An Open Letter

I went to an event by 222, which is essentially like time left if you know what that is. And I really felt like I was the life of the party for my group, I had people kind of hovering around me and if I went to a different group or made new friends I would eventually have my old group end up coming to me. I made a lot of new friends and people that are interested in doing several different things, and I very much consider it a success. I also want to kind of be a little bit intentional with reminding myself that I was good at being social and I was very well received by others. I also feel like I was very charismatic and entertaining with my stories, and I was consistently making people laugh. I remember that one reel that talked about how interesting people constantly have applicable stories and I kind of felt that way where I was able to just naturally have a lot of related stories that I felt like I was able to tell in a very entertaining manner and I was even complimented on my storytelling at one point. I just wanna take a little bit to be proud of myself for that and to acknowledge that as a strength of mind that I’ve worked hard for.

Additionally there was this one girl named A, who I was friendly to from the beginning but was pretty judgmental and honestly rude. When I would make friendly comments or conversations she would be pretty rude or would casually throw in put downs towards me, and this really does remind me of L. I essentially just stopped interacting with her, and she ended up kind of gravitating back towards me mostly because I was kind of at the heart of social interaction. But she still continued to be rude to me and so I just didn’t really go out of my way to interact with her too much. I invited some other people to a game night at some point in the future, mostly just checking for interest and I didn’t explicitly ask her because she wasn’t directly in that conversation and I wasn’t going to go super out of my way to invite her. When I finally dropped off everyone at their cars, I was talking with another person that I enjoyed meeting, and her. I was telling them a couple of different stories, and I eventually asked if she was interested in board games or specifically social deduction games and she said she was. She seemed friendly then. It kind of feels like there’s as weird manipulation thing almost of kind of being somewhat rude to them, and by that I mean not going out of my way to engage with them or to involve them with things which I do think is fair. But I feel like once that person gets that social feedback that their behavior of being rude gets them that response, they become a little bit more friendly.

I said the title kind of in reference to literally everything in life and maybe you can make an argument for this being overthinking. But for example with the whole fear about not getting married soon enough, I believe I saw something where the average age is 30, and if I wanna date someone for four years that’s two years to get into that relationship and of course if I wanted to really force it and hit this deadline I could absolutely do that but at the same time this whole arbitrary 30 years Mark isn’t for healthy relationships or for really amazing magical ones like the kind that you can get if you really wait and you do the work and the nice thing is I’ve done a lot of the work, and so the part that I need to do is wait and be patient. And so I guess I don’t really have too much to worry about I feel like in that sense, I can take my time if I want and my life isn’t a great spot so I’m in no rush. But even more generally I kind of just realize that I was both hungry and also didn’t have great sleep the last few nights and both of those things definitely negatively impact my mood, and so I just decided to not give too much weight towards any negative feelings today and I kind of just chilled and took it a little bit easy. And that’s all I really need to do.

I went to watch a horror movie with A, And she recommended unseen screen, Where the movie isn’t announced ahead of time and you see something that hasn’t yet been shown in theaters. We both assumed it was horror, and once we were watching the trailers she mentioned that now that she thinks about it she doesn’t actually know if it’s a horror movie. We ended up watching a two hour 40 minute political thriller/documentary about Russia in the 2000s. She fell asleep during the movie at one point which is really funny to me, and the movie was not necessarily good, but I realized that I actually really did enjoy it. I think one of the things I took away from it that I wanted to write down was how the main character essentially had his life fully rerouted an experience in his formative years.

In the movie it explains his backstory as someone who didn’t want to get into politics or anything like that and rather work odd jobs, and was part of the rebel/punk scene. He then meets a girl that is so incredibly unique and different from everything else that he falls in love with her. He gets into theater and the arts, and they are in a relationship and eventually one of his old friends who got into banking and made a lot of money essentially stole his girl from him. He continued to involve them in extravagant and lavish experiences, and the girl eventually ends up cheating with him. In a memorable scene, he talks with his father and tells him how after they had broken up he felt relieved, but at the same time theater could no longer satisfy him and he was essentially cursed with ambition. His father, who was a politician warned him against this. In the rest of the movie this person continues to climb in the chain until they are essentially a close advisor to Putin, and eventually it leads to his demise.

I thought about this because I realized that if I had had an experience like that during some of my formative years, I think that would’ve done an incredible amount of damage to me in the trajectory of my life. This person who was going down a completely different route fully pivoted their life into chasing power because that was who he lost his love to, which was his priority. And because of that he became disillusioned with the idea that power and wealth is what you should be chasing. And I think that he ultimately was not really happy or content the same way he was once he later had a child.

I think I see this story play out in several different flavors. I think about how there is the entire manosphere, where people are convinced that chasing wealth and monetary shows of that should be one’s objective in life. I think of people who hyper fixate on the gym, and think about how their social value is essentially tied to how muscular they are, or how physically strong they are. I also think about all of the people that play league too much and see their worth as tied to their rank. And I think all of these things are not inherently evil on their own and into some extent necessary in different ways. But at the same time these are not the sole optimization objectives or even necessarily that important I think. I think it is important to have financial security and some amount of success, I also think it is helpful to be in good shape. I also think it doesn’t hurt to be good at competitive things, but I do think that there is a hyper fixation or too much of a focus on some of these things that lead to neglecting other things that create a well formed individual. I think those important other aspects are sacrificed because they aren’t seen as important or of any value, at least compared to the main criteria. And I think that if I had had one of these experiences earlier on it would have absolutely derailed my life. I’m very fortunate to have both been successful in a lot of the endeavors that I’ve done, and I’ve also not had too many instances of direct competition especially in the romantic sense or in a way that matters to me too heavily. The closest thing I have that was maybe academics being compared to my sister, and maybe video games wanting to be the good friend in the group. Both of these things propelled me to be successful in these avenues, but at the same time I was able to let go and focus on other things because I think I did not have a strong loss associated with them. If I had lost the girl that I was interested in or in a relationship with to someone else that was for example a higher rank in league, I would probably have taken that as a strong source of feedback about how I value is tied to league and not sufficient. And the crazy thing is at least in the movie, the girl did leave for that reason. And I think especially in those early formative years is where you have autonomy, if this is what you see, and especially because stuff like social media will feed you more of these things, I can see it being something where you view the world as solely interested in that. And you see that as the entire market, pricing your value. But at the same time as an outsider I very much think that not a lot of my friends if any are that into extravagant wealth, and often or at least I would like to think it’s almost a negative thing. Someone being super showboaty and flaunting wealth would probably be seen as bad by my friends that are female. And so because of that perspective I’m able to separate my notion of value from wealth, but if I didn’t have other experiences I might’ve really fallen for that. I’m very grateful that I’ve managed to get to this point in my life where I’ve had a decent foundation of experiences where I am not horribly impressionable, and that I was able to get here without being poisoned by one of these predatory experiences. I’m very grateful for that, and I’m also very grateful for the movie for making me aware of that perspective.

I don’t know why today but I decided that even though it would probably hurt a little bit less if I waited more time I’m going to throw away the bag of stuff that I kept in the shed from our relationship. I went through everything because it was going to be the last time I was going to see them. And I decided that all of it should be thrown away. I feel guilty for growing away lemon, since I spent a lot of nights cuddling lemon and I feel like the parrot of that stuffed animal but at the same time it is just a stuffed animal and I don’t need to torture myself by humanizing it too much. I also decided to throw away the other presence and stuff that she gave me because I don’t want to carry those memories with me longer than I have to, and I don’t think that I’ll ever be able to separate those memories which is not a bad thing either. I just don’t want to be constantly reminded of them. I read the birthday card that she gave me. Twice. And then I threw it away without taking a picture. In the card she told me how much she loves me and how she loves to see the passion in my eyes and getting to hear about my perspective on the world and how many things I’ve been able to teach her. She told me that the only thing she wants is to be able to move in with me. I remember in one of the cards that I gave her, I wrote about how I’ve never been religious but I found heaven and it’s me laying awake in bed with her softly snoring on my chest, with me wanting to stay awake as long as possible to just save that memory. And it hurts because for some reason my brain wants to first say that it was wasted on her, something that beautiful, but it was not. I wrote those things because that’s how I felt and that’s what she gave me. And she also gave me a lot of horrible things I don’t want to romanticize the relationship, I remember going through the gratitude journal that she gave me and seeing the things that she wrote down and seeing the things that I wrote down, and it feels like I just had such a low bar or expectation, that I was trying to find ways to be grateful for the fact that she apologized for something after a lot of explanation for me, even though there was no behavior to back that up. And it sucks that I felt so unsafe and volatile in that relationship. And it hurts to see the times where she writes how much she loves me and how much she wants to spend her life with me and how I was able to teach her to apologize, but I couldn’t teach her how to actually change her behavior. And I think there’s just so much of a discrepancy between what would be healthy for me in a relationship and what she was able to offer, and that just caused so much friction and eventually the end. But it still hurts to throw away the framed photo of us that she gave me as one of her apologies near the end. She wanted to show me that she was committed and that she did care and that she didn’t want to change and that was her way of showing that she could put in effort. And it was so incredibly sweet of her. She framed the photo of us at the cat café that I took her to as a surprise. And it really hurts because I remember his feelings instead of had enough time to fade into the back, but with these small little things and these memories I remember how much I loved her. Like it’s such a beautiful feeling to care about someone so much and want to make them happy that you don’t even feel like it’s effort or work at all. It’s something that you want to do and it’s so incredibly rewarding. I have to kind of force myself to do these creative projects at different artsy things that I like and I’ve never once had to force myself to think about her or to try and execute these cute dates or things that would make her feel loved. Like wanting to write her cards, or to try to think about ways that I can help her or make her life easier. And it’s just that feeling of loving someone. And God it hurts to remember how I don’t have that anymore. It’s such a beautiful thing to be able to love someone like that and it’s so incredibly priceless to feel like that’s reciprocated. To think and to feel to believe that someone sees you and just wants to make you happy and just wants the best for you. And it hurts because I really did feel that and I don’t think that E is a bad person, and I don’t think that she was intentionally manipulative or aware of the bad things that she was doing, and I really do believe that she loved me. And I know that I loved her. And I know that both of us hurt in different ways and we both have to go through our own journeys and she is not alone in her path, even though it’s not one that I can relate to. And I know that vice versa is true. But it really does hurt to hold both of those truths together in a way that I don’t feel like I was able to earlier in the breakup. It hurts to understand that someone can love you and you can love them and they can have the best intentions, and at the same time they can still hurt and be toxic and do all of these things that are not OK. And I know that this vacuum and hole that I’m feeling from losing what was something incredibly beautiful is a necessary pain because it was beautiful in the same way that a drug is. It’s not sustainable and it’s something that can be damaging if you tie yourself to it so heavily. And there were absolutely things that I’m so grateful for and I am glad that I had this relationship, there was a lot of things that I had to learn and be aware of and thankfully because of that relationship I am more suited and positioned to hopefully find a partner where I do feel safe and consistently so. I don’t want to have every week or every other week another big problem or another potential dealbreaker pop-up. I don’t want her to yell at me when I try to voice that something hurts, or have to find out that she was hiding things like exes or talking to people that are showing interest in her. I don’t want to have this jealousy or conflict that isn’t communicated to me about my other friends, even with my attempts to be transparent. I don’t want to feel like there’s a different life that’s being hidden from me, and seeing the differences between her when she’s around me and her when she’s around other people. And I want to know that the big things that hurt me can be remedied, rather than them being disregarded or ignored or minimized.

But I do miss the good. And I know that overall it was a very clear sign that this was not a relationship for me and I am grateful in a sense, because there were enough explicit things and enough that pushed me hard enough to see that I was in the wrong for trying to make it work constantly. And this would have hurt me so much more if there were these different things that were incredibly valued to me in the relationship, or if it was just that zone of comfortable discomfort. I’m so grateful that it happened when it did and it didn’t last longer, and God forbid something like marriage or children. And I really do believe that there is some sort of divine planning in my life or some kind of a overseer that gives me these opportunities and experiences in ways that I truly need, even when I don’t think I do – all while protecting me as much as possible through it. And I will be OK. And I mean that in the sense of in the future I will have a life that will be so beautiful and it will be filled with the things that I am currently wishing for, like a loving wife that I feel safe with, hopefully children, and I really hope Hash for a long time. I will have someone who will love Hash just as much as me, if not more. And he will be so incredibly loved and safe. And I will find someone that matches me in the ways that matter, and someone that will be a great mother to future children. Someone that will be able to give them a childhood not just of love, but of stability. And that is so incredibly important to me. And it’s so important that it’s not worth a wide confidence interval for potential, but rather a narrow necessity.

I firmly and truly believe that my future will be everything that I want, either through divine planning, or through sheer effort and intentionality. I love you man, and I know that there’s a lot of pain and hurt that comes from living life, but I want to remind you that it is worth it.

Today I went to figure drawing and a salsa class by myself because my friends were not available this week, and I had a great time! I feel like I’ve been exposing myself to new people in several different ways and I’ve gotten so much more comfortable talking to strangers. I’m proud of myself.

If I’m being honest today I really wanted to start making a dating app profile again. I feel like socially I’m pretty happy right now, and now that I’m no longer depressed I do feel like my life is in a pretty solid spot. I also do feel like while I would like for a relationship to be from non-dating sources, I also do want a relationship. There are some stuff from relationships I cannot get otherwise and I do kind of feel like I have been missing those things maybe unnecessarily so. I’m in no rush, but I guess I did feel the pull today.

Today I went for a big PR, and completely miss grooved and the weight just slammed into my chest lol. But I also did make a lot of new friends today, I even got someone’s Instagram who said that we would work out sometime. I talked with some people that recognized me later and smiled and said bye while they were leaving. And I can’t you like everything is OK again. Yes I don’t have a huge network of friends that I feel are ride or die and that I can invite to anything, but I do have friends, and I also feel like I am at a social capacity where I feel fulfilled. And I also feel happy in life right now which I’m really grateful for.

I’m pretty confident that I forgot to take my Adderall today. In the past if I don’t take a dose it’s not the end of the world, but I definitely have been feeling very tired today if not recently. I’m sitting with feeling a little bit depressed today, and I’m doing my best to avoid the panic that comes with that because I thought that my depressive episode was ending and I think it still is but I guess that there are some aftershocks. It’s weird because I’m not really stressed right now in life, at least not in the way that’s apparent to me but rather more in a more existential way. I feel like there’s something I need to be doing or something I need to change to make my life one where I’m happy, I’m not quite sure what it is.

One of the new hires on my team just mentioned that he was married and his wife is coming down with him. Another person that also accepted an offer is delaying it a little bit because they are having their first kid. Another one of my meetings today with a coworker included the news that he was planning his wedding for later this year. I also recently met someone who was 25 and married to his high school sweetheart. And I’m starting to feel a little bit like the people around me are partnered and a lot of them are getting married. I understand for sure that I am right now younger than they are, but at the same time I feel like if I want to get married after dating someone for like four years, I would be pretty much 29 at the earliest assuming everything goes perfect and I meet my future wife in like eight months. And I feel like this is something that is kind of heartbreaking to me in a way, because I very much valued and prioritized the idea of getting married growing up, and I really want to be a good father. And when I think about pretty much all the people I know that are in a relationship relationships or stuff like that, they met in college and that is a period of my life that has passed. I also think that there was a lot of learning that I had to do, including the last relationship that I got out of. And I understand that I am coming at a big disadvantage because I didn’t really get to get socialized prior to college other than in the online sense. So I get them coming from behind with the disadvantage, but it does sting to feel like I am behind and the deadline has passed. It also stings because part of me feels like right now our relationship should not be my priority, because I think socially I still want a consistent reliable in person friendly group, and I am right now struggling with depression. And a part of me feels like if I’m struggling with depression that means I shouldn’t be dating.

Earlier today when I went on a walk I was thinking about why do I feel empty for this sense of tiredness, and a thought crossed my mind of how I would really like or feel rejuvenated by being able to hug E, and just like collapse into her arms. I do also recognize that even though that desire is real, it is not something that I really want if I consider all of the other things that come with it. I know that that ship has fully sailed, and additionally while some of the things like that were nice there were plenty of other downsides and issues that make it something that I really do not want. But all of that being said, I do wonder about what I’m supposed to do in lieu of not having access to that. The only thing that really comes to my mind is a massage, but that costs a pretty solid amount of money and it deals like I’m doing something kind of wrong if I need to spend money on an expensive massage to feel OK or good. And so going back to my earlier point I feel like I shouldn’t necessarily prioritize dating right now because I might just use it as an escape from my problems or a solution, and that would lead me right back into codependency and refusal to leave when things aren’t what I would like them to be because I am using it as a Band-Aid. But at the same time there comes that panic and desperation thinking about how I want to have a happy marriage and have all these sweet things that I get to see other people have, and I would love to be able to give someone that love and affection and share that intimacy with them. And I feel like that’s one of those things that you need to plant the seed for way before you need it. Because if I’m like 28 and I want to be married or something like that, if I don’t want to rush it I need to take time to know someone. And it feels like I’m at this weird impasse where I both need to not date until I am ready, and also I need to be dating by some certain point to hit some arbitrary timeline. I think if I look at a surface level emotional reaction, what I feel is frustration and envy towards people that have the stuff that I want like a relationship where they’re getting married and I assume that it’s healthy and fulfilling. And I feel like according to my values I provide so much and it’s not fair, but I also do think that the kind of partners that they might have aren’t necessarily the kind of partners that I would want. And then I wonder if I am unreasonable with the things that I want, I think the necessities are someone who is emotionally safe consistently, reciprocates the things that I try to provide, and someone who I am able to have good conflict resolution and communication with. In addition to those things I would really love it if I had a partner that was a body type that I find really attractive (eg. thicker girls), someone who shares a similar type of humor and that can make me laugh, someone who is intelligent and passionate about things in their life that they can articulate and share with me, someone who has open mind, and can share emotionally deep conversations with me. I would love it if they had a lot of vitality, and they were creative. It would also be a huge bonus points if they played video games similar to the ones that I do, or enjoy weightlifting/powerlifting. But I’m trying to step away from hobbies being so necessary. And I feel like when I think about those things I don’t feel like I’m asking for anything to unreasonable, but I do think that it is rare. And I kind of worry that I’m not gonna find someone else in the sort of timeframe where I would be kind of keeping up with the people around me that I see. And I do wanna remind myself that it’s not necessarily a thing for me to fix it on, that a timeframe is necessary. And I also want to remind myself that I am focusing on a few samples and also ones that are the ones that succeeded. And I also don’t know anything about how happy their relationships are, or if they really are relationship relationships that I should be envious of. I do think about how a lot of my friends are my age or older with less experience or less prospects, and additionally I have the problem in my head of thinking that I am a person I would like to be in a relationship with, I am kind and that is not something that I have to fake, I am intelligent and funny, and I am very financially secure. And so it is a problem to think about how I feel like I’m doing the right things and I’m not having immediate success, but I am very much am grateful if I step back acknowledge the fact that I don’t have the problem of missing some of these fundamental things and hoping that I can somehow figure out how to make up for them. I’ve interacted with enough people online or seen people especially men but not always, be not kind. And it’s not something that I necessarily fault, if that’s how you grow up and that is something that you are taught is the way to see life, then yeah what are you supposed to do? That sounds fucking rough. And thankfully for me I’ve kind of had this alignment since I was a kid and so I don’t need to worry about having to learn how to treat strangers with kindness or have empathy, or stuff like that. And I also think I’m incredibly fortunate with the family I was born into in the way is that financially I’m incredibly privileged. I currently have a very nice house that I do not deserve because my dad is able to financially support me with that. I also have a very nice high paying job, and I also do well in that job with relatively little effort if I’m being honest. I don’t have to cram and I don’t have to grind the same way some of my friends do and I still am doing exceptionally well. I also am in physically the best shape of my life, I really love the way that I look, and I also am pretty good with women I would say. I’ve learned how to flirt pretty well and be vulnerable and authentic, thankfully due to the civilization that I put myself through as a kid growing up online. I’ve gotten to the point where my friends ask me for advice on talking to women or flirting. And these are all things that I should be very grateful for. I think it is unfortunate bad people consider right now to be some of the worst times to be dating as a young adult, and I also think it’s really rough with the economy how many people do not have jobs and get a college degree with that debt and struggle to find minimum wage employment. I think I have several friends that are financially struggling and I have a huge fortune of being able to be callous with money and not stress about that. I have free time and I have agency and I don’t have these other obligations that some other people do that let me be free or unconstrained. I have the benefit of not being born into a mold, or at least not a rigid one. I find that I’m able to relate with a good amount of people, and I’m also able to be authentic and unique in the ways that I find rewarding. I think I also am incredibly intelligent, and that helps me a lot in the non-academic sense because it enables me to have a certain level of self-awareness or humility ironically enough, and recognizing that I really do not know that much, and very often I am wrong including my subconscious mind. I think because of that I’ve been able to do a lot of growth than even though I haven’t necessarily started in the greatest of places, it enables me to grow at a faster rate than I would have otherwise. I have a lot of agency over my life, and that is something I’m very thankful for. And I guess I’m not thankful enough for that if I’m being honest.

I find myself thinking a lot to what G said the other day, about how relentless optimism is an incredible asset. And I think that’s pretty true, or at least I think that it’s something they can benefit from. If Isaid the other day, about how relentless optimism is an incredible asset. And I think that’s pretty true, or at least I think that it’s something they can benefit from. If I think about my future life, and it’s something where I am content, fulfilled, and honestly feeling like one of those songs where you earn that point of relief and realizing that you were fighting a worthwhile battle. I’m thinking about the song basketball shoes by new country Black Road right now. And I think I want to believe that more, and I want to think about that more and have that take up space in my conscious mind. Rather than thinking about how I am behind, or how I have tried things and they haven’t worked, and how I am not where I want to be I would like to focus a little bit more about how I have succeeded in this journey so far, and additionally how things will be if I continue to put in the work like this. I did put in the work to maintain and foster the friendships that I currently have and I really cherish. I have a dog that I love, I’ve done a pretty good job of keeping depression in check. I have friends that love me, I have a life that is beautiful, and a lot of of the things that I stressed out about so much have resolved themselves in some of the best ways. And I do believe that a lot of the effort that I have put in will pay off. And it is one of those things where it only really needs to work once. And it’s not like I have to be perfect or check off all of these boxes and perfectly fix everything before I’m eligible for that, those things just help me along the way. And on top of it it’s not that if I’m in a relationship with someone that I want to spend my life with, and I’m not married to them, that doesn’t mean that I won’t be happy then. It’s not like the wedding ring is the thing that makes me happy, it’s the person and it’s also me at the end of the day. And so as I bring this walk to an end, I do feel a greater sense of peace and I feel like it’s not just OK, but it will be something beautiful. And it be something that I’m very grateful and when I look back at will only have a struggle and worries as a memory.

Tomorrow I’m going with J to a social event for chess and I’m excited. This is the first time I’m doing some kind of social event like this, and I also have a 222 dinner next week.

One of my friends that I was talking with told me how she firmly believes in relentless optimism, and even though a part of me disagrees, I think she is correct. I think specifically with the goal of finding a friend group in person that feels like my tribe, that’s been something where I’ve been pretty doomer about. But I do think that this is something that will take time, and additionally I feel like I am ahead of the curve here. Not counting the months where I was in a very intense relationship, I feel like I have made at least one lasting friendship each month. Not everyone I meet is going to be that ride or die person or my tribe, but definitely an important and valuable part of the life I am trying to build. Also remember how the closest friends I have are not at all the people I thought I would get along with. Have an open mind. And have faith that it will work because it will.