A deeper look at self

In the early years when I realized I had a brain that I can use to think, I didn't have external stimuli to divert me from talking to myself and taking a thorough look at my inner thoughts, fears, and hopes. The school year was the closest I got to excitement in my life, and so I had a life between September and May and I was pretty much void the remaining months. During the summer, I used to set with my dad at 3 in the morning, silently looking at the starry sky(we lived in a half-roofed house.) I used to form shapes out of stars not knowing that these are actually known formations by astrologists. My dad and I seldom talked during these moments, but it was as if we knew what these moments were all about. For me it was about opening to the world, thinking of the limits and how to look through them, clearing my mind of the mental webs of early adolescence. For him, I think it was about the twists of life, and how nobody ever got what they really wanted, and whether anybody really knows what they wanted. At these times, going to school was to me like going to the movies, I built my whole life around it. I thought a lot, and talked to myself a lot, and it was as if the winter weather was the perfect frame for my mental state. I'd go home to my great tasks of doing homework and thinking about the day, thinking how lucky I am to have this life and at the same time dreading it! It's a complicated thing, because when you're estranged in your country and estranged in the country where your parents live, you get confused as to where you should belong and who should embrace you. I didn't know people in my country so I didn't care about them, but the people in Libya I cared about and wanted them to accept me. Well, this happened the hard way, by sometimes making a fool of myself, by sometimes denouncing my country, and by all the time working hard to stand out and be likable even if this involved doing stupid things. I had so much dignity and pride, but I crushed them willingly to be accepted and loved by my school mates, and I know I can't call them friends now because friendship is a whole different dimension.
At that time, I used to talk to myself about what I'd like to be, I used to write plays and stories reflecting my inner state of mind about life, heroism, friendship, and leadership. And suddenly I found myself here and now, wondering where did these past 13 years went. I realized that in Egypt, you get into a frantic race to get something decent out of life, you have to fight all the time for a slot in happiness and a bit of success. You can't afford to talk to yourself or you'll be crushed by the running crowds. In the first three years after I came from Libya, I was so stunned by the transformation in people and the pace of life that I could for a while preserve a slight contact with myself for the expense of being stepped over by the "crowds" of students wanting to score high for college. I was so baffled by the frantic families pushing their kids to extreme limits and the frantic kids crying over a degree or five degrees. For me, life was about the little enjoyments as much as the great achievements. When I got into college, I began to understand the game, and I had one of two choices, either get in the track and run, leaving behind me all the little bits of my mind that kept me alive all those years, or hang on to them and find myself again baffled by a style of life I'm stuck in for no body knows how long. I unconsciously chose to "hop in" and leave myself behind, only to realize now that it's hard to reestablish the connection again. I postponed this step until I could be a bit secure about my Master thesis, and said to myself "then you'll reassess yourself, then you'll take the time to know how much you changes and whether it was for the best, then you'll read all the books you want, then you'll play all the music you want, then you'll correct all the wrongs you see in yourself, and then you'll try to take a trip and simply enjoy lazy life for a while." This is not happening though, and I find myself to be unwillingly caught in a spiral of duty after duty and pushed again to the race. Tonight, I began talking to myself only to find that it was a way to practice my English, and to my surprise I found out how shallow and superficial I became, how empty my mind is in spite of all the technical data stored in it, and how weak my shell became because over the years I ignored to add an internal strength to myself and instead added the garbage that's called "social intelligence" that's only good to deal with others in order to gain extra points to my credit. I can't even seem to have organized thoughts anymore, and this is pathetic, after studying logic and science all these years.
I don't know how I'm going to restore myself to a state that I like, I don't like me to the degree that I really see nothing good about me and always have this impression that even when people say good things about me, they either don't mean them or I don't deserve them. But realizing that something is wrong is half the way to get it right, or so I hope.