I was born into an ordinary family. My mom was from a very tiny inland town you’ve probably never heard of. She was the first child in her family and had four younger siblings. As the eldest, she took on the burden of caring for the family from the time she can collect rice field.
Every morning she had to prepare breakfast for everyone before going to class. She woke up before the rooster crowed, lit the fire, and cooked noodles with a few vegetables for the whole family. Then she quietly closed the door and walked along a rugged mountain road for an hour and a half to get to school. As you can probably tell, my maternal grandparents were not wealthy, and neither were my grandparents on my father’s side. She barely finished middle school and left the town for jobs. Later, my mom and dad went to a small fishing village near the sea to look for opportunities. That’s where they met and eventually had me.
It was the beginning of the twenty-first century when I was born in a military hospital. My parents were about the same age then as I am now. They were young and busy, trying their best to work and raise me at the same time. When I was six, they moved to another city for work and left me with my grandparents. When I was seven, I moved to another elementary school in my parents’ city. Even then, I still rarely saw them and mostly lived with my grandparents on both sides. Four years later, I moved again to a new city and a new school, where I finished elementary school.
The same thing happened in middle school. Over nine years, I transferred five times to different schools, all because my parents’ workplaces kept changing. I kept making new friends and then losing them. I became more and more experienced at making friends, but it became harder to truly trust anyone or rely on them, because I knew that one day I might suddenly have to leave again. I was very confused on how to respond to them. I intentionally kept a distance from them to avoid separation which I know will happen to me one day.
Instead of hanging out with classmates, I hid at home and became severely addicted to online games. My parents only came home a few times a month, but my friends in the games logged in every day to have fun with me.
My heart slowly closed itself off from the turbulence of the outside world and stayed lonely and silent. My classmates held birthday parties, events, and all kinds of activities without inviting me. Most of them knew each other well and understood how to make good friends and talk to people. I didn’t. I couldn’t find a place for myself in the real world.
My grades dropped. I got into fights at school three times. I felt both soft and easily hurt inside, and at the same time irritable on the outside. Many times I felt deeply sad, but I pretended I didn’t care. I shouted at my parents at home over tiny things. I stopped listening in class and sat in the back of the classroom so I could secretly read novels on my phone. I spent almost all my weekends and holidays on gaming, because I felt like I had nowhere else to go.
I was an outsider to the big “family” of classmates around me, and I didn’t really know what was going on because there was no one I felt I could talk to. I tried to help everyone, hoping they would like me more. But in the end I realized many of those people were not real friends. They were just using my goodwill.
It took me years to ease that pain and to learn the lessons I missed in my adolescence. I still wish I could have understood everything sooner.
Things slowly began to change when I went to university. There, I met a friend who had gone through struggles very similar to mine. He talked openly about his anxiety and loneliness in a way I had never heard before. Instead of hiding from these feelings, he was studying psychology to understand them. For the first time, I felt truly seen by someone who didn’t judge me, because he recognized the same patterns in himself.
Through our conversations, he started sharing basic psychology concepts with me—how childhood experiences can shape attachment, how constant moving and separation can affect a child’s sense of safety, how gaming and withdrawal can become coping strategies when you don’t know how to ask for help. I began to see that what I went through had names and explanations. I wasn’t just “broken” or “weird”; I was reacting to a lot of instability and unspoken pain.
Eventually, we decided to work together on a project: a psychological companion app called UNIMO, designed for teenagers and students who are trying to understand their minds better. As we built it, I dived deeper into psychology. The more I learned, the more my past made sense. Instead of blaming myself, I started to feel compassion for the younger version of me who was just trying to survive.
I still have difficult days, and I’m not “perfectly healed.” But I can notice my emotions earlier, name what I’m feeling and choose kinder ways to cope. I’ve learned to reach out to people I trust instead of disappearing into games for days. I’ve also realized that my story can be useful—not as something to be ashamed of, but as something that might make someone else feel less alone.
If there is one thing I’d say to my younger self and to anyone who sees themselves in this story, it is this:
Your reactions make sense. You are not beyond help. With understanding, support, and patience, it is possible to build a different relationship with your mind and your pain.
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