Stories of Our Journeys

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When Edrei Zahari started his personal blog, Footsteps in the Mirror and created the Kamigoroshi persona, little did he realize the path the blog would take him, and how it would literally save his own life.

The name, Kamigoroshi, means “God Killer” in Japanese. He choose it because he didn’t like the idea that a God is in control of our destinies all the time. He describes it thus:

The name symbolizes the act of destroying a written destiny and carving our own from whatever fate befalls us. Deep, but being introspective is part of who I am. I don’t really apologize for it.

Leaving his native country of Malaysia to follow a dream, family and everything left behind, he arrived on Australian soil and instantly felt he had arrived “home.” His dream of a higher education and becoming a medical researcher came true with hard work overcoming incredible odds. He is now a medical scientist in Wagga Wagga, a small town in New South Wales, specializing in cancer research, fulfilling a promise he made when he was young, a promise that set him on his current path to help others.

I am that boy that will never stop fighting for what he believes in. That boy that will never quit as long as there are promises left to keep. That boy that will stand by his dreams and carve a reality out of them. That boy, that friend, that lover who will always be who he is. Who will always be driven by what he has seen.

He says that his blog is literally the story of his life, his challenge to discover himself and work his way towards meeting the person he wanted to become, and did become, using it to measure his path – and success – along the way.

Of course, I tend to forget that in my life, there is no such thing as peace and comfort. If we can extrapolate the events of my life so far, this part is the calm lull before some insane hurricane sweeps past, forcing me to once again batten down the hatches and weather it out.

His blog was critical to his sanity because it offered connections beyond his small town in Australia, sharing his stories and thoughts with people around the world. He wanted to find similar minds, people who thought like he did, to help him find solid ground under his psychological feet. Suffering from a mood disorder, which he reveals in this interview, this connection helped him build a support group around his blog.

Yeah, so I’m a walking balance of contradictions. I surrender because it lets me fight better and I fight because it’s the closest I can come to finding some measure of satisfaction and peace in my life. Not many people can understand it. In fact, I don’t think anyone I know in my life actually gets why I do what I do (except for Mel who isn’t considered as “anyone” in my life), which is probably why I don’t have friends. I know it’s not a particularly ideal nor is it mentally healthy for me to keep doing so, but until I can find another beneficial compromise that gets me a social life, I am probably going to remain the forced hermit.

His willingness to share his thoughts and feelings with both abandonment and freedom caught the hearts of many readers. Blogging since 2004, Edrei is a master of cryptic writing, learning the hard way about privacy issues, keeping his blogging identity separate from his personal one with amazing skill and candor.

He says you have to learn not just to blog for yourself, but write for others. He has mastered the method of blogging for personal reasons while understanding that others must relate to it as well, so you reach them while fulfilling your need for expression. For example, he explains that you can talk about the challenges of a close personal death in your family without ever naming names or telling the story, just sharing the experience, not the facts.

…the reason I blog as I do everyday because I have the hope that one day the blogger that I am and the blogger that I want to be will meet, and when that happens…I think it’ll be mighty interesting to see what may come out of it.

Examples of some of his powerful posts include:

• I Am That Boy Who Blogs
• Why Do I Blog: Redux
• KamiCast – Happy Four Years Of Blogging
• Sweet Surrender
• Moments Of Change
• Blog About What You Know
• Happy Anniversary Ed.
• When Merdeka Means Nothing To You (Redux)
• The Third Anniversary Of My New Life
• The Last Anniversary Of My New Life
• 1826 Days
• Day Of Days…

After this interview, on September 25, 2010, Edrei announced he’d finally gotten his permanent residency application for Australia approved, beginning a new journey that all of us from Stories of Our Journeys celebrate with him.The following are books from Amazon offering insights into the challenges Edrei Zahari faces with his mood disorder.

• Beyond Blue: Surviving Depression & Anxiety and Making the Most of Bad Genes
• The Mindful Way through Depression: Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappiness
• Self-Coaching: The Powerful Program to Beat Anxiety and Depression, 2nd Edition, Completely Revised and Updated

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