An Open Letter

It's a problem until it suddenly isn't

One time in middle school in PE when we had to run a mile, right at the start I tripped and got crushed by the rest of the kids and had the wind fully knocked out of me for the first time. While several other people came over to make sure I was okay including the teacher, I was desperately trying to breathe and I could not. I didn't know what was happening but I thought that in that moment something happened to my lung and I would die, I have no clue how I could possibly breathe like that. I was struggling to get air for what was about a minute but felt like forever, but then slowly I was able to breathe a little bit more and more. Soon enough I was completely back to normal aside from the fear of what had happened, but I of course fully recovered. In that moment I didn't know how I could possibly get better but in just a little bit of time it works itself out and you continue surviving.

Just got home, exhausted. She is right now fast asleep with Hash by her side, and after my shower I join her. I never thought I would struggle with vulnerability but I think I should be the one to make that jump soon.

Now that I'm finally recovering, I'm again infatuated with my girlfriend. This entire week while I've been dying to strep, I've been kinda depressed and had somewhat withdrawals from caffeine / my ADHD medication which definitely wasn't helping. Because of that, and because I was feeling nothing but depressed feelings like exhaustion or numbness, I automatically try to figure out what's causing these feelings. And so I get in my head and think about what's happening in life and I scare myself by thinking it's because I am now in a relationship. But no, it's because I'm sick and have been bedridden for a week. It's never that bad.

I had a watch party with L and N, and since I have strep I streamed it over Discord. The fight was fun to watch as a group, but the outcome fuckin sucked. But afterwards we just watched random UFC videos and then later N started showing me some football things and was explaining how the game works to me and showing me some famous plays. It was actually really interesting and I’d like to get more into it, as there’s a lot of cool strategy and also just a fun pastime. It was a great day.

I’ve been using OVHCloud as a VPS since 2022, but I finally decided to bite the bullet and shop around. I found Hetzner, and I got the same machine for half the price! I did this because I wanted to set up a new machine so I can install Coolify, which is a self-hosting project, kinda like Vercel but you are the cloud. I spent a lot of my day today just learning it and moving over some of my projects, I got the REST endpoints setup with a docker container, one of my discord bots moved over, and I’m working on getting the frontend working. It’s nice to have some kind of fresh start, like a brand new clean machine. On my old VPS I had a factorio server running, a Minecraft server, a few discord bots, and also a couple webapps. That poor machine was getting abused lol.

After a bit of being in quiet I decided to put on some music, and youtube autoplay gave me some beautiful midwest emo gems. I’ve been kinda just playing “still save a seat for you” by Otuka on repeat. The kind of repeat where you keep clicking restart once it goes to the next song. It’s one of those beautiful songs where someone tries to pour out all of their pain into their art. The art in it is how the artist has a fairly deep, monotone voice. I think they only go through a total of 5 notes or so, and so in compensation, the rest of the instruments scream for him. It’s that kind of beauty that shows up after living in the dark for weeks. It feels like being on the verge of crying for several months and finally, something bad enough happens that you’re justified in just breaking down sobbing. It feels like it captures that male feeling of being told to not show emotions or being punished for that. I guess that’s why I love it so much.

The song almost paints a picture so vivid in my head it makes me sad for a memory that’s not even mine. The song feels like a teen boy in a basement alone facing the wall, with an electric guitar plugged into headphones so he can be loud without being reprimanded. I see that kid blasting the chords into his headphones, almost to the point he can’t hear himself think. He can gently say the words along to the song, all with the guise of writing a song. But I think it goes past that, I think this is one of his only ways to put those feelings outside of his head. I see him closing his eyes and shaking up and down with each strum, fully in his own world where he is heard, or alone – I’m not sure what he wants or what he should want. I then see his mom coming down, and shocking him without him noticing her coming over. She would probably say something supportive of the music, but to him instantly all of the vulnerability and courage to confront those emotions instantly goes away to the facade of being closed off to the world, after all, emotions are punished and how is a kid that’s never been properly heard supposed to know how to speak? And suddenly he needs to do something else because he is afraid of being perceived. All until it gets bad enough and he gets a moment alone where he can continue all over again. At least that’s what the song sounds like to me.

What an insane rant to go on! I must seem crazy.

Holy fuck this cold/tonsillitis has been kicking my ass for the last week+, I’ve been exhausted the entire day and want to just sleep. I’m hoping that by Sunday I’m fully better as that’s when I’m going to see Ken Carson, and I also just want to be back to my normal self. I haven’t worked out in almost a week now which is insane to me and I really hope I don’t fall out of habit.

I feel scared with A because she’s been so great to me. She’s been super understanding, very empathetic, and kind, and she has been showing me a lot of love. For example, she offered to get me things to help me get over this cold and even spent $20 on a marked-up bottle of Dayquil without even mentioning it. She’s been incredible, and that weirdly scares me. I guess I’m trying out the common thought of “I don’t deserve this”. I feel like parts of this resonate with me. I’ve been very sick and tired since our sleepover, and so I’ve been somewhat depressed with no energy to do anything. I feel like I haven’t been me for the last few days and recently am starting to feel like myself again, but during this entire period I still feel like I am not providing enough value to her as a person, let alone a partner – and so I don’t deserve this amount of care or affection. I guess the logical reasoning is if she cared about me less then it would be more sustainable if I am providing her such little, but I know that the faulty assumption there is that everything is so black and white in terms of “value”. I also know that on top of it, she probably understands that I am sick and recovering right now, but I guess I’m afraid that this patience is on some timer. I feel bad for starting a relationship this way since I want to be a good partner. But also I think this is putting way too much unhealthy stress on me, since this stress doesn’t actually benefit me at all, but rather hurts me. I know that this is the overanalysis that I do ritualistically nightly, but I think there is a valid fear beneath it. I’m excited for therapy tomorrow to be able to talk about this a bit more and pry behind to see what this is.

The last post was the one I should have written yesterday, so this is meant to be a fully distinct post for today. I saw a person who posted an art project they wanted to do and it took them over a year to do. It was one animation where they drew a different frame of it every day, and it was a relatively simple scene but the pure love that went into it really hit me. Similar to the thought of the pinned post of art, I think a lot of love is things taken for granted. Like how my parents carried me into bed after a car trip when we acted asleep. Or the deserts or meals that my dad would feign disinterest in just for the chance of us wanting to eat it. I think a lot of love is founded on actions that are likely to never get recognition.

A is now officially my girlfriend! Well technically as of yesterday, 11/10/2024. I guess the only way I can say this is I’m a bit overwhelmed right now and not feeling well so I don’t want to overanalyze anything for fear of misrepresentation, since I do believe at some point she will read this. I’m very excited but I guess I’m also scared. But I also do think this is the fear that comes from my brain having no dopamine left and just regular depression, and so I’ve been kinda just distracting myself constantly today to avoid falling into those mental traps.