Blah blah blah. Yeah, this is the part where I'm supposed to sound all deep and poetic, like, "This book is the culmination of my lifelong journey through pain and purpose." But let's be real, this book is more like a weird therapy session mixed with a personal rant, sprinkled with wisdom I had to dig out of trauma, loss, and pure existential dread.
Now I know what you're thinking: "Oh look, another teen angst story trying to sound profound." But wait, hear me out before you roll your eyes and chuck this into your "meh" pile. Because unlike those so-called New York Times bestsellers (how are there like 9,000 of those btw, shouldn't it be, like, one at a time?), this book isn't trying to sell you inspiration. I'm not here to act like I figured life out or cracked some code to happiness. Nah. I'm just here to show you what it really looks like when you grow up on the edge of everything, culture, mental health, identity, expectations, and try not to fall off.
So yeah, my life is a mess. I wake up, go to school, get shouted at by teachers for existing incorrectly, try to act normal so no one thinks I'm weird, come home, hear my siblings yell about whatever kids yell about, remember that everything sucks, do homework, cry internally, maybe code something or draw to survive emotionally, and that's a good day. But it wasn't always this bad. I used to play Minecraft Education like it was my personal therapy. I used to think love was real. I used to care less. But then responsibility slapped me across the face. And now, I've got to act like some sort of older-brother role model when I'm still figuring out how not to spiral during roll call.
You're probably already regretting buying this book. Good. That means you're paying attention. This thing is gonna hit you like a rollercoaster: overpriced, makes your stomach drop, only enjoyable in short bursts, and once it's over you're like "Why did I do that?", but you lowkey want to do it again. That's me. I'm the rollercoaster. Enter: Ibrahim Tayyab. Self-proclaimed narcissist, reluctant philosopher, reluctant Muslim with a capital M, and expert in overthinking everything.
Nihilism is kinda my thing. If you don't know what that is, it's basically believing that nothing matters, everything is fake, and we're all just living in some absurd simulation of suffering. You might be like, "Wait… Ibrahim is a Muslim name. Aren't you supposed to believe in, like, purpose and all that?" And the short answer is yes. The long answer is yeeeeeeeeeeeesssssss but also nahhh fam. Islam taught me everything is temporary. Life, pain, love, it's all a test. But I took that a step further and ended up on the extreme end of the spectrum where even tests feel like background noise in a universe that already decided how this ends.
But yo, don't think I'm writing this to be your blueprint or some fake deep influencer. Please, don't try to be like me. You really don't want this. You don't want to be the guy who lays in bed staring at the ceiling wondering why he even exists. You don't want to be the guy who lost a best friend in a car crash, who was in a car crash, who got held at gunpoint, who lost someone he loved because he got too full of himself. I'm not some tragic hero. I'm just a guy who's felt a lot of pain and finally decided to say something before it crushed him.
So why should you read this book? Because I've lived through stuff that would've broken most people. And I survived. Barely. But I did. And through all that wreckage, I figured out a few things you might need to hear. Stuff about not repeating my mistakes. About how to stay sane in a world that keeps screaming at you to be someone you're not. About how to stop pretending everything's fine when it's clearly not.
There's this scene in Matrix Reloaded where Merovingian tells Neo:
"Choice is an illusion created between those with power and those without."
That line stuck with me. Because yeah, life feels like that. Like all the big choices were already made, and you're just pretending you're in control. I've spent years trying to fight destiny, trying to change what felt written in stone. But the older I get, the more I reMumtazze... maybe we're not here to win the game. Maybe we're just here to understand it.
All the people in my life, my parents, my teachers, my friends, they taught me stuff. Sure. But nothing taught me more than time. Time showed me how little all this material crap matters. How everything fades. The people you loved. The pain you swore would kill you. It all goes. And if you're lucky, it leaves behind memories. If you're unlucky, it leaves scars.
So yeah. This is the preface. This is the part where I set the tone. You're either in or out. But if you are in, buckle up. Because this isn't a self-help book. It's a war report from someone who's still learning how to survive the battlefield of his own mind.
Let's begin.
The Three Pillars:
This story is built on three silent forces that shaped my life more than any single event ever could: Belonging, Resistance, and Becoming. They weren't concepts I knew at the time, but they were present in every hallway I walked, every word I swallowed, every dream I dared to build from the rubble of confusion.
Belonging is where the story starts. It's the ache to be seen and accepted without needing to change who you are. As a kid, I didn't have the words to explain why classrooms felt like battlefields, why I flinched when teachers raised their voices, or why I sat silently when others laughed. I was searching for something, someone, who could reflect back to me the truth that I mattered. Whether it was trying to decode the rules of a new culture in AustrMumtaza, bonding over Pokémon cards with Jack, or hoping my father's approval would feel like love, I was always looking for a place to rest my identity without fear. Belonging isn't just about fitting in, it's about not disappearing.
Then comes Resistance, the second pillar. Not loud or violent, but quiet and stubborn. Resistance is what happens when the world tries to fold you into something you're not. It's the refusal to stay silent when you're wrongly accused, to accept failure when you know you have more inside you, and to let go of yourself just to please others. For me, resistance looked like coding games after midnight when I felt worthless during the day. It looked like arguing with a teacher, walking out of a room, or choosing to speak honestly even when my voice trembled. It also meant surviving depression, suicidal thoughts, and isolation, not just physically, but emotionally. Resistance is how I stayed whole when the world asked me to shatter.
But neither of these would matter without Becoming, the third and most fragile pillar. Becoming is the aftermath of struggle and searching. It's the quiet reMumtazzation that you are not just the product of what happened to you, but of what you chose to do with it. Becoming is not about perfection. It's about momentum. Every time I journaled, shared a story, or posted a piece of art under Flame Wing, I was becoming someone new, someone closer to the person I dreamed of being. Not to escape my past, but to transform it. Becoming means honouring your wounds without letting them define you. It's the slow, sacred work of turning pain into purpose.
These pillars don't stand apart. They hold each other up. I resisted because I longed to belong. I began to belong when I embraced who I was becoming. And now, I write this not because I have all the answers, but because I believe that in telling our stories, we give others permission to find their own.
This book is my way of holding space for those three forces, for myself, and for anyone who has ever felt like they were too much, too little, or never enough. You are not alone. Your story matters. Keep becoming.
Nihilism: My Favorite Flavour of Depression (Deluxe Edition)
So let's talk about nihilism, my toxic comfort zone. Think of it like an emotional beanbag chair: uncomfortable to look at, embarrassing to own, but somehow the only place I ever fully relax. Nihilism, in case you skipped the philosophy crash course, is basically the belief that nothing means anything, and we're all just floating around in a vast, indifferent universe, waiting to expire. Cheery, right?
But I didn't arrive here from a textbook or a college lecture or some angsty black-and-white film. Nah. Nihilism wasn't an idea I picked up, it was something that moved in like mould. Quiet. Creeping. Unwelcome. And only visible when the light started to die.
First light? Jack.
My best friend. The one person who made school feel like less of a prison and more like an inside joke. Gone. Just like that. One car accident. One reckless ute. And the world reconfigured itself in a single headline. No warning. No foreshadowing. No sense. One minute he was showing me a meme of a cat falling off a couch. The next, I was staring at his empty seat in science class like it was some kind of cruel metaphor. That seat stayed empty. Just sat there, like a ghost that didn't believe in moving on. Every time someone laughed too loud, it felt like a betrayal. How could the world keep spinning when he wasn't in it?
And then came Anya Nuz Nuz. My anchor in human form. Smart. Funny. Sensitive in all the ways I wasn't. She understood me even when I didn't know what I was saying. For a moment, she made this life feel less like a maze and more like a map. So I did what any emotionally impulsive teen with abandonment issues would do, I told her I wanted to be her boyfriend. Not with a ring or a plan, just the raw thought: What if we built something that lasted? I wanted permanence in a world that only knew how to delete. She ghosted me. Said it was "too much." And she was right. I was trying to build a house on shifting sand. Still, it hurt. It rewrote how I understood love, not as sanctuary, but as something just as unpredictable and disposable as everything else.
Want more existential spice? I was in a car crash once, too. Front seat. Left side of the car pancaked in like a crushed soda can. Metal screaming against metal. Glass like confetti. The whole thing felt like a slow-motion punch from the universe. I walked away. Somehow. Barely a bruise. But Jack didn't walk away from his. That's the kind of brutal arithmetic life does. I get to survive. He doesn't. Is it chance? Fate? Karma? Glitch in the simulation? Who knows. I sometimes wonder if the only reason I lived was so I could write pages like this, existential therapy for a kid who didn't ask to survive.
And if that doesn't prove how ridiculous life can get, let's throw in the gunpoint story. Yeah, that happened. Walking home. Some guy with a rusted pistol, like, cartoon-level rusty, jumps out and starts shouting nonsense. Demands my phone. I remember just... blinking. Not scared. Just weirdly calm. Like, "Okay, so this is my last scene? Really? Over a phone I don't even like?" He took it. Ran. I went home, ate leftovers, and thought, Was that it?
That's what nihilism does to you. It doesn't make you cry. It makes you numb. It doesn't shout, "Life sucks!" It just shrugs and says, "Life just... is." It's the strange silence after something awful. The blank ceiling you stare at when your heart's racing and you can't even remember why. It's sitting in the rain and reMumtazzing the rain doesn't care whether you're dancing or drowning.
But here's the twisted thing, I find peace in it. If nothing truly matters, then that means I get to choose what does. That's the paradox. In a world without objective meaning, the little things I care about, my pixelated games, my stupid jokes, the weird little art pieces I stay up too late finishing, those become sacred. Not because they are, but because I say so. Because I chose them in the void. It's like carving your name into fog, knowing it'll fade, but doing it anyway.
So maybe I'm just coping. Or maybe I'm finally starting to understand what it means to build your own meaning when the world offers none. Either way, welcome to my brain. Sorry for the mess.
Where I Find Myself
It's strange how some people need order to feel safe, clean desks, scheduled routines, nice little five-year plans. Me? I find peace in chaos. Not the kind of chaos where the world's ending and everyone's screaming. I mean the quiet chaos. The low hum of three problems happening at once while no one's making eye contact. The undone dishes, blinking cursor, five tabs open with none in use. It's that strange background static of uncertainty that lets me breathe. Like, finally, no one's pretending we have it together. Finally, the outside matches the inside.
Deadlines crashing into each other. People arguing in a room while I just sit there, headphones on, making pixel art like it's a normal Tuesday. A mountain of schoolwork I'll probably fail, a family argument simmering in the next room, and somehow I'm calm. Centered. Because chaos doesn't expect me to smile. It doesn't ask me to be fixed. Chaos just says, "Be here." And honestly, that's the most forgiving thing I've ever known.
And yes, I've felt happiness in evil, too. Not cartoon-villain evil. Not laughing in a thunderstorm with glowing red eyes. I'm talking about the cold, quiet kind, when you finally stop apologizing for existing. When someone pushes you for the tenth time and you finally push back, not to win, but to stop losing. That moment where you stop trying to be liked, and instead, just protect your space. I used to think kindness was a shield. Turns out, it was often a leash, tied to guilt, to silence, to being "easy to deal with." When I cut that leash, even if it hurt people, even if it made me the villain in their story, I felt a kind of joy. Not the shiny kind. The deep kind. The kind that felt earned.
Because sometimes, to be good in a broken world, you have to do things that don't look like goodness. And sometimes, you find yourself smiling when you walk away from the people who said they'd love you unconditionally, just as long as you didn't change.
And then there's the paradox of being trapped in freedom. Everyone says freedom is the goal. "Be free." "Do what you love." "The world is yours." Cool slogans, until you're actually free. And then you're standing in the middle of your own life, with no instructions, no obligations, just... options. So many that it becomes dizzying. You can be anyone. So you become no one. And suddenly, the thing you dreamed of, freedom, feels like drifting alone in deep space.
And here's the messed-up part: I started to miss the trap. The school bell that told me when to stop. The timetable. The expectations. The same routines I used to curse started to look like landmarks in a storm. At least when you're trapped, there's structure. There's shape. So now, I trap myself on purpose. I make to-do lists I don't even finish. I set alarms for things I'm not excited about. I pretend there are rules so I don't disappear into my own head. Because unlimited choice can be more terrifying than no choice at all.
So yeah, maybe I'm built backwards. I find comfort in contradiction. I rest in the hurricane. I laugh when I'm supposed to cry. I think about life like it's a sketchbook, messy, half-finished, pages torn out. And maybe that makes me hard to understand. Maybe it makes me the quiet one in the room who suddenly says something too honest, too dark, and everyone blinks.
But that's how I survive. Because in a world that never made sense, neither did I, and maybe that's exactly the point. Maybe we weren't meant to fit the blueprint. Maybe we were meant to rip it up and start again. Maybe belonging doesn't come from being understood, it comes from being true, even when no one gets it.
This is where I find myself: In the eye of the storm, with a sketchpad in one hand and a glitchy, broken smile. Not healed. Not perfect. But real. And somehow, that's enough.
You're regretting this book already aren't you?!
Don't worry, cuz ur in luck. Im about to talk about my troubling life.
Lets starting looking at my life eh