I wrote this story, and despite my best intentions, I couldn’t stick to the 30-minute timeframe. But, nonetheless, here it is.
It is the first day of the new year. I woke up and reflected on who I am now and who I will become this year. We are always changing; we are never the same person. Every day you get up and leave behind the person you were yesterday to grow and evolve. That's the natural way of things. And we need to know who we are now so that we can know where we are going.
Ten years ago, when I was diagnosed with Asperger's (Autism Spectrum Disorder), I suffered a burnout. As a result, all my coping mechanisms shut down because I simply did not have the energy for them. I was no longer masking, and I was no longer using personas. I was just my raw self. While I was in this state, random people started coming to me with their problems, and my problem-solving nature kicked in. I would listen patiently to their problems, detach, tell them to lock down their emotions, analyze the problem to find the root cause, and then solve it. Some, I could help find the answers. I even helped an elderly lady get out of the grip of a scammer who was stalking, threatening, and terrorizing her - but that is not my story to tell.
Then, I was asked the question: "Who are you and how do you see yourself?" I did not know how to answer and simply responded: "I'm energy and data." Then I was given the most difficult assignment ever - even more difficult than any university assignment. I had to reflect and write down who I was and how I saw myself. I thought long and hard and could not answer this assignment, so I went to all the people who had previously come to me and asked for their help. I asked them to write me a letter and tell me who they thought I was and how they saw me.
They all gave me a letter that same day, and as I read them, I was completely amazed. I never realized that people saw me as, among other things, a leader. They saw me as someone they could look up to and a deeply spiritual person. I’d never thought of myself as a leader; I was always the one on the outskirts of society. I never thought people would look up to me; I was always invisible. When I saw myself through other people's eyes, it opened my own and helped me put into perspective who I was versus who I perceived myself to be.
The final challenge came when my subconscious appeared to me in a dream as Superman and spoke to me.
My whole life, I’ve had extreme, borderline obsessive fascinations with some movie characters and would binge-watch movies and series with them over and over. Especially Superman. I have the whole Superman collection. One night, I had a dream that I moved back to Secunda, where I grew up for the first 13 years of my life. The house that I grew up in was completely different and unrecognizable. So, I moved into another house across town. In the dream, the entire town consisted of one broad street, and on the side of the town was an empty field that led to a faraway forest. In the new house, which was surrounded, almost engulfed in huge trees, I learned to reach greater personal growth, intellectual heights, and understanding. Then I decided to go to the forest. I walked to the edge of the town, and because the forest was far, I decided to fly there. I ascended into flight. People started running toward me, grabbing my feet and pulling me down. A crowd formed, telling me I couldn't fly, that I wasn’t supposed to fly. Every time I rejected what they wanted me to believe and tried to fly, they would grab my feet and pull me down. At one point, I hit the ground (field), falling on my face so hard that there was a shockwave, and I became self-aware in the dream.
I noted every fine detail of the dream with great awe. I was completely surprised by the level of detail in which my mind created the dream, as if it was completely real down to the smallest molecule. I could feel the dampness of the dew seeping through my clothes as I lay on the ground. I could feel the cold, crisp needle grass cracking under the palms of my hands. I could smell the dirt and the forest. The grass was the most vivid green I’d ever seen. I got up, turned around, and looked at the angry crowd. Then I jumped and ascended into flight, just to be grabbed by my feet again and pulled down. But I resisted because I knew this was my dream, and I could fly! Just as I thought I was going to lose the battle, I felt a hand gripping mine. When I looked up, it was Superman. He pulled me free from the crowd’s grasp and took to the sky with me. As we turned around and floated alongside each other, looking down at the angry crowd, he told me that people will always attack what they do not understand, always challenge your destiny, and try to bring you down to their level. Then he suddenly looked me straight in the eye and asked me: "Have you figured it out yet?"
I was completely stunned. I’d dreamt of Superman many, many times before. But he was always just present in the dream, usually saving me from something, never directly engaging with me, and I could never see his face. I NEVER see faces in my dreams. Faces in my dreams, even my own face when I look into a mirror in a dream, look like the faces of the people in Doctor Who’s "The Idiot’s Lantern." But here, it was like he was actually there with me in the dream, where I was aware I was dreaming, and we made eye contact. I could see his face, and he directly engaged with me. To me, this was an entirely new dynamic. I said that I didn’t know what he meant, and he asked if I’d figured out why I was so obsessed with him. I was like: WHAAAT?! NOOOOO! So he told me that I identify with fictional characters and then get attached to them, trying to learn from them. I identified with him because he knew what it was like living amongst people but not being one of them. Different, an outcast even. I learned from him how to handle that, how to move past it, and overcome it. Like he was also Clark Kent, I learned how to create personas to help me cope with being and operating outside my comfort zone. Then he told me that it was time for me to become who I was meant to be. Then he said that now that I had learned everything I could from him and understood why I was obsessed with him, that obsession would be gone. But I had to figure out why I was obsessed with other fictional characters. When I woke up, the obsession with him was gone. I still dream about him, but in those dreams, he never comes to save me; he comes to assist me because I have grown into a rescuer myself (in the dreams, and perhaps also in real life). And I did take the time to analyze my other obsessions, and as I figured them out, the obsessions went away.
A few years later, I moved back to Secunda. My then-fiancé took me to the house where I grew up. The house was unrecognizable. I don’t think the original structure even exists anymore. I moved into his house on the other side of the town, which has a lush garden with huge trees that surround it. I am not good with changes, especially sudden changes, and here I had to learn to cope without my family and support system. I found a new support system, became stronger, more independent, and grew further than I ever thought I could. When things in Secunda turned for the worse, my new support system remained, and the person I became was strong enough to survive the fallout. Reflecting on it now, I realize that growth often requires leaving behind familiar structures. It’s in those challenging moments that we find our true strength and capacity for resilience.
Life is a journey of self-discovery and growth. There will always be people who second-guess your choices and tell you what you can or cannot accomplish. Challenges and resistance are inevitable when you set goals and reach for the stars. Yet, the key lies in understanding yourself - knowing who you are, who you want to be, and where you want to go. Only then will you be strong enough to overcome the odds and chase your dreams.
As we step into this new year, take a moment to ask yourself: Who are you now, and who do you want to become? The answers might just set the course for your most transformative year yet.