An Open Letter

A digital journal

I don’t know if I’m lying if I say this, but men have always scared me in some capacity. They’ve always felt somewhat foreign to me, with the blatant irony of me being a man aside – I’ve never really felt like I understood what was going on with the men in my life. But I always did have a sort of respect, somewhat garnered through fear. Men always made me feel like it was a competition to prove who is enough, and who isn’t. That wasn’t a competition I ever wanted to do, and so I kept men away if I could. I guess I’m not lying when I say men intimidate me. I say this to explain how in my eyes how men are creatures who avoid showing weakness, and are somehow always resiliently strong.

Twice in my life I can think about men crying. First was when my dad found out that I had tried to kill myself. Second was a few nights ago. Both times it hit me out of nowhere like a truck. Seeing these infallible pillars suffering so much to the point where it eventually just seeps out past the facade breaks my heart. It makes me cry to think about how much I hurt my dad for him to cry. I can’t think of many other things that have that much weight for me. I’m so so so sorry Dada. I love you so much. I wouldn’t want any other father. I’ve never even thought about that once. I love you so much.

Yeah so much for that, it’s 3am. I’m working from home tomorrow, but still this isn’t smart oopsie daisy.

My god, the raw power in the regular model S was like crack. I had four other people in the car screaming as I got to whip around back country roads, and I genuinely think I fell in love. God, I want to try the plaid – let alone buy one. Test drives fuckin work.

T got robbed last night, and they stole his PS5 and two TVs. I also found out I did not get a job offer for a TA, and so today has been a pretty stressful day. I know you shouldn’t compare things, but he is very much having a way worse day. We stayed up to play some games just to talk and distract ourselves. I laughed really fucking hard. It was a good night.

I started off the session by talking about how I knew about things I can do to help my depression, but I just didn’t want to do them. She asked me to visualize it however it felt, and for me I said it was like I was in a river and it was just pulling me down the current. I could grab a branch or lodge something to stop myself from going down the river, but neither of them mattered to me. It didn’t matter if I was going down the river or staying still, and so there was no point of me doing anything to stop it. I think that summarized apathy and anhedonia pretty well for me, and I guess I still don’t really have an answer for that. But I think that was a very nice way of describing how I feel. Nothing really matters, if I get even more depressed or if I do CBT it doesn’t matter to me.

I’m a little bit scared about my relationship with caffeine and my prescription Adderall. I am under the average dosage and I am taking it daily as prescribed, but I feel a little bit worried about how much it helps me. I know that it helping me is the point of having it as a medication, but I’m a bit afraid of the reality of who I am without any stimulant. I feel tired, and I feel hazy on everything. I think I need to value sleep more, as I know that helps me – but I still am a bit afraid of how I am there. My mind is one of my greatest assets and it scares me when I lose that, like when I somewhat struggle to make sentences or anything like that. I wish sleep was more instantly gratifying.

Last night I thought that I was feeling this way because it was late at night and that I was searching for some issue, but this morning I woke up and I spent the entire day more or less alone since no one was online. I went and watched a movie, read in a library, even took a nap there. Got good food, and still felt like shit. I’m scared, I don’t want to be depressed.

I thought the title of this post is a little bit clever, because the thing stuck on my mind is my feelings of just who I am as a person. As I made my protein shake and took my supplements, I was thinking about what I wanted to write down for my daily journaling. Originally I wanted to talk about my envy of artists. I still want to write about that eventually, but that thought then jumped around until it somehow got transformed about thinking of E and that burn down. I thought about how I’ve been mentally struggling with S, and how I’ve been feeling just overall somewhat alone I guess. I thought about this blog. I feel like this is a weird thing, specifically because this does feel like something I wouldn’t want to show other people. But I still do it, and I know that this is linked to my discord. The thought eventually just packaged itself back into the same familiar mold – I just feel like I’m too much.

I feel like I’m too much as a person. I want to romanticize that notion, but I don’t think this is a pretty thing. I think ugly thoughts, and I don’t see the world in a good way I think. I have a lot of scars and shortcomings that constantly paint over my experiences, and that feels like it’s either pushed me farther down that path or hasn’t gotten better as I’ve gotten older. I just feel strange, like an eccentric person except not in a charming way but more of a “wow that person isn’t fit to be in society” in a soft sense. I think about N, and how she would probably shame me for the things I want to do, and the things I do. I don’t really blame her for it, and I just look back at my actions and consistently cringe. Yet I still do them! I don’t get where this mental disconnect happens, it’s like I don’t learn from my experiences. I worry that who I am as a person is just too much. I hate sharing music, but I love it so fucking badly, there are such random parts of songs that evoke such wonder and just raw emotion to me and I want to share that so badly. But I’m also afraid of doing that! I don’t know anyone who feels the same way I do, and so I end up just feeling like a fucking creep, like a weirdo (had to make a joke, I am who I am). I recently wrote down the belief I’ve held for a while about people being like vectors, but I just feel like I’m just too much in too many things. And those things have came from other, safer things. God that makes no sense, even to me and I’m the one who was supposed to have known what the fuck I’m talking about, huh.

I’ve been thinking the same unhealthy thought when I blast my liked songs from top to bottom in order on my blissful drives. I think about how no one knows me, just like the 14 year old edgelord stereotypes. God how cringe it is to actually say that. With that out of the way, I always think about how no one knows me in this fundamentally intimate way. No one knows the way I knock my head side to side like a metronome during addicted to the night. Or how I throw up fake gang signs while listening to king hendricks because I am from a suburb in San Diego, have never been in a fight, and don’t know how to act hard. No one knows the way I almost cried in a costco food court after finally finding the piano piece written by that depressed guy dedicated to his psychiatrist for lifting the fog. Or how I played hey asshole on loop while playing mineplex dragon escape for at LEAST an hour, because I was depressed before I even knew what that word meant. Or how I listened to Pride on repeat on the floor of the bathroom on loop for hours. Or how I’m listening to a remix of Rushing Back I can only find on youtube on loop right now, because it was the same song that made me almost cry while journaling almost a year ago, while I was pacing the living room past midnight. Or how I took a video of me screaming along to Great Lakes not once, but TWICE just because I wanted to have some proof or some validation to show that I was feeling that way. I think I just want to be seen in some way. I feel like I haven’t been seen for a while. That’s actually a terrifying thought I’ve never considered.

I do all of these weird little bids out into the universe like little breadcrumbs pleading for me not to be lost. I guess that’s just another way of saying alone. It’s such a gutteral feeling for me to want to be seen, it feels like all my body knows it wants. I have had a discord bot running since 9/16/2022 (I just checked) which has been logging my statuses. God, I didn’t think it was almost 2 years. I think I set it because I didn’t want those things to be lost. I set it more than enough and I’ve I think violently displayed my cringy behaviors enough that no one gives a shit anymore. And at least as far as I know, that is what I want. I don’t really want people to acknowledge them, as that would be mortifyingly embarassing. But I still fucking do it! I set that status as something for me, THAT I DON’T EVEN READ BACK. I just do all of this weird shit, including this for no good fucking reason. I don’t know why I am like this, but at least right now I feel bad about it. I think about other people I know and how they are more or less normal, and it seems like they fit into society way better. I envy that feeling so fucking badly. But instead I find myself feeling like fuckin Louis from suits. That’s not exactly the character I’d want to be self-inserting as. But I just feel like I don’t fit in and I don’t fucking know why. And it’s just because of who I am.

Truth be told, I’m kinda scared. I don’t know what I am going to do about this and I don’t know what my future will look like. Most people have some rough mold of what life will look like, but I’m afraid that I won’t have that security. Like what if I don’t get picked up by someone more extroverted in office and I stagnate myself into just self-isolating. I just want to sit down and think about this all, like some sort of self-reflection will solve this fear. And it will I do think, something like CBT would help – but I don’t want to do that. I just want to sit here and bash my brain into the wall until my head stops hurting (surprise surprise, it’s probably because I’m hitting my head against the wall). This much self-analysis cannot be good. Like how a doctor can always find 10 things wrong with a patient, I feel like I routinely scan myself for some shortcoming or another. And because of that I end up trapped in this cycle of every day thinking about how something or other is wrong with me. The worst thing is these problems aren’t even consistent, but I instead just bombard my unconcious brain with the feedback of “you’re fucking ill!”, and then just feel like a fuck up 24/7. That actually is a lie, I don’t feel bad until everything else stops and it’s 2:51am at night and it’s my daily self-flogging time (introspection). But right now, this moment is my entire world and it feels bleak. I’ll feel better in the morning probably. Go to sleep you idiot. Love you.

I was pretty emotional earlier today, I don’t even think it was for a necessarily valid reason. I just was upset at S for putting in effort to reach out and connect with others, but not me. It kinda reminded me of E I guess, and so I’ve been somewhat pulling back. I think I should properly talk with my therapist about this and do stuff like CBT, but internally my gut reaction is just that I shouldn’t invest in someone who doesn’t invest in me. I know that I’ll be able to definitely make other friends so I’m not worried about that, but I am just sad and in turmoil about it right now. I shouldn’t think that things are like over or anything like that, this is just so far a self vs self battle. I just wish they put in some effort, otherwise it kinda just feels like all the things they said in the past were things of convenience. Things get pretty grim mentally I guess.

Today was a solid day, I have made a decent amount of friends at this internship. I kinda got adopted by V, which I’m pretty thankful for because I’m very content just staying introverted. I saw A when I went to get lunch, and so we sat together and talked which was actually really nice! When coming back after getting a drink I saw some random mobile game on her phone, and so I asked her what she was playing and she got super embarrassed and refused to say. I also admit that I’ve been playing phone games at work, and we both were talking about just nonstop being blocked and having to look busy at work. I honestly enjoyed that a lot more than just sitting on my phone watching tiktok and responding to existing friends. Even if today wasn’t super stimulating or anything like that, I felt refreshed and enjoyed that lunch. But on top of it, I got closer with her and so that early phase of surface level friends is getting slowly transitioned out of here. And I’d much rather have lunch with someone like A or S because they’re my boys and I just love talking about stupid shit with them. If I want that, I think it’s only logical that I need to get out of my default behavior and grow those friendships.