Chapter 3: A New Beginning That Wasn't
I was a shy child.
I never had the courage to speak my mind or say what I truly wanted.
I don't even know why I was like that.
But I was.
I was finishing high school, and it was time to choose a college.
Honestly, I had no idea what I wanted.
I didn't know what interested me, what I wanted to become, or even where I wanted to go.
But one thing I knew — I had to leave.
My parents supported me.
What else could they do?
My mother only wanted the best for me.
She wanted me to succeed, to graduate, and become a respectable man.
But she had no idea what I was hiding inside.
I wanted to move to a big city.
To start over.
To change.
To not be the same person anymore.
But my parents didn't want me to go too far away.
So I ended up enrolling in a college just two hours from my hometown.
Still, that didn't stop me.
I found an apartment and started living on my own.
I thought everything would finally get better.
But it didn't.
I didn't fit in at college.
I didn't know how to study.
I wasn't interested in what I was studying.
I kept telling my parents everything was fine.
That I was studying, that I had friends, that everything was going well.
But the truth was completely different.
In that new city, I started meeting people.
Not girls… but men.
Through apps.
At first, it felt harmless.
Like a way to escape loneliness.
And then I started inviting them over.
There were many of them.
So many that I don't even remember their names anymore.
After every encounter, I did the same thing.
I blocked them.
Went to take a shower.
Tried to wash away the feeling that stayed on me.
But it never went away.
I felt dirty.
Empty.
Like I was losing a part of myself every single time.
No one wanted to know me.
There were no conversations.
No real connection.
Everything was quick, shallow… meaningless.
And every time, I asked myself the same question:
Is this all I am?
There's one I remember clearly.
The moment I saw him, something inside me resisted.
I knew I didn't want it.
I knew I should say "no."
But I couldn't.
Fear stopped me.
What if he got angry?
What if he started shouting?
What if he told someone?
What if my family found out?
All those thoughts rushed through my head in seconds.
And instead of leaving…
I stayed.
I closed my eyes.
And let everything happen, as if my body didn't belong to me.
And that's when I realized…
It wasn't what I was doing that was destroying me.
It was the fact that I stayed silent.
That every time, I betrayed myself.
And that was only the beginning.
Because step by step, I was sinking deeper into problems I didn't know how to escape from.
But that… comes later.