An Open Letter

I finished half of J’s Birthday present. She said that she wanted cute things or something like a candle, and so I have been learning how to sew and got all the materials to create a stuffed animal of her cats. I finished the first one and I’m really proud of myself because it took a long time, but it came out honestly pretty good and I think it’s really cute. I think it also shows a lot of effort and care, and I think those things make a really good gift. I can’t lie, though, I feel already let down for my birthday again this year. In the past, I haven’t really been able to celebrate my birthday and there has even been times where my parents have forgotten about it. I worry that I have set my expectations too high for them now, as I almost always find myself disappointed, or let down. I think just generally, this is how I feel whenever I receive presents for something like birthdays or Christmas when I do. I cherish Presents and I keep them and savor them, and I am very thankful for them, but I feel like more often than Not. It feels like I am not receiving something that has a lot of thought or Care put into it. I feel like whenever I give Presents to people close to me. I put a lot of thought and effort into them, and I feel like I set the bar for myself too high. I don’t think that’s a bar that other people really reach. And I don’t fault people for that and I think I’m saying all of this because I recognize that this is unrealistic to expect and to be upset by. I know the obvious thing here on why I am additionally feeling this way is because of my last relationship. I remember how for Christmas she got me stuff late, and she was worried about giving me presents because I had given her such good ones and I think for my birthday she had not really put a lot of thought into them. To try to make things easier for her, I said that we would both make a list of things in our discord server where we used to keep notes, and I gave her a lot of different ideas and I even bolded a couple things to try to make it even easier, to basically give a slam dunk. When we did our delayed Christmas, she gave me random things that weren’t on the list and she didn’t give me the things that I bolded. When we talked about it later, she said she just didn’t think about it and messed up. I remember she got me a random thing from an Instagram ad, which were scratcher cards for date ideas, but the problem was the dates were nothing like the kind of things that I like doing. And additionally, all of the things were available on their website, and she instead spent $50 which was half of our budget on that. She ended up taking that back and I ordered the thing that I had asked for and she sent me the money for it. I got her a lot of things for her presents, going well over the budget. I understand that this puts even more pressure on her, and I can recognize that. But one of the main things I got her, was one time when we were late on a call she was talking about how as a child in London, she got a jelly cat Collab stuffed animal that she could not find any mention of anymore, and her stuffed animal was really really beaten up. She talked about how she wished she could get it replaced or repaired. I immediately took note of that, and I ended up trying to scour the Internet as much as I could to find it, and I ended up eventually finding someone who is selling it on eBay, and I got it imported. When I finally surprised her with it, I had given her a different stuffed animal that was the same type of animal, and when she wasn’t looking, I swapped it with the real one, and she finally noticed it and broke down crying and gave me such a big hug. And I remember that later, she talked about how shit she felt because of how good of a present and how much effort I had put in compared to her. And I think that was one of the things that ultimately led to the breakup, just along with this general pattern of guilt because she felt like I was too good for her and she kept fucking up. I’m not gonna get into it, but I have a lot of different memories of things like Christmas or birthdays where I would be skipped over or forgotten, or almost purposefully excluded. And so I recognize that I am sensitive to receiving presents for things like this. But part of me is always wishing that someone would really take note and see me and get to know me in such an intimate way that they could give me a present that would hit me to the core. I guess I really want to know that I matter. And it sucks that I kind of see Presents like that.

Just to be incredibly explicit, I am in no way shape or form interested in J as anything past a friend. Because we hang out a lot and we do stupid things together, a lot of people think that we are in a relationship. This isn’t necessarily great for me because both I don’t want her partner to feel worried at all or any kind of fear regarding that, but also because lot of single people might rule me out because it seems I’m in a relationship. But I think it’s honestly a really sweet thing, on how our platonic friendship and love for each other. Is that meaningful. I feel like if strangers don’t think that opposite sex friendships might potentially be relationships, their is work to be done lol. Something about being so comfortable with someone else and not worrying about being perceived in certain ways is a really comforting thought.

Short post today because I need to wake up early tomorrow and I stayed up, but today while driving to the gym, I realized while talking to myself out loud that part of the reason why I liked creating things whether it’s a video or ace song or physical object is because after the day is done, I have something I can show, and that is important because with that days cannot just melt into each other, ultimately to be lost as a large haze. I think routine is very useful and has its benefits, but it comes sometimes at the risk of monotony and falling into the exact same cycle with nothing really tangible to show, and so I think it is important to recognize that and take care to carve out time to create small little things here and there.

I had my deload week Leading into a new block, and immediately on squats, I had knee pain. I think I cannot do wide stance squats, And I’m thinking about finding a powerlifting coach so that I can both find a specific programming and also work on my form. I know it’s only really been a week of throwing in some random rehab exercises here and there, but I was hoping I wouldn’t have this patella pain.

Today was a really difficult day if I’m being honest. I was super stressed and tired from trying to organize the IRL Minecraft Lan party, And when people finally came the people that said they would come earlier to help me showed up late, and a lot of things weren’t working. My home network ended up breaking, and I spent so much time trying to debug it running upstairs and downstairs and things ended up breaking my existing home network set up, so my home lab went off-line, so my discord bought my servers all the other processes running there and it’s been a while since I’ve had to do any kind of maintenance and so it was a nightmare trying to do that while my computer isn’t even working. I was really overwhelmed and tired trying to do all of that, and eventually we all said let’s take a break and get some food. We went altogether and I brought Hash, and we got pizza and I started to feel a little bit better being able to take a break and just joke around a little bit. When we got home, I went upstairs, and my bathroom was flooded because someone left the faucet open. The counters were covered, the floor was covered, and apparently it leaked through all of my cabinets, and then my friends downstairs told me that the light fixture was leaking. There was a good amount of water falling from the ceiling downstairs because the leak had gotten that big, and the next few hours were me and my friends helping thankfully, trying to do as much damage control as possible. We ended up unscrewing the light fixture to let a lot of the water drain, and trying to deal with all of the things that were damaged. I remember, I was super exhausted and honestly depressed this week, and I just wanted a break, and with the whole networking and home Internet fiasco, and the devices breaking, I just wanted to end, and then I came home to an even bigger crisis. eventually, though, when we dealt with most of the things to the point where all of the immediate issues were addressed, we ended up at least playing Mario party, which was fun. We also watched a movie before that. I then had to go and clean up some more stuff and deal with some more damage control, and I decided to go to the gym. I was exhausted and my new block just started and I didn’t think that I would be able to do all of the things programed and so I instead just treated it as a fuck around day where I could just do whatever. At some point at the gym, I realized, however, that all of the things that I am stressed or overwhelmed with, they are not things that I have to do, but rather things that I get to do. This is directly from the book, nonviolent, communication, and when I applied it here, I realized how many things I have to be grateful for. My home network breaking was stressful, and I was exhausted trying to get everything working, because I had friends over at my place to play Minecraft as a lan party. That sounds like a fucking dream, and I can think of more times in my life than not that I would’ve prayed. I would be able to do something like that. I’ve always wanted to do a Lan party. And on top of it, having to reset my network was painful because of all of the other devices and things in the house that would require reconfiguration. Trying to debug the home server, or make sure that the backup NAS doesn’t break, but all of these things are stuff that I was super excited to get and I still am excited to have. I remember how I wanted these things for a while, and I wanted to save up for them, and I ended up being able to get them from my dad. I have a little server rack. And I’m grateful that I have all of these things that I get to reconfigure. And the fact that I’m so stressed about water being trapped in between floors is only there because I have a fucking house with two floors. That is so incredibly lucky and I cannot think of anyone else that has something like that, and I will be able to fix it and learn from this. I was also able to call my dad and ask him for help and he picked up immediately, and he offered to come over even though it’s not necessary, and he is coming over tomorrow. I have a dad that I can call and rely on for things like this, and that is near me and accessible. And I came home to this massive mess that happened because I had friends over that feel comfortable enough to use my things, and we came back from all getting food together. I remember when I was a kid I would go to sleep and try to dream about just looking through the window of an apartment and seeing me with like three other friends just hanging out casually. I went and got food with four friends. And I remember I used to pray and look at myself in the future and think about how beautiful it is that I can take that for granted. That would mean I’m not afraid of losing it, and I wouldn’t think that this is something worthy of a dream, just an average Saturday. And honestly, I’ve started to cry a little bit while using voice to text to say this. I remember when I would struggle to make new friends when I moved here or when my life got fucked over from my last breakup, and having to push myself hard to try to make all of these things again, and telling myself how this is one of those situations where you plant the seed now for the fruit later. I remember how lonely I would feel and how anxious and worried I was about how I couldn’t control it directly, and I didn’t know if I was going to be able to find my people, and all of the times where I tried and it didn’t work, and I would feel more and more afraid that I wouldn’t be able to find friends. And now I can take it for granted. And when I think about the fact that I went and got pizza and a McDonald’s drink with friends with my dog with me, I can’t help, but to think that in one of the worst days I’ve had in a while, younger me would be so fucking excited. I can type this now while walking around my bedroom with my dog happily licking his paws on the bed getting ready for sleep. And my friends know my dog. And all I can do is think back to all the different points in my life where I have dreamed of such innocent goals like this. I would close my eyes and daydream and try to convince myself that things would be better in the future, and it would be finally right. And I have gotten so comfortable with this relative heaven. It makes me cry and these tears are of happiness. I know that life has its way of giving everyone their fair share of misery, but I’m so incredibly fortunate to have these stresses. And even though I feel exhausted and stressed and scared and overwhelmed, if I think about younger me, seeing this, I don’t think I would be able to hide my excitement out of thinking my dreams would come true. I really really am grateful for these blessings. And I’m so thankful to myself for being strong and working towards these things even though they felt so incredibly impossible.

This is one of those moments where I think that depression is a blessing in disguise. If I did not have this chronic obstacle to joy or any kind of willingness to live, I have been forced to learn and develop these skills and intentional ways of living, such as this exercise of gratitude. And it is these practices that I’m required to constantly do in order to manage my mental illness, and while that is exhausting, it also gives me this incredible resilience to difficulties in life. The same situations that would cause more Neurotypical people to struggle end up being the same amount of difficulty regular life hands me, and so I have enough familiarity and experience with pulling myself out of it. A marathon is not as painful if you run every day, as opposed to only during the marathon.

I’m honestly really overwhelmed today, I just feel like I haven’t had any energy or motivation for anything. I did no work, and I ended up spending four hours trying to set up all the stuff for my Minecraft event tomorrow. I didn’t finish and I will have to do stuff tomorrow, and I’m exhausted. But I for some reason got motivated to play guitar, and I learned at least how to play parts of sober to death. And now I feel better. Something about just singing and playing the music and really putting your heart into it.

I went to Costco and I was dressed like a bum because I took the day off, last night I got home Late and I had the Taco Bell Baja blast that apparently has a pretty substantial amount of caffeine to it. As a result, I could not sleep at all due to restless leg. I ended up actually getting up at 3:30 out of my bed because I could not sleep and going on a jog around the neighborhood shirtless. I eventually was able to sleep, but I called out of work because I felt like there was no way I could’ve been productive. But I digress, the thing I was asked in Costco, however, was about the macros on the chicken bakes that I got, and they commented about how it’s obvious I lift. I told him honestly I don’t really know, I am not locked in on my diet like that, and he was shocked and taken aback by that. I feel like I get that pretty often, and honestly, I’m not completely sure why I am able to have the body I do while still eating like trash. But part of me feels guilty because when I tell people that I don’t know if this is necessarily reasonable for everyone or if this is another spot where I’ve gotten incredibly genetically lucky. I think about how maybe my metabolism is pretty good, but I also did get very overweight or I guess very overweight compared to what I was used to when I truly ate horribly. But now I exercise very consistently and for a lot of time. Typically I just end up saying because I work at very hard. That’s why I get the benefits that I have, but I’m not sure if this applies to everyone. It’s one of those things I’m grateful for and fortunate with, but I’m not sure if it is fair if that makes sense. It’s one of those things that I don’t want anyone to be envious of.

I just got back from a J. Cole concert. N Had a friend that was flying in that couldn’t make it and so he offered me the ticket for free, and I was super happy to say yes. I had a feeling during the show of how high school me would’ve gone crazy to have this experience. The fact that I was able to see J. Cole live and in honestly pretty good seats. I’m really grateful.

I feel like my sleep schedule has definitely been lacking recently. I find myself more and more staying up to chase, temporary dopamine, whether it’s through gaming or watching YouTube, or scrolling on my phone. I’m not proud of this. But I guess I want to try to look at this with as a little shade as possible, because I think that a shame is only something that makes it harder to make meaningful differences with. I feel like this is one of those habits, like waking up early, or not using my phone in bed. The more I normalize, and I expect watching YouTube before bed, the harder it is to stop and the more I do it. I think I could benefit from being more disciplined with this again.

J and I planned to hang out today, and we ended up trying to re-create poster boy for five hours on FL studio. Honestly, I’m pretty proud with what we made even though it’s nowhere near Accurate enough to pass, but I actually learned a lot while making it. I actually really enjoyed that, and I could see myself fucking around with more music stuff, especially if I have a friend to do it with.