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The truth is I’ve always been unlucky.
Growing up, I had few friends and was constantly bullied, even physically attacked. There was pressure to be perfect in everything. Keeping up with Tamilians is a lot harder than keeping up with the Joneses because there is no amount of anything ever that is enough. Then there’s the sexism. Boys were boys, but I was feisty and a problem child, someone my extended family loved to insult and criticize. I thought I was in the wrong when my aunt said she wanted to murder me and my uncles said they liked seeing me cry. As a child, I did not know better.
Partly because I was academically ahead, I had few friends. I was often told I would never make any, I had no empathy, and I was destined for failure. To prove a point, I spent undergrad and law school making well over a hundred friends I was at some point inner-circle-close to. Of course, this too largely failed, with most of my friends turning out to be using me for status, popularity, someone to lean on, or cold, hard cash. When I went through a health crisis in my early twenties, they disappeared, with only two people ever checking up on me.
I succeeded on social media early, got attacked by the leaders of a popular platform because I was woke before it was woke, and never really…
