When I came to Korea, I felt very strong within myself. In Uzbekistan I had respect as an IELTS teacher, people trusted me, my salary was good, and I had friends around me who thought the way I did. Every day I saw myself as a needed, useful, and valued person. That feeling gave me strength, and even when I woke up in the morning, I had a purpose. But after coming to Korea, everything slowly began to change. Nobody here knew who I was, my teaching experience wasn't valued, and because I didn't know the language, even finding simple jobs became difficult. Within a year, I slowly lost myself.
At first, I tried to console myself. I thought, "This is temporary, I'll adapt soon." But as the days went by, my life became repetitive: wake up, go to a no-brand burger place, come back, sleep. No growth, no new goal. Compared to my active life in Uzbekistan, I felt an emptiness here. Every day I started asking myself, "What am I doing? Where am I going?" There was no answer. These questions slowly began to eat away at my confidence.
I also tried to learn Korean, but there was resistance inside me. Learning the language felt like it was bringing me down, as if I was losing my own worth. This thought pulled me back even further. I felt like I was "degrading" myself. Because of this, I stopped learning the language, but that decision didn't make my life easier either. On the contrary, communicating with people became harder, job opportunities decreased, and I felt even more excluded. Every small difficulty pushed my confidence down another notch.
At one point I thought about starting a brand called "Tamere." I had a dream of creating clothing with an Uzbek spirit, my own style. But when I thought about buying a machine, setting up production, and taking on risk, fear overwhelmed me. Within a year I had brought myself to such a state that even a small risk looked like a huge disaster in front of my eyes. Because of this fear, I didn't take a single step. I limited myself with the thought "I can't do this." And this became the biggest blow: I completely lost confidence in myself.
Looking back now, I see how I slowly wore myself down over that year in Korea. The same life every day, lack of purpose, resistance to learning the language, fear of risk, all of it combined and hollowed me out from the inside. In Uzbekistan I knew who I was, but here I forgot who I was. This process became the biggest lesson for me: confidence doesn't come from outside circumstances, it comes from your inner decisions. I stopped myself, I pulled myself down. Now, to rebuild, I need to save myself from myself again.
The reason I'm writing this post is to remind myself. I lost my confidence within a year, but this story isn't over. Maybe I'll find myself again, maybe I'll rebuild myself again. Because life isn't only about going down, it's also about rising back up. If you're reading this and you've lost yourself too, know this: this state is not the final point. It's just one stage. And there is a way out of it.
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