The Story of a Boy Far Away
Posted: Tue Jul 25, 2017 1:34 pm
First of all I have to disclose that I'm not an English speaking person so pardon me if there are grammatical mistakes on the text you are about to read.
I was born an only child from Iran. A country in Middle-East that I'm kinda sure you either not heard of it at all, or heard bad things about it.
Had - and still have - the best father in the world that even though he was uneducated and only finished highschool, he would do anything for me and my mother. We were poor, didn't own a home and would just rent a home one after the other. He worked and still works in an autoservice that changes cars' oil and oil filters and such.
My mother is from south of Iran and my father is from north of Iran and we currently live in the north, the birthplace of my father.
Growing up till I was 7-8 I would come home from school or playing with other neighbor kids to broken plates and shattered glasses because of the fights my parent had. They would always fight about my father’s family and there was always yelling and cursing in the house. And because my mother was from the other side of Iran, she would always threaten my dad that she would pack her bags and leave to her hometown. Many of you guys may say my dad should’ve let her go but things are different in Iran and divorce and getting separated is highly frowned upon in here. My father, being the best guy on earth, would always compensate and don’t let that happen.
So those stuff made me be angry and stressful and get angry at videogames and shout and grind my teeth and all these stuff (I forgot the term for this problem). But in school I was great. I would score the highest and I have an IQ of 126.
I hate my mother. Some of you might be thinking I shouldn’t say that, whatever she is she’s still your mom. Well I don’t think that’s right. You shouldn’t love people just because of who they are, but how they treat you and the others. Because of the family problems she had with my dad’s family, I couldn’t see my cousins of my father’s side that lived in our city. Cousins on my mother’s side lived in another city hundreds of miles away and I could see them only once a year when we travelled over there or they would come over here.
She was and still F-ing is an isolated person. Wouldn’t cope with neighbors, didn’t have friends and only people she talked to were her family. She wouldn’t talk to me that much when I was a child. Wouldn’t help me with my homework (neither did my father) cuz she was uneducated too. She only finished mid-school and quit school. She wasn’t a logical person. Whenever you argued with her she would just yell. She would spend so much time watching TV. In one week she may have cooked 5 meals in total even though she was a stay-at-home-mom. My father would always come home tired as hell and see the dishes are dirty and my mom haven’t cooked anything so he would cook meals and wash the dishes even though he was tired.
In second grade when I was about 8-9 years old, I was diagnosed with Vitiligo. It’s a skin condition that causes the cells in your skin to stop producing color and become white (the same thing Michael Jackson had).
In Iran the color skin is green-ish or brown-ish. So people would see this 9 year old with half his body white and the other half green and they would just stare at me. People usually get Vitiligo when they’re grown ups but I got it when I was a kid. But because I was a kid I didn’t understand what was going on. Hopefully we don’t have bullies in schools in Iran but still I could feel the eyes on me.
At that time I had friends and was okay until we changed our home. We moved in to a place that there were no kids around. We still live in this place. So I became lonelier and lonelier. The only friends I had were in school. There were only 3-4 of them but they lived so far that we couldn’t see each other outside of school. Since then I had troubles making friends and it was then that I turned to the online world. I was 13 years old back then and it was around 2007 or 08. Yahoo was really popular back then so I would spend hours upon hours in chat rooms. I assumed it’ll fill up my loneliness. Since then my grades just stopped dropping down. I would come back from school just to sit behind my computer and sit in an empty chatroom waiting for my yahoo friends to come online. In summers I would go online from 7 in the morning til 9 in the evening.
I didn’t realize I was becoming skinnier and skinnier until my bones would show. That’s when I went to the doctor and was diagnose with hyperthyroidism. I would sweat a lot and I was stressful and was in an AD/HD like state and above all that I still had that skin problem.
So I began treatment for my thyroid and under my doctor’s prescription used radioactive Iodine that turned my thyroid around. It went from hyperthyroidism to hypothyroidism which makes you get fat. So I got fat! And it sucks. So I had so many problems and wasn’t the smart kid anymore cuz I didn’t study and I wasn’t very good at social communicating so you get why I wasn’t very popular at school.
That made me completely put aside my real world and focus on virtual life. In real life I never had a girlfriend but in chatrooms I had a lot. But virtual world girlfriends are not as effective.
So I became lonelier and lonelier and I was so caught up in virtual world that I didn’t notice that. I wasn’t depressed or anything. I just lived. Went to college, studied software engineering, got my bachelor degree and learned coding.
I started teaching English because I couldn’t find a job that involved coding and computers because wherever I went they wanted a sample of my work, for example a website I created or a program I made. But I didn’t have one because I didn’t have the mood to do it. I quit teaching English because I wasn’t making enough money.
I stopped being in chatrooms only to find myself playing video games like Call Of Duty multiplayer non stop and watching YouTube videos. My memory is awful. I forget things in an instant. My concentration is messed up. I can’t focus on anything. When I read a book in the middle of the page I forget what I was reading. My eyes move over the text but my mind is somewhere else. It’s starting to get to me a lot. I don’t have a job. I forgot how to code and can’t make myself to do the college projects I have (I am currently in third semester for my masters). I wanted to write a book, learn photoshop, learn Spanish, French, German and Japanese but don’t have the motive.
I want to do them but I can’t. I’m indifferent about things that are happening around me. I know I should get a job. Study. Be helpful to others but I just can’t. I started going to the gym two years ago but I wasn’t consistent with it so I didn’t get any decent results about my body.
About my skin I should say that my skin is now 90 percent white so there isn’t anything weird when you look at me but around my belly there are some green spots.
This lack of motive and concentration is killing me. I consulted with a psychiatrist and he said it’s because of my thyroid. I told my thyroid doctor about it and she prescribed me some medicine but it’s not working.
I don’t have anybody to talk to and it’s my first time opening up about my life. I think not having a girlfriend is a part of this too. I have no-one to comfort me and I never asked a girl out first because I’m very strict about relationships second things are different over here for boy-girl relationships.
The important thing that I forgot to mention until now (you probably know why I forgot) is I was different growing up. Everybody says they’re different but my story goes like this: in highschool I fell in love with English music. Specially rock and metal. Over here everybody is a Muslim and our government sucks. They try to brainwash people with religious stuff. Our TV has about 10 channels that mostly talk about religious stuff. I got sick of religion and after reading a lot I stopped believing in God. Everyone around me was Muslim and our criterias were different. I loved American TV shows and movies and hated Iranian movies and shows and music. There are not that many people like me specially in my city. So even if I find a girl and ask her out, we wouldn’t be having so many things in common and barely have anything to talk about. Most people here listen to that awful Iranian “Music” that I hate and are always about love. I want to be with somebody like me.
I am willing to provide any additional information if anyone is willing to help. Thank you for reading my story.
A 23 year old boy from Iran
I was born an only child from Iran. A country in Middle-East that I'm kinda sure you either not heard of it at all, or heard bad things about it.
Had - and still have - the best father in the world that even though he was uneducated and only finished highschool, he would do anything for me and my mother. We were poor, didn't own a home and would just rent a home one after the other. He worked and still works in an autoservice that changes cars' oil and oil filters and such.
My mother is from south of Iran and my father is from north of Iran and we currently live in the north, the birthplace of my father.
Growing up till I was 7-8 I would come home from school or playing with other neighbor kids to broken plates and shattered glasses because of the fights my parent had. They would always fight about my father’s family and there was always yelling and cursing in the house. And because my mother was from the other side of Iran, she would always threaten my dad that she would pack her bags and leave to her hometown. Many of you guys may say my dad should’ve let her go but things are different in Iran and divorce and getting separated is highly frowned upon in here. My father, being the best guy on earth, would always compensate and don’t let that happen.
So those stuff made me be angry and stressful and get angry at videogames and shout and grind my teeth and all these stuff (I forgot the term for this problem). But in school I was great. I would score the highest and I have an IQ of 126.
I hate my mother. Some of you might be thinking I shouldn’t say that, whatever she is she’s still your mom. Well I don’t think that’s right. You shouldn’t love people just because of who they are, but how they treat you and the others. Because of the family problems she had with my dad’s family, I couldn’t see my cousins of my father’s side that lived in our city. Cousins on my mother’s side lived in another city hundreds of miles away and I could see them only once a year when we travelled over there or they would come over here.
She was and still F-ing is an isolated person. Wouldn’t cope with neighbors, didn’t have friends and only people she talked to were her family. She wouldn’t talk to me that much when I was a child. Wouldn’t help me with my homework (neither did my father) cuz she was uneducated too. She only finished mid-school and quit school. She wasn’t a logical person. Whenever you argued with her she would just yell. She would spend so much time watching TV. In one week she may have cooked 5 meals in total even though she was a stay-at-home-mom. My father would always come home tired as hell and see the dishes are dirty and my mom haven’t cooked anything so he would cook meals and wash the dishes even though he was tired.
In second grade when I was about 8-9 years old, I was diagnosed with Vitiligo. It’s a skin condition that causes the cells in your skin to stop producing color and become white (the same thing Michael Jackson had).
In Iran the color skin is green-ish or brown-ish. So people would see this 9 year old with half his body white and the other half green and they would just stare at me. People usually get Vitiligo when they’re grown ups but I got it when I was a kid. But because I was a kid I didn’t understand what was going on. Hopefully we don’t have bullies in schools in Iran but still I could feel the eyes on me.
At that time I had friends and was okay until we changed our home. We moved in to a place that there were no kids around. We still live in this place. So I became lonelier and lonelier. The only friends I had were in school. There were only 3-4 of them but they lived so far that we couldn’t see each other outside of school. Since then I had troubles making friends and it was then that I turned to the online world. I was 13 years old back then and it was around 2007 or 08. Yahoo was really popular back then so I would spend hours upon hours in chat rooms. I assumed it’ll fill up my loneliness. Since then my grades just stopped dropping down. I would come back from school just to sit behind my computer and sit in an empty chatroom waiting for my yahoo friends to come online. In summers I would go online from 7 in the morning til 9 in the evening.
I didn’t realize I was becoming skinnier and skinnier until my bones would show. That’s when I went to the doctor and was diagnose with hyperthyroidism. I would sweat a lot and I was stressful and was in an AD/HD like state and above all that I still had that skin problem.
So I began treatment for my thyroid and under my doctor’s prescription used radioactive Iodine that turned my thyroid around. It went from hyperthyroidism to hypothyroidism which makes you get fat. So I got fat! And it sucks. So I had so many problems and wasn’t the smart kid anymore cuz I didn’t study and I wasn’t very good at social communicating so you get why I wasn’t very popular at school.
That made me completely put aside my real world and focus on virtual life. In real life I never had a girlfriend but in chatrooms I had a lot. But virtual world girlfriends are not as effective.
So I became lonelier and lonelier and I was so caught up in virtual world that I didn’t notice that. I wasn’t depressed or anything. I just lived. Went to college, studied software engineering, got my bachelor degree and learned coding.
I started teaching English because I couldn’t find a job that involved coding and computers because wherever I went they wanted a sample of my work, for example a website I created or a program I made. But I didn’t have one because I didn’t have the mood to do it. I quit teaching English because I wasn’t making enough money.
I stopped being in chatrooms only to find myself playing video games like Call Of Duty multiplayer non stop and watching YouTube videos. My memory is awful. I forget things in an instant. My concentration is messed up. I can’t focus on anything. When I read a book in the middle of the page I forget what I was reading. My eyes move over the text but my mind is somewhere else. It’s starting to get to me a lot. I don’t have a job. I forgot how to code and can’t make myself to do the college projects I have (I am currently in third semester for my masters). I wanted to write a book, learn photoshop, learn Spanish, French, German and Japanese but don’t have the motive.
I want to do them but I can’t. I’m indifferent about things that are happening around me. I know I should get a job. Study. Be helpful to others but I just can’t. I started going to the gym two years ago but I wasn’t consistent with it so I didn’t get any decent results about my body.
About my skin I should say that my skin is now 90 percent white so there isn’t anything weird when you look at me but around my belly there are some green spots.
This lack of motive and concentration is killing me. I consulted with a psychiatrist and he said it’s because of my thyroid. I told my thyroid doctor about it and she prescribed me some medicine but it’s not working.
I don’t have anybody to talk to and it’s my first time opening up about my life. I think not having a girlfriend is a part of this too. I have no-one to comfort me and I never asked a girl out first because I’m very strict about relationships second things are different over here for boy-girl relationships.
The important thing that I forgot to mention until now (you probably know why I forgot) is I was different growing up. Everybody says they’re different but my story goes like this: in highschool I fell in love with English music. Specially rock and metal. Over here everybody is a Muslim and our government sucks. They try to brainwash people with religious stuff. Our TV has about 10 channels that mostly talk about religious stuff. I got sick of religion and after reading a lot I stopped believing in God. Everyone around me was Muslim and our criterias were different. I loved American TV shows and movies and hated Iranian movies and shows and music. There are not that many people like me specially in my city. So even if I find a girl and ask her out, we wouldn’t be having so many things in common and barely have anything to talk about. Most people here listen to that awful Iranian “Music” that I hate and are always about love. I want to be with somebody like me.
I am willing to provide any additional information if anyone is willing to help. Thank you for reading my story.
A 23 year old boy from Iran