An Open Letter

She came over at like 10:30 to dye her hair, and it's 3:40 and she just left. I get it again.

All of my projects are either done, or extended and I am now done for midterms for now. It feels weird too let off the gas without doing really anything heavy. Oh well.

Situation – S is taking time out of midterm week to go across the country with a relatively new friend for their birthday.

Thoughts – I wish someone did something similar for my birthday. I think it would mean the world to me and I would cherish the thought forever if something similar happened to me. This kinda feels like a reminder of what’s about to come and how miserable I will be on my birthday again.

Feelings – Honestly, I just feel like crying. I feel like a younger me sitting on that bathroom floor crying since what else was I supposed to do.

Behavior – It gets worse, and the pull starts to creep in.

Thoughts – Realistically it’s not like she planned this for the other person, and it could just essentially be an excuse for a fun trip with new friends. This is important because it points out how this isn’t like the status quo for a birthday or anything like that. And regardless I am the one in control of my days, and so I can plan something nice for my birthday for myself that doesn’t have to include others.

Feelings – I still feel like I’m mourning my childhood, but at least I’m not there anymore. I also don’t really care about S since I can at least separate that information from what depression wants to leverage against me.

Behavior – Yeah this time of year will still suck, but at least this is one less piece of pain alleviated.

I don’t like the idea of S reading this, since I think I’ve hit the point where I have to somewhat carefully portray myself to them. Unfortunately, I don’t think they really understand some things and so I’d rather just not have to deal with that can of worms. But also I guess I kinda do think about this in terms of other people. I always think that everyone has their own tragically bad childhood, but sometimes people don’t. Everyone has their problems, and ironically enough I think a lack of those problem is another problem in itself, but having the conversation with S was kinda painful. S didn’t understand how they were making me feel and when I would try to explain that to them they would get kinda aggressive and there was not much chance they would be able to listen to what I had to say, since they were saying “I understand what you’re saying and I can read emotion and tell what you’re feeling” no matter what. Today they mentioned how they were going across the country for a few days as a trip for a coworkers birthday, during midterms week. That sounds sick and I’d hope that they’re getting along well if that’s happening so quickly lol. But also I do feel sad because I’m thinking about how my dreaded birthday is coming up soon. 21 days. I wish I could skip it. I wish somehow S could come visit for it, I miss him. I feel like if V was not super far away we could do some stupid fun shit and that would be a blast. Same with A, he’d prob be down to do something fun. I’m kinda worried about A, because I don’t want her to be bogged down with all of my shit. I just hate this time of year. I wish I was allowed to have friends as a kid. Birthday parties would have been great. What else can I do but mourn this shit now, it’s not like I’ll ever be able to have another childhood. It’s kinda sad to think about how the thought of childhood is terrifying to me. Nostalgia just kinda feels like a concept that I’m aware of, but I never really feel it for the same things everyone talks about. I’ve never had nostalgia for summer, since it’s just been me locked in my room physically isolated from everyone else. Covid was honestly nicer than before since other people were also online. I tell myself that the benefit of this is that I’m good academically and financially well off, but I can’t help but mourn the lack of a family. I’d gladly trade money to have a family. I get an angry kind of sad when people talk about family stuff, or when they lean on family for support; what am I supposed to do? I’ve poured myself into school and studying because if I’m focused on something else and my brain doesn’t stop moving I don’t have to think about the rest. I become so incredibly bitter around this time of year, it’s not fair I don’t have a family while everyone else I know does. I would give so much to have childhood me not become who I am. I wish younger Anshuman was loved, I can’t even bring myself to ask for the love to be unconditional. I realized recently in a therapy session that to be loved or liked I didn’t even need to be anything, I just needed to give space to someone else. That’s the closest I’ve ever come to understanding unconditional love towards me, since for the first time I didn’t think I had to provide something to get it.

S kept rubbing in how she had a secure attachment style and wasn’t insecure about being loved, and that cut so fucking deeply. I’m sorry that it hurts me this much and I’m sorry that I didn’t have parents that hugged me, told me they loved me, or anything like that. Instead, I had one essentially absent parent and another abusive one. I’m sorry that was the hand I was dealt as a kid and how now I can get hurt by your actions. You keep saying you don’t know what to say since it feels like I’ll just be hurt, and I wish others just understood I don’t want to be this way. If only I could make them understand that I’m not upset at them. I wish I wasn’t difficult. I wish I was less.

Today I felt comfortable. I don’t know what’s going on.

I haven’t hit escape velocity yet, but I was closer. It’s a nice feeling to go lightheaded from the g-force; for a little bit, all that matters is staying on the road and conscious. Today was bad enough that while on call with friends I got so stressed and overwhelmed that I just went nonverbal for like 40 minutes. I played guitar for a bit and when I came back I just couldn’t speak, so I sat quietly in call. Sometimes I just get blindsighted by things and it hits me out of nowhere. It’s like that tweet “you people can’t do anything” (@ adhd people struggling with like Halloween costumes or something lmao). Don’t even sweat it man. Don’t even trip.

I just got back from clubbing with A, N, S and a couple other pkmeople I didn't know before, and it was so much fun. I have to be a little bit careful about what I say because I do think that A will see this sooner or later and I don't want to scare them off, but I think she's super cool and definitely someone that I get along with really well. I think if I was friends with her I would definitely get a crush on her, and I'm so lucky that I get this head start of already starting off kind of like that. I'm excited to see where this goes.

So I finally checked my due dates, and by some bad luck I have a 22 page paper to understand and present on Monday, I have to create my glove controller project for my physical computing class on Monday also, and I have to finish creating the automated CVE VM thing by Tuesday. Also, the competition for the robotics team I’m mentoring is this Saturday, and Halloween is tomorrow. Also, CLEOPATRICK IS ON WEDNESDAY SO I NEED TO BE DONE BY THEN!!!!!!!! I had to tell the robotics team I won’t be able to make it since its a full-day competition, so that’s at least one more day I have to work with, but for the first time this quarter, I need to lock in. I’m kinda happy and excited, since I get to go all out and milk as much dopamine as possible out of doing homework tasks and stuff like that. I almost finished the full CVEX today, and I have a few pages left on the paper. My glove is also mostly physically made just a few more wires to soder onto the threads and then I got the RPI working so I need to write the socket code and the actual interface on the computer. I live for this stress.

I stayed up today after my Jiujitsu class (which upset me) and had a beer and decided to try to solve the CTF’s for my computer security class. I finally had a breakthrough on the first one (I had to hijack 3 environment variables and overwrite a system command to trick it into giving me a protected file) and that was an insane rush of dopamine. By then it was time to sleep, but I wanted to just peek at the second question and I was slowly dragged into doing the entire question once I figured out the encoding scheme was something I could easily reverse with cyberchef. I finished both questions and the feeling I have right now is bliss.