An Open Letter

The title says it does because I’m driving home with the windows down and I’m pretty sure that voice to text is going to butcher whatever I say and I kind of don’t care about editing it. I have slept past 3 AM the last two nights in a row and even though I have technically gotten seven hours of sleep, I understand that realistically I have slept like shit. On top of that I know that I have not been eating well and so I understand that these things will all factor into this current depression, along with the stress from life, recovering from this cold, and other life events that have happened. And so I’m fairly confident that this will pass and I just need to take care of myself and everything will be OK. Now that being said, I do not find myself having a shortage of things that I plead my finger towards in terms of trying to attribute this current emotional low. It feels so infantilizing to call it an emotional low compared to this complete sense of defeat and wanting to just be able to fucking put all of this down for a bit. But that is what I said, and I am not going to edit this now that I have said those words. I know that one of the things that I am sad by God that doesn’t even make sense grammatically fuck it, but yesterday with Halloween, I brought my camera off, and I took a lot of photos of friends and they saw how nice my photos were coming out and they wanted more and more photos of them. We didn’t even take that many group photos, and I didn’t really get many photos of myself. Thankfully, Jay did take some photos of me, but I feel pretty ungrateful for saying this, but they were horribly framed, and the lighting was terrible, you can barely see me. I’m completely covered with shadows, and there is no detailed to the photos, but either way I ended up staying up for about four hours, going through the raw photos and editing them, and I made some pretty cool photos of my friends, but the most I was able to do for myself, was make the photos essentially visible, and even then you can’t really make me out in them. And it kind of hurts because the photos of my friends came out really amazing, but I don’t really have too much to show for it, for myself at least. I have some photos of me, but a lot of them are kind of shitty or really lazy in comparison. And they are all really happy with the photos I think. And I remember one of the things was G was one of the people that had a time constraint, and so we were kind of in a bit of a rush and on the clock, and she kept asking for other photos of her because she really liked the way they were coming out, but that essentially took away from time from me being able to have photos and group photos, and so when it finally got to my turn, everything was super rushed, and it felt like it was just trying to be done to get it out of the way. And it feels like a little bit of one of those things where I’m not really upset at her for it, but it’s more just she spoke up and an open mouth gets fed, and a closed mouth does not. But on top of it, this is one of those cases where I feel like suffering from success, in terms of me having some skill or something that I’ve worked on, and it is something that benefits other people more than it, benefits me, and it is something that I would like to also be on the receiving end of if I’m being completely honest. Like in this case, it is taking photos of other people and posing at the editing and all of that stuff, But it’s also things like being emotionally, mature and handling certain conversations or navigating situations in certain ways. It is one of those things where Both benefit, but work is disproportionate. I also feel like my hands are tied because J did not need to take photos of me, and I am very thankful that she did. But at the same time I feel like if I complain about the photos or how high ultimately don’t feel like they were up to the bar of what I was hoping for, or that I was able to do for others, it will only make her feel bad and be less willing to do it in the future, which is understandable. I am so it just feels like I kind of sit here and suffer quietly with no real way to vocalize my want. And so I don’t really know what to do about that and it just makes me feel trapped.

Also, today it took me 3 ½ hours to finish my powerlifting training. And I still didn’t even do the weights I was prescribed. I feel like such a weak bitch. I feel so incredibly discouraged and demotivated because I have been not able to keep up with the training while sick, and it feels like every time I start to give it another good attempt or something, I can’t really keep up almost. And so it feels like I’m not making any progress, and it feels like I just don’t have that dog in me. And it makes me feel like I’m trying like I really am, I put a lot of time into it. More often than I really don’t have much in me, but I still try. I spent over an hour taking notes on the first video he gave me, i’ve tried to find a coach on my own, and I’m spending a good amount of money on it. and honestly way more often than not I don’t have the energy or motivation to do anything. It’s been months now I think and I have trash and random things on my kitchen counter that should be put away by now. I have so many small little things just piling up and I don’t have the energy to even do tiny things like throw away, trash here and there, or just take a second to fucking wipe some hair off of the counter. I have mess after a mess and small little thing of small little thing and they all just pile up, there’s laundry that needs to be done, there are things that need to be moved or put away and even good little memories like these photos that I need to find a way to display. And they just accumulate and accumulate and I can’t bring myself to get them done. I haven’t vacuumed upstairs in God knows how long, let alone mopping. And I’m tired. I really really really wish that I wasn’t like this. I wish I had the energy to do these things, but obviously I don’t. And so I really am trying hard. But that’s not enough. It feels like. Sometimes it feels like I need more than what I can give for so many different little things. And God I’m tired. and I feel like such a pathetic bitch for all of these small little things like just moving something from point A to point B and I feel like there are so many people that work harder than I do and would kill to trade places with me, but instead here I am struggling to do these basic things. I tried to stay away from self hate because I know that it is very painfully natural to me and it is something that I’ve worked really hard to move away from, but why did God make it so easy? Why was I raised in a way that taught me that it is so natural to hate myself. I’m trying really hard like I feel so pathetic for saying this, but I’m trying to cry saying these words out loud because it’s not like I’m not showing up for myself. I really am. Like I have never worked so much at something as I have for trying to overcome my childhood and to be able to lead a happy or normal life. But sometimes in days like this, it really just feels like I just might not be able to do enough. I don’t know what to do. And it’s such a shitty thing that I think about how I have squandered this life, and so many opportunities that I have been given, but I also understand that it’s not like you could have the good things without the bad and you could argue that someone else put in my situation from the start would struggle in a lot of the same ways that I have. But at the same time, what am I to do. I feel like it’s too early in my mind to be kind to myself already, but I have finally cleaned up all of the shit from the bathroom counter that has been here for months. And I could both be hateful at myself to think about how much this took for me to finally do something so simple and arguably, trivial, but I could also be kind to myself and recognize by virtue of the fact that it is taking me so long that this is something that I have struggled with, and so I am proud of myself for doing this. And it’s not like I just have to prioritize this or have to thought about it, like some of the creative projects that I wanted to do, but this is something that I have wanted to do and I’ve even tried chicken away at. But finally here I have actually done it. and so I am going to choose to be proud of myself for it.

I am driving home now on Halloween night from my friends place. We did have our five person group costume, and we honestly spent most of the day doing a photo shoot in Js Apartment, because it started to rain. I got to take some cool photos and I am going home and planning on editing them a bit. We then dropped off G at the airport, and had to go to do something separate, and we stopped by a friends place who was hosting a party. Honestly, we all felt pretty awkward and out of place there and so us three left pretty soon and instead just went to go get Taco Bell. I’d call it a night. It’s a strange thing because in a lot of ways tonight was unsuccessful, like we did not really go to any events or do anything outside of the house and on paper it kind of just looks like we all dressed up took some photos together, and that was it. But I surprisingly feel actually good about everything. I didn’t even drink really or anything like that, and I guess I’m just really grateful for the friends that I have and how we all kind of coordinated and dressed up together.

Over a month ago, I had RSVP to a party after one of my friends sent me the invite, and it was with someone that I have interacted with a bit before and it seemed like we could be friends, but yesterday she told me that she is going to have to uninvite me because someone that she is loyal to doesn’t like me. I had told her that this is coming out of nowhere and is there something I did like? Would it help if I apologize, and especially because the party is supposed to be fairly large it’s not like it is a tight close thing, and also just from my side of things I’ve been racking my brain, but there really isn’t anything I could think about where I have wronged anyone to the plate where they are this justified and not wanting to see me. But she did not punch and so the day before I had to scramble to figure out what plans to do instead. I had sent the invite to the rest of my group and that was her plan to go to, but I’m really grateful that all of them independently said that if I am not going, they don’t want to go. And I will say I am really grateful for that, and I know that my brain can come up with arguments against this, but I think I truly am an important person in the lives of my friends around me. I think I would very much be missed if I went away. And I can think about this in the sense that if I was not there, I don’t know if my friend groups would really be able to function the same. But I’m only bringing that up just because I really want to drive that point home because I’ve been working on that in therapy of unconditional this thought in my head. But overall, I’m really grateful that I have a lot of friends that I can even complain about this situation too and so forth. I think there are a lot of really nice memories associated with this Halloween, including things like going shopping for the shirt with E, or when she came over to use the sewing machine I have borrowed for altering the corset and also trying to figure out how to tie the pentagram. Or how Jay helped me with the pentagram the day off, and just a casual comfort of me being at her place, taking off my contacts while she is taking off her makeup and it’s little things like this recognizing how comfortable I am with these people in a way that I think is healthy, rather than a lot of the super intense out of nowhere relationship relationships I have had in my life. I have taken my time and slowly gotten closer to these people and I think that is a very sweet thing. I guess a part of me does wonder if I am losing something in life however, in the sense that I am not really going to these huge parties or going out clubbing or like flirting with people and getting drunk or stuff like that, and I think, especially when we were in the Taco Bell, and we were surrounded by what was really uncomfortable by the way, a lot of highschoolers that were dressed in very revealing costumes. It reminded me of being at college, which was a big party school and feeling like a loser for not partying every single weekend, or seeing people dressed in really revealing clothing and feeling like a home body. But at the same time I feel like I do have several friends that don’t party or do anything like that, and they seem to be very content or happy with that, and I kind of aspire to be more secure in that sense, because I think there were people on both ends of the spectrum that are happy and also unhappy with where they are and feel like they need to be closer to one side or the other. And I think my virtue of that that means neither of those is necessarily wrong.

Must come down. I feel like after sexual experiences, especially the more intense they are, I end up having strong crashes proportionally. I will say, however, I don’t actually have that adverse of a reaction this time I feel like which is good. But I also feel like a big thing stems from this pattern of over promising, and then the immediate regret and the feeling of having to overcorrect. I think, especially with how cheap talk is and how easy it is to get high off of a fantasy, it leads to this constant writing of checks that I cannot realistically cash. And I need this mostly in the pragmatic sense of it being something I actually feel comfortable with when not under the influence of hormones. I can’t help but feel like there have to be some amount of parallels between this weird consumerism culture of sex. Maybe parallels is the wrong word. But it feels like with the cycle of accelerating, getting high off of a fantasy, and when it comes time to actually consider the costs of that you can simply just move on. In a weird analogy it feels like how you can get into some new hobby or have some new goal or resolution and think about a daydream about reaching that goal, like you could think about how you could lock in on diet and everything and become a bodybuilder, and you already start thinking about how insane you might look in your head or how people might treat you or some of the second order effects and you can really start to reap some of the reward early – especially even more if you tell other people about it. I think about that study about how telling people that your New Year’s resolution releases dopamine in a similar way to actually working towards it, but actually ends up completely unproductive towards the actual goal meaning you are expending your dopamine without gaining any benefit from it. And think about how easy it is to tell people how you are training to run a marathon or that is your plan, but you don’t even sign up for a marathon and you don’t actually figure out a concrete plan of getting to that point. Instead you just. Maybe do a half assed jog or something like that until you say screw this I’ll start next week or whatever other excuse. And you can just continue to delay this while building up this fantasy in your head about what it would look like after you actually do it. And that is so incredibly dangerous I think. But I digress, in this analogy, you do this, milk out all of this loan of dopamine, and then move on to another goal and repeat. You stagnate in life and waste dopamine hacking it like this, but in the case of sex, I think you actively atrophy your emotional pathways and damage. The things required to have a happy relationship instead of doing this to some abstract promise, you were doing this to another human person and I think this should at least come with guilt or shame with those actions, as this is what serves you too do this less I think it becomes very dangerous when you were able to turn off this part of your brain and stop listening to this voice. I think that is what my main underlying fear is. I really do not want to fall victim to this arguable addiction.

Today S, T and I Planned to play the new overwatch drives. We got hard shit on every single game. We changed roles. We changed heroes everything. We ended up like two wins eight losses. S finally called it and got off to go to bed, and then T and I went on an eight game win streak. S wasn’t doing bad at all, it is honestly pure luck and we kept playing with the same people and we had really good synergy, but it’s so fucking funny to me.

I’m worried I’m going to be still sick and recovering this Halloween, but this is the first Halloween with friends :( I am really hoping I can somehow stop coughing by then

I saw someone on reddit today asking for advice on how to get closer to this guy at school. He was a shy guy, and this other person was really friendly to him and extroverted, and they began to become closer and closer, friends, and there were some things like his leg touching for a couple minutes at a time in ways that felt like that had to be intentional, and little sketches or drawings., And honestly, it was incredibly cute. And for some reason, seeing this person talk through their experience really made me feel like I was in their shoes and helped me better empathize with what it must be like to be gay or Lesbian growing up, and to not know if someone could even like you in that sense. And I know that I felt like the kind of people I can get along with are such a small sub set of the population already, but if you were to add on the fact that they would need to be queer? I feel like that would make me almost immediate give up on finding someone like that.

I just had a thought, the same way that I always mention when criticizing men that do not have many female friends growing up, how some men do not recognize that women are humans just like them. And now that I think about it, I feel like the counter point of that is also extremely true. Especially with a lot of the wide stereotypes about men, I wonder how many of those women understand that men are more or less the same as them. I think the only difference is really boil down to how we are raised, everything else is functionally noise.

For my own dignity, I want to say that I was never an E dater, but I definitely did end up in somewhat social circles, especially coming with being good at league And playing on Smurf accounts most of the time. A few of the friends that I made were E daters, and the kind that would constantly jump around with new girlfriends, and I would play with them, and I was always happy to boost people. Ever since I have stopped using TikTok as much I’ve noticed my algorithm is a bit more volatile, and I have somehow ended up on e dater TikTok. Specifically, for some reason people who are mourning losing a past booster, and I see in the comments people sharing similar sentiments. And I see people on both sides of this community. I used to look in on, and I’m really thankful that I’m not there anymore. I feel like I am so detached from that where I almost find it hard to call myself a gamer in the same way anymore. And I’m a little bit grateful for that.

This cold has been around for a while and yesterday was nightmare, slowly miserable, but it seems like after doing basically nothing today because it hurts so much to even stand up, it seems like I’m slowly starting to feel a little bit better. I just really hope everything smoothens out soon enough.

Lots of pain, throat hurts so much to do anything. Afraid to swallow. Mom today talked for first time in years, and refused to apologize and said to let things go. Fuck off.

This Halloween, I am doing a group costume for the first time, and I had the idea of doing the biblical sins. I ended up choosing to be lust, and I feel like I find myself victim to the sin fairly often. Today, for example I was supposed to leave work a little bit early so that I would have time at the powerlifting training before a concert with a friend. But I got derailed when I checked Hinge and I found someone who had a very suggestive profile linked with something else. Out of curiosity, I looked at the other thing and since then I have been in this weird limbo of wanting to go to the gym, and also wanting to have sex or do something like that. And especially because I know that I should not do something like that before the gym because it will negatively affect me in several different ways, but because of that I end up kind of just depleting all of my dopamine stores for the day, chasing some kind of relief. And I think about how the commodification of sex through dating apps has gotten so easily accessible, almost similar to how gambling is now with you everywhere at the touch of a finger compared to going to a casino. Instead, I can scroll through a near infinite pool of possible people through several different dating apps, I can message people, and I have the option to go and do any of these things with these people. And because they’re so little friction to it, my brain loves it so much, and I can find myself falling victim to my libido and wasting hours. And I think with as little judgment and shame towards myself as I can, I wonder why I am so lustful. That’s the better way to use honestly, the first thing that came to my mind was horny. And I feel like it is both a mixture of just naturally My biology, but also I do think that I grew up in a pretty over sexualized way due to having to socialize myself online. I think, especially during this formative years that did said a lot of the wiring for me to have this high drive. But another thing I was thinking about was how having a relationship is really nice for several different reasons of course but also just because you end up having access to someone that is available, you are attracted to, you enjoy their company with, you feel safe with, you can trust, etc, and the list goes on. And the thought of how when I am in a relationship, especially with one where sex drives are fairly well matched, I am able to indulge in this lust in arguably one of the healthiest ways as much as I would. And I remember having situations like this a couple times in my life with different people. I remember what it is like to go to the gym with my partner, and then especially with the endorphins and all that both of us being horny and then going home and having sex pretty often. And that is honestly a really nice thing to have, at least in the immediate gratification sense. I think with a lot of things about sex. I feel like it is stigmatized or seen as a negative thing in my mind, like there has always been a little bit of emptiness after masturbation for example, if I’m speaking really candidly, like the feeling that you are tricking your brain and gaming the system, and you don’t really get those happy warm bonding chemicals that make you feel closer to someone. And I think with any sort of casual sex or relationship like that, it is less preferable than a relationship, in a sense that the ideal friends with benefits situation does not compare to the ideal relationship situation. But I also know that comparing ideals is kind of impossible, I guess I feel like I’m a little bit back to wishing that I somehow found this perfect person for me right now. And I understand that that’s not necessarily feasible or realistic, and the same way that I have felt going into every relationship that I have done the sufficient work and I am now ready and I come out again learning that there were more lessons for me to learn, maybe there is still more to go. But at least for now this lust kind of does plague me.