An Open Letter

For I think over a year or maybe even two now I’ve kept a gratitude note with 5 things that have made me happy every day. Today I had a pretty wonderful experience just staying up watching comedy specials from Akaash Singh. I figured out how to plug in my guitar into my PC and use digital amps, and I got to take the day nice and easy. How nice life could be. And I guess how nice it is.

Today I got my wisdom teeth surgery complication treated, got a great workout at the gym + basketball, made a few new friends there (one of which had a SICK car), and even jammed out with someone for the first time! A new friend R came over and we tried learning and playing some songs together, and that was fucking sick. We said we would try to practice some more after choosing some songs and try to jam again. It’s cool since she’s around my age and also like me which makes it super easy to vibe with. Later me and T played league, and at the end we had some people join our call and one of them was like a compulsive liar, and we just kept lighting them up and roasting them and holy fuck it’s so much fun to rage bait people on the internet with a friend. I even him them with the “do you know Owen?” and even their duo cracked up, and she was pissed lol. What a wonderful day lmao.

It’s fully over. At the end of the day she said she cannot forgive me for the things I’ve said, and for me being afraid of committing suicide if she had pushed me too far. Maybe it is for the best. It still hurts like hell.

It tears me up because I forgave her for the numerous things she did that absolutely gutted me, to the point of several breakdowns. But she doesn’t see those as comparable, and she is adamant that she cannot forgive me. Regardless of me apologizing, and trying to make things right. She didn’t do those same things for me, and still I forgave her. I wonder if I should adjust my definition of love to include a level of tolerating hurt. But I don’t think that’s love. Then I don’t know what I felt for her that made me accept all the times she hurt me horribly badly.

I remember the thing she said that made me fully break down, and then afterward when I told her I wanted to stop talking she kept pushing me and then I locked myself in the bathroom to get away from her. She said something mid-argument that essentially blamed me for what had happened to me as a child. That made me break down to the core. The years of abuse and the shit I had to deal with became my fault. That made me want to sob, but I was so hurt I couldn’t even move. I just sat on the bathroom floor silently weeping. I forgave her for that. I even forgave her for not remembering the thing I had pleaded with her to remember several times to avoid, for concern of triggering my childhood trauma. I don’t know how I did.

I wonder what it would have looked like if the first time something like that happened where from negligence I was hurt so horribly bad from her, if I had ended things the way she just did. I wonder if she would blame herself the same way I am now. I can’t help but regret saying something in the heat of our argument. Even with all of the context behind it, she can’t forgive me for saying it. I find myself still censoring what I type here because of fear of her reading this even though she’s said several times that she wouldn’t.

At the end of the day, I think I’m mourning the person I thought she was. The person I fell in love with was empathetic, understanding, and someone who wanted me in their life. Throughout the relationship, those things felt like they were cracking at the seams, and it feels now that they refuse to acknowledge the double standard, and that forgiveness was a one-way street only. I asked them for the same grace I gave them, and they refused that. It hurts like hell to know that. I dealt with them lashing out at me so often, and that wasn’t returned. I know that I made mistakes and that I shouldn’t have lashed out in the first place if I knew how to communicate better, but of course, that’s also a two-way street.

I’m hurting badly because I’m faced with abandonment I guess. But at the same time, just because someone is telling me they don’t want me in their life, I need to stop myself from immediately trying to change that. I should also consider if I want them in my life. I think they’ve shown me several times that their level of compassion isn’t enough for me to feel safe around them. Most importantly, it feels like they never tried to compromise on the things where I was asking for something. That’s something that’s a dealbreaker for me. I want someone that respects me and wants the best for me at the same time, and that also values my feelings.

At the end of the day I know that relationships are a two-person thing. This one failed, and it seems like it also cannot work as a friendship so it has just ended here. We said we would talk on Saturday, and I think I want to set the goal of by then deciding from MY point of view from what they’ve shown as their colors, is this someone I want in my life. I think the answer staring at me is no.

If I follow V’s advice and think about if one of my friends told me this situation, how I would react. I’d tell the friend that if the relationship is one-sided where it is acceptable for bad things to happen to them but not vice versa, then that isn’t a healthy relationship. I don’t think I can get over this double standard.

They finally responded to me, and they said they did not want to talk. They said they wanted more time no contact, and would not clarify at all any updates or if they had changed how they were feeling since we last talked. I'm very happy that I set my foot down and was assertive that while I respect that they do not want to talk about anything, I don't want to be left in the dark for a week when their response is kind of a 180 from what we had last talked. Eventually I coaxed out the fact that they are still not sure if they want to be friends afterwards, and so we left it at that. We also said no contact until Saturday evening.

I guess this means that I mentally should prepare to go down the route of us not actually being on good terms. I know the more I think about it, that this is probably just because they haven't had enough time to think about it and they're still hurting, but I don't have any indication on whether it's them not knowing if they can separate and not catch feelings, or if they resent me for something, or if God knows whatever reason. And so now essentially I'm left with this prisoner's dilemma of deciding whether or not I should consider them as a friend, or if I should move on and accept that we are on essentially ghosted terms.

They said that they were emotionally overworked and they finally today had a chance to take a break, and so they hadn't had time to process it or think about it. But at the same time the last we talked, we were on pretty good terms and it was originally them saying that hopefully we can stay friends. The fact that they are now the one casting doubt on this, I want to have some self-respect and think about what this would look like. If we were friends and that's what they decided afterwards, then I guess everything is fine, but I am upset that I had to deal with this turmoil and risk of deciding whether or not to move on and not risk getting hurt. If they don't want to be friends and I I mentally do prepare to be friends, then it feels like I was led on for 2 weeks instead of them just telling me that they wanted to move on. And now I essentially would have to deal with the feelings of abandonment it would be something that I would consider cruel since it is unnecessary put me through this pain. Now if they want to be fence but I have moved on from them mentally, I think he would be kind of hard for me to not have that resentment against them. Like it's kind of hard to be friends with someone after they like directly to your face said oh man I don't know if I want to be friends with you, and then it goes a week. Like to me that just doesn't feel like someone that I would want to be friends with, since that just feels like a blatant disregard for personal self, and it's not like I need this person in my life either. Now if they don't want to be friends and I also prepare for that, then I think it would still hurt, as much as I would like it not to. I think it would kind of feel like dealing with the rest of the breakup, since I guess I've been able to process it fairly well because I was under the impression we are ending on good terms.

I think I was in a pretty good spot mentally before today, and I'm not a fan of being put in this limbo. I think I'm going to try to get some outside opinions and decide what to do about this, part of me is considering telling them that from my point of view this puts me in a very rough position where I either need to risk being hurt and blindsided, or already move on from them. I obviously don't want to have to move on from them and essentially act like they are dead to me, but maybe that's a choice that I need to prepare for, no matter how uncomfortable.

Let me also take a little bit to try to understand her point of view. She just finished finals, and has been working and busy with other stuff. She said that today was the first day she got a break mentally, and hasn't had much time to really process and think through things. Maybe she's saying she can't say that she still wants to be friends because she is starting to feel the loneliness setting in, and maybe it's because things that she had compartmentalized have come to light. I know that I processed this really fast, or at least a majority of it – and I'm not sure how she handles things like this, and so maybe she just doesn't want to rush into something potentially damaging to her. There's so many different possibilities, and I'm not sure which one would be the right thing to believe. But I do think however it's not the right time to bring up anything today since she is emotionally stressed and hasn't had time in process things as much as I have. Maybe the best thing would be to just act like she doesn't exist forget about her and just put that on pause for a couple days at least.

I worked out for an hour, then played basketball for another hour, and now it's time for me to sit and watch the sunset with my hands tied.

Today no contact was supposed to end, and we were going to check in to see how each other is feeling. I sent a message in the morning pretty light-hearted, asking if she would be free later in the day to go on a walk and just talk to check in and that message was ignored. I tried to call a few hours later, and it went to voicemail and I got an auto response saying I can't talk right now. A while later I sent a text saying I like to talk but if she doesn't want to that's fine I can respect that, and she finally responded saying she was busy earlier, and that also she couldn't go on a walk with me. She then asked if she could get something of hers on her way home, but I was out of the house by then and so I told her that and then I asked her for a vibe check.

That message still hasn't been opened. Honestly it does kind of suck for such a tense anxiety inducing moment to be left unanswered and hanging, but thankfully I'm in a place where I'm strong enough that I can tolerate that. But at the same time I do want to give myself the self-respect of not just bending over backwards to tolerate things that I shouldn't have to. If she's not ready and wants more time that's completely okay, but it would be nice to tell me that instead of just leaving me unanswered for several hours. I did my best to be courteous, and so at least I'm happy about that.

I guess in a nice roundabout way this is at least confirmation that a relationship is not in the cards going forward, and it seems like a friendship isn't either. I'm really happy I've taken a lot of steps to make sure that I'm okay with that, and thank God that those worked. I have friends to do things with, and plenty of activities to keep me busy and new social connections to explore. But I'd be like if I didn't say that I'm sad that this is how it went. I guess it's not over yet but unless there's a valid reason for not responding to my messages other than just not wanting to respond, that is something that I will kind of keep in mind. To me that's something that makes me lose respect for someone, because it feels like they cannot step past their discomfort and would rather take the easy way out and put that excess burden onto someone else. But at the same time that might not be what happened and so no point overthinking it.

I think I have a problem trying to make things work where they shouldn't, overall. I do this with friends and connections and situations are pretty much everything else in my life I feel like. I think it comes from not really having a sense of stability growing up and because of that I'm so desperate to make something work and I'm not confident in the fact that another opportunity will come along, even though it always does. I'm happy that I've had enough people to talk to and enough support to the point where I feel okay with what's happening, I think this is a situation that would have absolutely done a number on me several years ago, and so that's a very promising sign of growth.

Tomorrow R is coming over and we are going to try to jam together for the first time, and honestly I'm pretty nervous both for just meeting new people but also playing music in front of others. But I really hope that I can put my soul and my heart into whatever I play. I think it would be nice to get that out there, especially in a way that someone else can see. I guess in a sense I do that with this blog at the same time.

I wonder what's going to happen with this situation. I think my worst case outcome was her resenting me and effectively ghosting me, and that's kind of happening which sucks but at the same time I'm happy that I'm not devastated. Don't get me wrong, it hurts but I'm still okay. One thing yesterday that professor M told me that really opened my eyes, was with a lot of the situations in the past that I have been very self-conscious about how my actions would affect them, those were invaluable experiences to see how they respond. Not to my actions, but to the situations make me feel like I need to accommodate their emotions. Like one of the examples was when they were careless and destroyed a expensive gift I got for us both, and I remember in the moment even though I was super sad how I had to put all of that aside so that I would make sure that they didn't leave and spiral even more. Looking back at it now, I should have paid more attention to what their response was, and that was to want to leave and not really acknowledge what had happened or comfort me. Their response after that was to again not acknowledge it, to say that they were going to buy it again which to stressed me out so much more because they weren't financially in a place where that was responsible. Those were their responses, and those weren't the things that I would want in a partner. I'm not saying that those things are make or breaks or anything like that, but I think I should have understood that these experiences are places to see kind of how people react.

I bring this up again because I'm thinking about this situation here. I really don't like the behavior of being incredibly distant and cold and hiding intention, for such a tense moment. That just leaves me in the dark and in confusion, and it really messes with my head. I think realistically with this feedback, this helps me understand what level of connection I can keep them at, because if this was someone that I was super close with and trusted a lot, these things would hurt me. But at the same time if this is someone that I'm not like super emotionally close with, then who cares and I can just ignore it.

What a weird thing it is to have to figure out everything for the first time.

Today’s the last day of no contact. I’m not fully sure what to expect, as this is a fully new experience for me and I’m kinda going into everything blind. I guess that’s how most things are in life anyway. I’m excited for this book on depression to come since I heard someone talking really well about it online and it seemed like a novel and intuitive approach. One of the parts of my life I think I have been neglecting as of recent with all of the interviews and projects was socialization, and I’ve been taking it upon myself to be more proactive in that. I think I’m decently introverted, but still I need that social connection somehow. I’ve been really enjoying playing basketball recently, and I even reached out to someone to play music with them sometime!

Life isn’t meant to be some challenge or some unwinnable struggle.

I feel surprisingly ok. I’ve spent most of my day playing games with friends, all different groups and in different ways. I’ve found that life is not as complicated as it seems, just enjoy it as it comes. Things will work out.

Today I started to feel the familiar threat of depression with break starting. I spent yesterday just playing games till 3:00 a.m. with friends, and I realized how unproductive I feel. I feel like that's a drastic understatement of what I'm feeling, but I don't know how else to objectively describe it. I feel like that spending or wasting the entire day away is starting to already take a huge toll on me. I'm scared for when everyone goes home.

I know that A is going to be here for spring break and I really want to reach out and feel that familiar company. I honestly want an excuse to do anything with them, but I know that a good part of it is kind of along the same lines of dropping an addiction. I've been riding the high of her always being there and now that the rest of life's problems are filling back in I really want to get another hit just to make it more bearable. But I know that that will make it worse than the long run. I don't want to be around them because I don't want to be alone, I want to be around them because I want to be around them. And it's kind of hard to disambiguate while I'm so desperately looking for someone to distract me.

I'm honestly terrified of being alone right now. Or I guess more just terrified of being depressed over this break. I feel like I say I don't want to be alone because that's the easiest potential cop out, of someone else somehow distracting me and making me not depressed – but that's not the answer either. I don't know if I would want to feel content with how life is right now. If I think about that, it feels like I would be setting myself up for a miserable life. I don't want to be content playing leave Legends for fucking 8 hours a day or whatever. But at the same time I don't really have much of a choice right now I feel like and so I guess I have nothing else to do but sit in this nausea and misery.

But at least I shot once lol.

I decided to use this crisis as incentive to try things I've been wanting to, and one of those was basketball. I already signed up for the novice League again I wanted to practice a bit and have some fun with it as a form of cardio. Today And got a basketball, and since all the main courts were full I went to the Mac. Still all the courts were full but there was one with a guy just shooting by himself. I really wanted to just leave and keep walking around until I can convince myself to leave, but I realized I am being a pussy and this is how socialization happens. It's only unknown the first time you do it. And so I went and I asked the guy and he gave me a thumbs up and so I just had my headphones on and I listened to my podcast while shooting. I think I missed every single layup which is impressive, but at least a few threes went in!

After a while I was pretty tired, but some guy came up to me and asked me if I wanted to run fours. I'll be honest I thought he meant 2v2 but he meant 4v4 which I guess was better but another thing that caught me off guard lol. I told him I was complete dog shit and brand new, and he said yeah that's chill and so even though I knew I was going to bomb I joined. For most of the time I kind of just passed the ball back and forth and tried to rebound where I could, and I was fucking gassed out of my mind. After the 15-point game ended, even while sitting down my face was throbbing lol. But it was that easy. And I mean it can't really get much worse can it? I literally threw one of the passes too far and it went out of bounds, I rebounded once, and then I just kept passing the ball back and forth. Halfway through the game I literally wasn't able to run to the offensive side lol. I'm still super happy I did it.

I know the academic studies back me up on the fact how my generation is one of the most rejected, there is a loneliness crisis, and of course my childhood is not doing me many favors there. But I still today at least met and interacted with five new people, and I even made one friend from just being receptive to it. A guy was doing bulgarian split squats next to me, and asked me for advice and I told him I had no fucking clue either LOL. His name was M, and we just talked about a different exercises specifically for the glutes because both of us are weak there lol. I also found out he's graduating and I made a comment about how I'm going to miss the arbor, and he mentioned getting a Subway before classes. I told him about the subway coupon code and it blew his mind, and little mums like this remind me on how unpredictable small talk is, but how easy it is to make friends at the end of the day. It's kind of just a pattern of being open to it, and just practicing being out of your comfort zone. I think I'm most proud of myself for the instances where it doesn't work. Because that means even without the reinforcement I still try. And when it works it feels great! Life doesn't have to be so lonely surrounded by so many people. Just keep reminding yourself about how the people you cherish now are the people you never in a thousand years would have picked out in a room at first. At the end of the day you really cannot know someone until you get to know them.

I think once I was able to release all the tension in my mind about the problems we were having, I have the room to see things from her perspective a bit more. In the moment for me, it's hard for me to focus on things in her life when I'm thinking about how I don't feel comfortable talking to her about my feelings. But at the same time from her POV I would feel pretty fucking sad if I couldn't share parts of my day or life. Like she won the study abroad photography competition!!! How sick is that!! I don't even know which photo of hers won. In a vacuum that would make me pretty sad if I was her. I'm not saying this to put blame on me, or to feel guilty, but rather as just more information on how bottling things up hurt both of us. I also think of course that there were things that she did too that made it harder for me to not bottle up, but again that's not meant to be blame or guilt provoking. More just an understanding of how we have room to grow as people.

WARNING: BRAIN ROT ANALOGY

This is almost like playing kassadin and constantly fighting, roaming, and never catching waves. 30 minutes in and you're level 14 and you're losing. Next game you understand that resources are incredibly important for you, and you can prioritize that. Or a nasus with stacks, same shit different toilet.

Communication and this comfort is a two way street, and also something that is necessary over everything else – since without this you're just banking on the fact you two are perfectly compatible naturally. Like a learning rate of 1e-6 with a good start has no room for growth while a worse one with 1e-4 can.

What a weird fucking insight into my brain and the experiences I've had. If I want to have a unique experience, I think this life's been pretty damn up there lol.