An Open Letter

A digital journal

I’ll write about this properly tomorrow (I hope), but today was the first birthday I wasn’t depressed for. A brought me multiple sweet presents, and also made me an incredible painting that embodies my pinned post about what I love about art, in her own unique way. I’m so grateful for her. She even had S come over, and S gave me the first (real) flowers I’ve ever received! They’re beautiful to look up at. I feel loved. I’m so grateful that I met A, and I even get to call her my girlfriend now. What an incredible birthday.

I thought about someone growing up with a strong community and network, and then eventually their life changing to one with less. I could feel that fear of doing something wrong, and messing up your once shot at life. The fear of doing something wrong or bad for fear of ruining the rest of your experience. And this made me write down: there will always be anxiety in new or change.

The whole reason I thought about this was because I was just perceiving the feeling of my fear of change. But in writing that and reading it, I thought of parallels – and I thought about how people react to change. Imagine you're in some single player story game, and you just did something completely new. Depending on what kind of game it is, you may feel afraid of ruining the run or getting a bad ending. But there could also be someone who sees it as exciting, living without fear of a “bad ending” but rather wanting to see where that went. And then they're excited. I think the willingness to be content with the experience of a bad ending is a power by virtue of always having succeeded. Imagine you threw away your life into a pit of addiction and an early death. I'd argue you could see this and think this was a success, since you got to experience an incredibly unique experience. Unique in the sense most life's will have a lot of things – almost everyone's going to feel the experience of running, their first love, getting hurt bad etc. But most won't feel the nightmarish descriptions of addiction. And so that's an incredibly rare experience! Yes it was horrible, but if I'm consistent with how I see life (the point is to experience as much as you can) then this was an incredible life. In this lens I think I am free from discontentment, since am I not leading a perfect, exploratory life?

Bright and early this time so that I can finally catch up on my debt of introspection. I've never written my post first thing in the morning and so I think the nature fit will be a little bit different because I know that I got a lot more depressed later in the evening when I have less energy. Oh yeah and also the title is just a miss heard lyric that I thought was kind of cool.

I got a little bit confused recently about who I am because of all changes in life. I feel like I've lost the stability that I used to have because I feel a little bit all over the place and I just generally feel this kind of fear of the unknown or unpredictability I guess. I need to remind myself that this is probably due to the fact that my social battery needs to be recharged a little bit more and treated a little bit more kindly. On Thursday I went out clubbing for a friend's birthday and we were drinking a lot, and then on Friday we went to a rave and we were drinking a lot, and on Saturday I finally said fuck it and I did not go to the social since I just wanted to stay home and play games with friends. Speaking about those friends, I'm still incredibly excited for our trip to Japan, but I'm also very stress right now because no one has stepped up to fill the hole made by me taking a little bit off the gas and not planning every single part of the trip. But now we are just going 15 mph on the highway because no one else is fully stepping up. This is really stressful and it also kind of makes me feel like shit because I feel like I make myself someone who's easy to take advantage of, similar to the group project that's happening right now. It feels like everyone else is saying they don't care and someone else will take charge, and if no one does I'm not sure what will happen and so I feel like again I have to take a lot onto my plate. I don't want to reach someone that always is forced to do extra. I guess I wish part of me have enough of a backbone to accept mediocrity or something of the sort.

Taking a step back I always feel like there is some part of me that I wish I could change or that I wish wasn't that way but at the same time I think they are relatively benign and it's kind of naive for me to think that they're self-isolated contained traits. I think if I was more masculine and someone that people fear more, I would also be someone that people felt comfortable around less which is something I really do value. I think there are silver linings to everything and they aren't always things that I consider and so I just take it for granted. I often wish that My parents let me have a little bit more of a normal childhood, and that I was able to have these regular experiences but also I think as difficult as it is it is much easier to learn how to be normal compared to learning how it feels to not be. I've met a handful of people that have had similar experiences and I feel like I've been able to empathize a lot better because I can somewhat relate. I just what I'm trying to say is I am glad I am who I am.

Today was the gymnastics / powerlifting social, which normally would have been amazing since I’m part of both of the clubs, but since I’ve gone out and drank the last two nights in a row I just want to sleep tonight. I bailed on the plans, and got to take a calm day to myself, where I caught up on some work and played games with friends. I’m ready to sleep.

She's over again tonight and so I apologize again to myself for not really journaling. I'll get back to it soon

I think I've romanticized struggle in my mind, but right now I'm content in life. I like my girlfriend and I'm so lucky to have her. I'm happy.

I poorly managed my time and so I’m still super tired and exhausted and about to go to sleep. I really like therapy because I slowly get to figure out these big problems that I never would have considered, and because of it I slowly get to build a healthy life one piece at a time.

It's a problem until it suddenly isn't

One time in middle school in PE when we had to run a mile, right at the start I tripped and got crushed by the rest of the kids and had the wind fully knocked out of me for the first time. While several other people came over to make sure I was okay including the teacher, I was desperately trying to breathe and I could not. I didn't know what was happening but I thought that in that moment something happened to my lung and I would die, I have no clue how I could possibly breathe like that. I was struggling to get air for what was about a minute but felt like forever, but then slowly I was able to breathe a little bit more and more. Soon enough I was completely back to normal aside from the fear of what had happened, but I of course fully recovered. In that moment I didn't know how I could possibly get better but in just a little bit of time it works itself out and you continue surviving.

Just got home, exhausted. She is right now fast asleep with Hash by her side, and after my shower I join her. I never thought I would struggle with vulnerability but I think I should be the one to make that jump soon.