I Am Nothing.

I did not know whether to write this as a story or as an essay. I got a DM from a young guy, aged 22, who is the inspiration for this post.

In the DM, very briefly, he said that he is lonely. Loneliness is a feeling I know quite well. So I somewhat could understand what he was experiencing. However, I was not entirely ready for the cause of his loneliness.

The cause, he said, he feels like he is nothing. He said he feels like he's nothing because he feels like a failure. Like telling a person who’s depressed ‘it’ll get better’, the worst reply could have been a reassurance that he is not a failure. I further probed him about the feeling, and at the end, he ended the exchange with a simple ‘thank you, talk soon’.

You know, when you are experiencing loneliness, the feeling eats at your soul. But in the same breath, you can find some strength in yourself to overcome it. With the pits of loneliness, you can manage to find a gem or two about yourself that makes the emotion of loneliness a blessing in disguise.

But the moment the loneliness becomes a feeling of nothingness, it is harder to overcome. I cannot speak for women, but for a man, when you feel like nothing, it is usually the last step before jumping into the abyss.

And unfortunately, a very sad and true reality is that as a man, you cannot express your emotions freely. You cannot tell your parents. They won’t understand. They will want to affirm their authority as parents. After all, this is what they have done all your life. You will forever be a child to them.

Yet you are no longer a child. You are no longer the person you were 5, 10, or even 20 years ago, if you

are a bit older than 22. And parents will never understand this, as they will cling to the ghosts of your past years.

Also, to be honest, most of us as African children really never had any relationship with our parents growing up. Growing up, it was taboo to have a girlfriend or even feel the emotion of love; it was taboo to talk about money, your dreams were usually cast to the sea, and you were expected to meet the expectations of your parents. Your emotions were not important. You are just a child, seen, sent around, used as free labour, but never heard.

It is true that how parents raise their children will, in turn, be how they treat them when they need the help of their children. So, if, as a child, you never had a relationship with your parents, how can you foster one when you are an adult?

It is impossible. And another sad truth is that the older you get, the more your parents become more human, and less ‘parents’. You get to see them for who they truly are. You no longer see them as a parent, the person who raised and bought you gifts for Christmas, but you see them as human, a person who is also winging it at this life thing. You see their personality. And sometimes, the personalities just clash. Because now, you are both adults. Your personality has been moulded by your own experiences, most of which our parents have no clue about.

But the fact remains, the way they raised you will be the way you treat them when they are older. And to allude to what has already been stated, many of us never had a relationship with our parents growing up.

Yes, they fed us, bathed us, clothed us, educated us and tried their very best to set us up for success. But they failed in preparing us for the real things that affect us, such as love, sex, money and dealing with emotions. Our parents growing up were never our friends. And it is impossible for them to be friends now that we are adults.

The same applies to everyone who has had somewhat of an authoritative role in your life, like siblings and older relatives. As much as I come from a very loving and caring home, as much as I know that I have both parents who love me to the moon and back and back to the moon again (my siblings included), it is impossible for me to be fully open to them, as much as I really try. Because when I was young and needed them, they were never there. There are instances in my childhood that many seem trivial to the next person, but to me, they are unhealing wounds that continue to fester to this day.

So, what about friends? Surely with friends one can share these feelings of nothingness. Perhaps they can help. I blame my long bouts with loneliness for what I am about to write.

Being so lonely basically all my life taught me a very valuable lesson. It taught me how to be friends with myself. It taught me how I can truly be friends with myself. It taught me how to love myself, with my flaws. It also taught me how to be hard on myself. Like the other day, I was looking in the mirror, and I was disgusted. The way my belly was protruding, that was nothing to be proud of. Some would say this is a form of negative self-talk. But to me, it’s just a dose of tough yet necessary love to get back in shape.

So with this self-love that does not require validation from the outside, I don’t need a friend to help me navigate the emotions I feel. And if you have true friends, they won’t remind you of the nothingness you feel.

You know, some people you call friends just want you to fail. They want to see themselves as better than you. This is very cliché, but it is true. I once had a friend, and when I experienced my first academic failure, he laughed at me. And he then brushed it off as a joke, nothing serious. I had another friend, a long-time friend, who one night, under the influence, was in my ear subtly saying he is now better than me because I am now unemployed. I chose to be unemployed, but to him, it was a secret victory that he finally had something I did not have.

Friendship, among males, always has a bit of competition. When the competition is healthy, it can help you work harder for your dreams. But when the competition is unhealthy, you'd better be alone. Friends serve a social function. They can ease the burden of loneliness and the feeling of nothingness that brews from it. But it is not a permanent fix. Remember, they, too, are probably in the same boat as you, but their pride will never allow them to confess it. That’s how we are as men, unfortunately.

You might then wonder, what if you have a girlfriend? Surely she can be there for you. Offer you the strength you need to overcome the dreaded feeling. You are wrong.

This is the part when feeling like you are nothing really drives the blunt nail through the heart. A woman will never settle for a man who has nothing. If you have nothing to offer her, she will not endure the pain with you. Remember, the better man always gets the girl. The better man always wins.

Good women will stay if you have something, even if it’s just a glimmer of it. You may feel like nothing, but a good woman will always remind you that you are something. She will hint at things you may overlook about yourself. Things like ambition. Things like passion. She will try her best to remind you of the something that she sees in you. This something that she loves about you.

The unfortunate truth, such women are far in between. You have a greater chance of finding a beached whale in the middle of the Free State. Your odds of winning the lottery are far greater than finding such a woman. Most men my age will confess to the fact that if you experience any troubling emotions, you need to face them alone. Excluding your women if you really want her in your life.

I have had a girl laugh at my pain. She proceeded to call me weak. Concluded by saying she would rather be with a man who played women than be with a man who cried. Personally, whenever I enter a period of tough times, best believe that’s the period when most of my relationships fail or enter rough seas.

An unwritten tacit rule for men in the dating world is that you must never tell a woman your emotions. Never. You know, I remember losing my uncle. I got the news around 10 pm at night. My then-girlfriend was visiting me for the week. She had paid for the trip to come over and budgeted for groceries so as not to bother me financially. She was the rare gem I speak of. But when I got the news, I could not bring myself to cry in front of her. I instead, in the middle of the night in Bloemfontein, took a walk around the block.

As much as I knew I was safe in her presence, I could never take that risk to show my emotions to her. Years later, this was proved when I did show my emotions to a girl, and she bashed me for having them. She made me vow to never reveal my inner emotions to a woman ever again.

Because it displays weakness, in her words. Unfortunately, her words are true. Women want to be with the strongest warrior in the village. That’s why a guy like me will never judge the young girl who uses her beauty to be blessed by a pot-bellied, frog-looking tenderpreneur. If a girl realises that her beauty can get her out of poverty or out of the stressed, debt-driven life of the middle class, I can never judge her. She found a way to make seduction work for her, the same as Cleopatra and the many queens of old.

And it is equally important that, as men, we understand the rules of the game. The brutal truth, if you are a man and you have nothing, or feel like nothing, do not date. You will get your heart broken. That is a fact. That is a reality. This reality is like how crime, single-parent homes and every other social illness go hand in hand with poverty. We hate TV Channels like Moja Love because they have shows there that remind us of this reality that is painful to witness.

This reality is the same as that of a man with nothing, thinking he can get a woman. She might think that she is a good woman and think she will be able to stand with you during tough times. But when the tough times hit, she will dip. 57% of divorces initiated (as per Stats SA. 2025) are done so by women. ‘Through sickness and health’, most women will never stick with you through the sickness. Especially when the sickness is of the mind.

Again, there are truly good women out here, but they are very rare. Extremely rare as we are living in the world of social media, where even the most plain Jane girl can get 99+ DMs from guys asking her out. To me, I am proven of this fact every time I post something about the shortfalls of women on TikTok. Trust me, they attack me every time. Every time, they say I am speaking nonsense. Every time they say they are the exception to the law. But trust me, most of them are not.

And so, when a man feels like he is nothing, that is when he is truly alone. Another harsh, yet true reality is that if you, as a man, have nothing (even when you feel like you have something), you will not be taken seriously in society. See how we treat the homeless and beggars? These men have nothing. And therefore, do not deserve our respect.

Yes, we treat them as humans. Alluding to how one was raised, my mom, when I was younger, had me involved in many social programs that dealt directly with poverty. There was a time when the government had a program to try and remove “street kids” from street and return them home. One of the programs my mom had me in involved helping these guys out.

To this day, when I see someone homeless while entering a store, I make a point to return with something for them to eat. But you see, for the man receiving the food, it touches his soul. I once heard a grown White man break down because I bought him some food. He explained his situation. Basically, he said that he was in the street because he had lost everything. He was now nothing.

A month later, when I saw him, in a different part of the street, he did not recognise me. Because he was high as a kite. Why I’m sharing this is to introduce a major challenge that one faces (I believe the same applies to women in this case) when one becomes nothing. They will try to find a sense of something, even if it is a momentary relief or some sort.

And that’s the true danger of this feeling. This is where it easy than to give up. It is of the utmost importance to never give up. Hence, I recommended being your one true friend. A true friend who can look himself in the mirror and critically judge yourself. A true friend who’ll love himself. Love yourself enough that even when you have nothing, you are something to yourself.

You might not have a relationship with your parents. But you know that they love you more than they love themselves, maybe even the same with your siblings. Use this love as a padded cushion to soften the landing on your rock bottom. Friends serve a social function. The same applies if you have good friends with a healthy competition; these friends will help you rise from the rock bottom beneath you.

If you have a good partner, this is good and well. Maybe she’ll help you. Maybe she’ll be patient with you. Heck, she may even help you financially. Indeed, there are women who do this for their men. I mean, the success of Drip was because of the founder’s wife before he messed it up. Indeed, my brother, there are good women out here who will go above and beyond to help you get out of the pit called the rock bottom. She will give you something to escape the feeling of nothing.

But do not assume every woman will. Rules of nature. Rules of the game. The better man wins. Someone whom I hold extremely dear to my heart, when I was going through a spell of darkness back in the day, once told me that I needed to “man up” or else I would lose my then-girlfriend. My then-girlfriend never left me during that time. But she cheated on me so many times and so disrespectfully that it effectively taught this very vital rule that every man must learn eventually: the better man always wins.

Feeling like nothing, as a man, is the end of the road. It is difficult to try to even come from it. But, if you can be friends with yourself and find strength in the love of those who truly love you, you’ll never be nothing. You’ll always be something. Even when you feel like nothing, you will know that you are something to someone who loves you. This somethingness is what will then save you from the pit of nothingness.