An Open Letter

Today me and L planned to go to the library again and continue working on our taser, and we finally built the entire thing aside from some final finishing touches and waiting for a battery holder to come in. It is absolutely terrifying, mostly because of the build quality – but it’s fun to do stupid shit with friends.

I checked my Venmo because someone hadn’t paid me for gas yesterday, and when I opened it I saw on the homepage several different transactions to S for pizza, and one of them mentioned trivia night. I know that woodstocks has trivia nights on Thursdays and I’m assuming they went and did that as a group. It kinda hurt to see that since it brings up the whole mess of feelings, and I again was reminded in therapy how CBT would be perfect for this, so here we go.

Situation: S very likely went to trivia night yesterday with a group of friends.

Thoughts: My immediate thoughts are that S has time to do things with friends, and since I don’t recognize a few of those names it could just be a regular friend group. What that means is she is unable to make time for me even when I would invite her, but for others, it’s not a problem.

Feelings: I feel like this is confirmation of the horrible feelings of not being a friend worth the time. I feel like I’m not really a person with feelings to them, but rather just something to be discarded or thrown to the side when they don’t want to interact with me. I feel like I’m someone toxic or fundamentally flawed to the point where she is justified in almost avoiding me.

Behaviors: I definitely feel like my day is ruined, and I will hold this extra heavy weight on my chest. I also will try to isolate myself away from her and mutual friends like L even more to avoid this feeling. In my mind I will try to believe that this is true and the case, because then I won’t be crushed by more evidence that reaffirms this in the future.

Now for the alternate less depression-mind way of seeing things.

Thoughts: She just went to trivia night with a group of friends. It is also very likely from her acapella group which she is an officer in now, since I recognize at least two of the people as members. I don’t want to invalidate the feelings of her not reaching out or putting in effort + rejecting when I reach out, but at the same time this doesn’t need to be more than what I already know. If I’m someone who is overwhelmed by life and incredibly stressed, I may just avoid any sort of conflict and go the path of least resistance in my free time. In this case the conflict could be her recognizing how I’ve been upset with all of the things blown off + how she hasn’t been putting in effort, and so she may just automatically try to avoid those feelings, and so this isn’t a reflection on me.

Feelings: I mean I still feel shitty, but also I recognize that this isn’t really worse than what I already believe. I still feel upset, but it’s kinda that feeling of upset when Hash has an accident – I’m upset at how it affects me, but I don’t feel any sort of frustration towards Hash since I understand why that happened and I know he didn’t do it to intentionally hurt me. I am strong enough to not take it personally.

Behaviors: I don’t feel this crushing weight on my chest, and I can avoid the needle swinging so far off and instead just keep S as a friend/acquaintance in my mind. I also don’t need to spend time moping mentally about this or beating myself up, and I win this mental battle against the depressed brain.

That does make me feel better, and it pisses me off that I don’t do this more since depression-brain just wants me to mope around in these toxic thoughts. But today I won, just by doing this.