my primary school days and two were from my junior secondary school days. They probably disciplined me more than all the other teachers combined, yet I loved them unconditionally.

Maybe because I understood them, and they understood me (or tried to).

Once, one of them intentionally cut me with a razor blade. I guess I was in Primary 1 or Nursery 2 then. My dad had placed me under her care, and she was my class teacher. She often ensured that I ate to my satisfaction just to prevent me from interrupting the whole school.

Basically, I ate more of her food than I probably caused trouble during that period 😂.

That fateful day, she told me not to touch the food until I completed a class assessment. Headstrong me didn't agree. I wanted to do the opposite. As I was reaching out for the flask, she grabbed my wrist and gave me a good cut with a razor blade that was sitting on the table after some moments of pause.

She allowed me to bleed for a while. She allowed me to cry for a while too. I know that you don't know this, but I once hated seeing blood. And she was among the few people that knew this, given that I was almost scared of nothing.

On a lighter note, how could you expect me to fear anything when I used to see ghosts when I was a bit younger? That's why I'm not surprised that Identity A was highly imaginative, given the kind of things we saw during those days.

Unimaginable things. I didn't even have access to technology then, so they weren't influenced by movies.

Then she took a napkin, wiped off the blood, and applied alcohol (I think) on it.

The second teacher would have me squat under her table whenever I brought chaos into the class.

It was indeed one of the most challenging punishments I have ever received. Squatting was one thing, but squatting under a table brought a different kind of pain and feeling. I felt enclosed.

Apart from these people (the two friends and the four teachers) who I probably wouldn't recognize if I saw them again, but who held a special place in my heart, my two identities had no connection by the time the work was complete... except ONE.

Back to my two identities. What do they not have in common?

1. One was highly emotional; the other was highly logical.

2. One made decisions based on hunch or feeling, while the other analyzes the past, the present, and the future consequences and benefits before making a decision.

3. One was highly intelligent; the other was less intelligent.

Wait a minute! I thought that being logical translates to being intelligent, Victor?

Maybe it does, but I would argue that where creativity thrives, intelligence is abundant. Curiosity, creativity, and flexibility are the forces that drive intelligence, which is why children are generally more intelligent than adults.

4. One hated failure so much that he could fall sick from it; the other didn't. Identity A taught me that you can hate failure and still embrace it.

5. One was very stubborn; the other was logically and mildly stubborn. In fact, at the peak of it, Identity A would challenge anybody even when he knew fully well that he would lose.

I couldn't help but laugh to myself. People often think they know more about others than they really do.

I didn't argue with these people because I don't like to give out more information about myself just to win an argument. Yeah, this is Identity B speaking.

I completely disagreed with them. I have almost never cared about competition, unfortunately. I used "unfortunately" because competition is a good thing if done right. If I ever tried to impress people, it was people I liked, and that was when Identity A still ruled.

Competition is very boring to me. I have had people compete with me even when I didn't care in the past. I guess my curiosity always gets the better of me and make people believe that I liked competition. I just love learning and whenever there is an element of learning in anything, regardless of what it is, I often run towards it.

6. Identity A only competes when he knows he will lose... and whenever he does lose, he feels bad about it 😂. Identity B doesn't care about proving a point if there is no logic to or learning from it.

Let me add one more difference.

7. Identity A was interested in everything, while Identity B is interested in nearly nothing.

To be honest, I do like Identity A. It's the original ME. It's the version of me that was the perfect definition of chaos. And I like chaos... a lot. But I appreciated Identity B more because I spent years implementing it and because he understood the mission really well. He was built with that from scratch.

Some of the things to be aware of about Identity B:

1. It is the version of me that parses intentions in words.

2. It is the version of me that would probably smile and count the number of bullets if he were being shot at, instead of running to safety.

3. It is the version of me that doesn't believe in self-sacrificing to save another, because he believes that there is always a way to save both.

4. He has so many weird principles in place that you might not tolerate him if you met him in person. In fact, you might even hate him.

5. He dislikes hugs and would rather give you a handshake than hug you, no matter how much he likes you. And whenever he does hug, he does it with all emotions detached.

Number 5 had a lie. Both identities actually avoided any interaction that involves their skin touching yours, except handshakes or "feet-shakes." The skin feels irritated, which can cause them to shudder or experience PSTD (where S stands for skin this time) after that.

The ONE thing that does connect them is PAIN. Reminds me of PAIN in Naruto too 😅. And this was something I didn't know till earlier this year.

I was furious with myself when I realized that Identity A had resurfaced—someone I believed I had eradicated years ago. I spent the next 2-3 months recovering from the illness and grappling with a severe existential crisis as these two identities clashed. It felt like the old days, except now Identity B had matured, and Identity A had grown much stronger.

All the work I had put in for nearly five years came crumbling down like the walls of Jericho 😅. I was likely struggling to stay sane, or maybe I wasn't. As expected, I stayed off social media completely.

Social media is generally a bin for all things insanity, so it is a quick way to go from bad to worse if you keep feeding off it in that kind of atmosphere. When I said I stayed off social media, I meant WhatsApp and LinkedIn, as they are the only ones I used.

Identity B was slowly winning as I kept reminding myself of the dreams and the screams. Then the news of Kibo closing hit my email app, bringing another level of pain 🥲🥹. As this is a blog dedicated to my experiences as a Kibo student, I believe you already know about Kibo from all my past articles.

I remembered reading the email and pinching myself. It was around 3 AM. I had just woken up and was still rubbing my eyes. I stood up, went across the room to stop my noisy phone from spurting out random musical notes. As soon as I stopped the alarm, I saw a notification from Kibo. Curious, I opened my Gmail app.

Behold, a mail from the previous night stating that Kibo was closing. I simply dropped the phone, brushed my teeth, and went back to bed. The bed wasn't supposed to be the next thing, though.

But emotional Identity A was already overpowering Identity B, and I don't want to imagine what he would do if he were fully in control.

For the following weeks, the fight between the two was so intense that I kept phasing out periodically, not knowing whether I was in the present or the past.

It was fierce. But rather than Identity B slowly winning as it was before the news, Identity A was winning.

Now the chaotic energy was brimming. I feared nothing, not even the future. The urge to embrace death, which Identity B normally uses to feel at ease, had disappeared 🥲.

Don't try to understand the last sentence; ignore it. It's a particular theory I formulated years ago while working on Identity B.

Finally, my birthday came, and I decided to ask the one question I had been avoiding: "Identity A, what do you want from me?"

And this led to a whole new discovery. I saw certain opportunities that had been under my nose for a while but hadn't utilized.

Identity A is indeed a crazy being 🥲. He chose to strike a deal with Identity B.

And I must tell you ahead of time, it's going to be chaotic from now on! Well, the chaos will be moderated by Identity B. I didn't choose to embrace both, but there are deals that are too precious to lose. I need to explore the discoveries Identity A has unboxed, and it takes Identity A to do so.

I must say, this is the first time both identities have worked together well. There are conflicts here and there, but for the first time, Identity A has a sense of direction, and Identity B knows how to rein him in whenever he goes overboard, which I believe he will.

Thank you for taking the time to read about my bizarre experience. I hope you learned something from it.

Let me leave you with a lovely comment from my good friend who reviewed this article:

That's the way to truly be: both light and dark, both logical and emotional, both chaotic and peaceful.

Even the Earth, the home that sustains us, operates on polarities: day and night, rain and sunshine, sun and moon.

Balance is key!