An Open Letter

Yesterday I went to bed at 6:30 pm and today I woke up around 10 am. I think that helped my headache a ton, and my body does feel a lot better. I’m hoping I’m fully recovered by tomorrow. I also finally got around to laundry today once I got home, but turns out I forgot the laundry is locked up at 8 – so my clothes are now going to be wet and sitting overnight and I have to wake up in the morning to go rewash and get them. Hooray.

I actually did it! I followed through with something I wanted to do, and so I found someone who offered me their heat gun to use. Their name was R, and they’re actually pretty cool! He helped me debadge my car and I got to learn about him, like his bikes and things like that which was cool. I think it was both a great experience in terms of results, but also because it’s another experience of getting along with people. I also had my first date with M, which went well and we have another date tomorrow. I don’t want to speculate too much about it as I want to not get in my head about it, but that’s something I’m excited for.

Short post to be intentionally cryptic, but I feel like I’m permanently moving the goalpost past what’s reasonable and I don’t know why I keep doing this. This feels like a recipe for regret.

Earlier today at the gym I was listening to Sabrina Carpenter after looping one of her songs (read your mind) for multiple months now. One album by her was called emails I can’t send or something like that, and I originally misread it as emails I can’t read. I thought that was a fairly interesting change on the trope, of instead it being something about the other person’s point of view. Knowing that there were things unsaid to you that you can never really hear, I wonder how that changes the perspective on things. In my eyes it kinda feels like a weird level of guilt, knowing you’ve done something bad enough to warrant someone needing to avoid communicating with you so badly, and I feel like you really want that closure and that information. But also what do I know, I’m barely lucid it’s late at night.

I hung out with some other friends today, and had a really good workout. I scheduled meeting some new people, and also had a lot of fun playing league with A. S messaged me which was really nice because I asked him to a bit ago and he listened and remembered which matters so much to me. I feel much better.

For the first time in my life I actually have my own nice bed frame. In the past I have had one of those small little metal things that just goes under the bed, but this time I actually bought a bed frame that has a little headboard and has this nice fake wood that I like. It matches the cheap bookshelf that I also got which also matches my table, and for once I actually feel like I have a nice home like apartment, not just a temporary place to stay. After I finish assembling the bed I was so giddy I just kept giggling. I'm happy.

I played two games with an Udyr smurf, and he played in such a hyper-aggressive beautiful way. We were on blue side, and so level one he invaded into their jungler's topside. In this game they ended up killing their Sion, but what his game plan was, is ward their raptors, and full clear their redside. After that he bases and buys a dark seal. With a ward on their raptor entrance, you now have info about enemy jg pathing. If the enemy walks over your ward, they’re fucked and you get ¾ths the jg. If you don’t see them, and you know they’re on your red, then you have options to either base and collapse, or just full clear and they have a bad timing. With this advantage, you will be lvl 4 before them and you can fight them on their crab, and then take double crab for a consistent advantage to start the game. He’s showing me on a call several different cases, but this really just is a beautiful game of strategy.

I'm glad I did CBT yesterday because the tricks that depression plays on my mind are not reality. I need to remind myself that I'm not consciously being excluded, but it's just that people are busy with other things in life and don't understand that these are things that would be very helpful or important to me. It's my responsibility to ask and advocate for myself.

I cleaned up my apartment and almost fully unpacked everything now, tomorrow I start FLL volunteering and also I get my internet router thank God. I think everything will work out.

I drove past old town coffee today, and I got upset when I saw it. For a little bit of context, a (close?) friend S started working there a few months ago and found some friends from there. I instantly noticed how that first gut reaction was that, and tried to pry apart why I felt that way. I think it’s because I feel like I’ve been cast aside as a friend by S and L, and I just don’t feel like they’ve really tried to keep me in their lives. Honestly, typing this out just kinda depresses me. I had an automatic thought pop into my head earlier today, of “you may lose me”. I wanted these friends to know that I’m not just someone who can be forgotten and then resumed whenever, but at the same time I know that being that person would probably be more healthy. I may be wrong about this but in my eyes that behavior of being a low maintenance friend is only when a friendship doesn’t mean that much to you. Like there’s no aspect of really wanting that friendship, because you’re content just going to whoever is more convenient at that time.

I do feel kinda sad that neither of them have been even tangentially excited about my new car, like when I saw S last she didn’t even ask to see the car even after it was brought up several times in conversation by others. This isn’t really a massive thing to me but it’s just the fact that I’m realizing of how little we are compatible as friends. We don’t really share interests, and once the convenience of things stop they’re pretty quick to stop putting in effort. I know I’m kinda just depression-convincing myself to self-isolate, but I do feel hurt by how one-sided trying to stay remotely close has felt.

I guess it’s a little bit weird, I jumped a few thoughts kinda quick but I did want to at least notarize the thought of how many of my days are done privately. I kinda just wish I had enough friends who were connected enough to be able to tell people something daily. The person I feel most comfortable just interacting with is S (different S), but even then he’s kinda stopped responding as much. I think he’s busy, but it does kinda start to get to me how he doesn’t text me. I sometimes feel like if I went quiet or disappeared the world wouldn’t notice. I know that’s a cliche, but it’s a very real, almost terrifying thought for me. I don’t say terrifying because it feels more like a grim, dread-inducing reality. I get jealous of others, because they have so many frequent interactions. But no one asks or shares anything of meaning to me. As a result I just feel like I’m a short little video to be scrolled past, and instantly forgotten. I’m a human. But I don’t know what I’ve been feeling like in periods like this. If I stopped texting people I don’t think they would really notice. Instead we would just drift away irreparably. This feels horribly unfair to me, I feel like someone just trying to hold onto 4 different strings that are slowly pulling away from me. Am I not someone worth staying around? I wish my friends would text me more, and I can only fantasize or speculate about people asking about how I am or what I’m doing or anything else to really just acknowledge that I’d be missed in some way.

Wow that got depressing, and something else to add onto the list of things to feel immeasurable shame at when I look back at it. But also I feel like I need somewhere to put these feelings. God knows I don’t really have anyone right now close enough that I could ask to talk to for support, I’m on pause right now for pretty much everyone.

If I’m being a hypocrite, I don’t want to defend myself – but at the same time I just want to be thought of and wanted.

Situation – I feel like no-one would really notice if I disappeared. I think I’m a little bit transparent about what I mean about that.

Thoughts – I think I should test that out and prove myself right.

Feelings – Resigned, depressed, alone, and suicidal.

Behavior – Who knows.

I wrote down thoughts below, but it’s been a few minutes and I’ve stopped writing.

Thoughts – Everyone’s busy with their own lives right now. Depression is just incredibly loud because you’re horribly stressed, a lot of things have gone bad in life right now, and it’s one of those periods where you’re very lonely because everyone’s busy or gone. But this will pass.

Feelings – I feel like breaking down and crying, but partially because I can think this is temporary.

Behavior – I don’t consider suicide.

Anshuman is a highly motivated and hard-working engineer.

In his 3 months, he completed an end-to-end software/data project which involved planning

and creating new database tables, building and validating a pipeline to pull data from multiple

data sources, populating tables, and deploying a new tab on Shortstop, all in production. Each

one of these, on their own, could have been a 3-month intern project.

Anshuman has proved his ability to pick up technologies / systems very quickly (e.g. database

migrations, bring up a new tab on Shortstop) and execute rapidly when given clear goals. He

has also demonstrated a high degree of initiative for parts of the project that were largely

ambiguous (creating testing infrastructure for the ccl-efficiency package pipeline, creating

plots using visX library).

Overall, I am impressed with Anshuman's progress this term. One growth area for Anshuman

to consider in future positions is focusing on comprehensive design reviews at the beginning

stages of larger projects. Meeting with customers to understand user stories and solidify the

design architecture could further accelerate the implementation of these projects.