An Open Letter

A digital journal

I know someone said anger is grief in a trenchcoat, but I wonder what fear is. I want to say it's fear of sadness but that's just fear. Is fear the bottom rung on the ladder

I notice most when I have energy (mostly because of stimulants, whether caffeine or my prescribed Adderall) I keep thinking of things that make me laugh. When they’re funny enough I sometimes text or call friends if it involves them. Today at the gym I had the idea to custom embroider this one somewhat unflattering picture of a friend on a shirt for when we pick him up from the airport to go to Japan, and another friend said it’d be hilarious to make multiple for us to all wear to surprise him. Even better would be changing into them on the plane itself. I was giggling so hard at the gym with the thought of the custom shirts, and so I plan to make them tomorrow. I enjoy making myself laugh as much as I do, and also just I guess enjoying finding things funny. At the gym when the endorphins are hitting me sometimes with tiktok things I see make me laugh so fucking hard, and I just really enjoy that I guess.

So turns out A went and read back a decent backlog of posts after I told her about this, and my only real complaint is how I’ve been very lazy with the posts recently. To be fair I’ve been fairly content which is kinda adversarial towards introspection, but hey we take those. Sadly today is not one of the days I properly write something either, as I’m tired as shit and ready to sleep even more.

Dear lord I’ve trashed my sleep schedule, It’s already late and I told myself I was going to sleep early but instead I got stun locked by some Instagram reels for a bit. Tomorrow morning I’m going on a run with M, and this is the first time I’m going to be running with someone ever! Hopefully it goes well, going on a morning run may be a nice way to start the day. Oh yeah, I’m done with my work for this quarter basically! Hooray! Japan soon.

The project is tomorrow and I really hope T finally does his part or at least BS’es enough for the presentation to go well. A finally came back today and we got food and then decided to have an impromptu sleepover! I told her about this blog which was the only thing I really had reservations about, and so if you see this hi A! Either way it’s super late and shes brushing right now so let me get ready for bed. Hopefully tomorrow (today) goes well.

I finished watching Arcane today, and I think it portrayed grief incredibly well. Specifically all of the scenes where people were temporarily reunited with a loved one that they thought was gone forever. I don’t know if it’s better to have that wound be closed up for a little bit just to freshly open, or if it’s better to just stay opened.

I remember thinking yesterday while sitting on the bluffs if you could shame yourself into love. Specifically self-love. My reasoning was because I know that a lot of my motivators in life have been shame, as in hating myself enough to make a change about something. Or at least leveraging that as much as possible as motivation, but with running recently I learned that it isn’t meant to be something agonizing where I tell my mind to ignore it, but something I can continuously enjoy. The problem is that kinda goes against my motivation method of constantly attacking myself in my head telling myself how much I want to change, and how I should be ashamed of who I currently am. I’ve seen people talk about this sentiment online, and I do think you can somewhat shame yourself into the direction of self-love, but eventually you have to learn to have whatever you’re doing be fueled by something sustainable rather than something you’re running from.

I got stunlocked by youtube shorts. Nothing past that to be honest. Today was not a bad thanksgiving, I got to play games with friends.

I finished charging my car late at night for the cheapest rates, and so I got some food at Jack in the Box. Afterwards, when I went to throw out the trash, the misty night looked absolutely stunning on my car so I recorded a quick 360 around it, and I’m not ashamed to say I uncontrollably moaned. I just kept giggling and twitching to myself because of how fucking beautiful the car was. I drove home with the windows down, and hearing the motor whir felt like witnessing mecha-godzilla tower above your skyscrapers. That combined with a heated battery and a full charge, and I again felt fight or flight while accelerating way too fast in a foggy night. I am happy.

I weirdly don’t feel much of an urge to talk about my birthday, which I guess is a good sign. For once I didn’t get violently depressed for it which is huge! I ate the cookie that A got me and I didn’t want it to end even though it wasn’t like delicious or anything. There’s also the fridge magnet that she gave me that says “You are beautiful” and she wanted me to actually put it on my fridge, almost like an affirmation. I also keep seeing the flower bouquet S got me on my bookshelf, and I weirdly feel kinda overwhelmed by it all. Part of me just thinks that I don’t deserve it. It’s a weird little voice in my head that keeps saying that, and I feel like it’s just some part of my mind trying to keep things as status quo to avoid the unknown. But I think the unknown, in this case, is much better, I’m starting to finally feel like I’m someone that can be liked/loved. I think the big thing that made it click for me was realizing that I don’t need to constantly be doing something or actively trying to provide ‘value’ to be lovable. Even in a fully selfish way, sometimes it’s more than enough to just have someone make some time and space for you to exist. I’m grateful to have F as a friend since he actually helps me understand myself a lot better. He’s got a lot of problems and isn’t a great friend by normal standards, but he reaches out to me and makes time just to be in the same space together which is something that means a lot to me. It’s nice to have someone you can just relax around and not be alone with. And that’s enough for me to love him. It really is that easy.