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.

I’m excited for this Halloween since this is the closest I can get to showing off the body I’ve accidentally gotten with all of this working out. Don’t get me wrong, I’m working out for my mental health, but also I don’t mind looking the way I do now. I know it’s true, but I believe it even more – “The man who loves walking will walk further than the man who loves the destination”.

Today I went to the gym after all of my classes and with the modern miracle of high stim preworkout I was full of energy and ready to go. I started with my favorite form of a lobotomy (deadlifts) and continued with as much torture as possible with dropsets of bicep exercises and things of the sort. At one point I was at a cable machine and there was a girl next to me doing an exercise I just watched a tiktok about and so we started talking about them a bit. We ended up exchanging numbers to potentially work out sometime in the future which is cool because she was a fan of triceps which I love lol. I also later helped out someone who was new with lat pulldowns, and so I hope I see them around and that they stick to it! I finished off by running for a mile, and afterwards the endorphin high was otherworldly. At one point while leaving I started drooling at a song because it was SO FUCKING GOOD. My face was stuck in disgust. Today was a great day.

My projector came yesterday and it surprisingly works incredibly well and I'm pretty happy because underneath it is just Android so it runs very smoothly. I was also able to connect it to my headphones and use the built-in YouTube app and I put it on the roof above my bed and was just laying down watching videos cuddling hash. I kind of realized with my wall of paper where I just mark whatever it kind of blocks off what would be a good wall for the projector so I can either keep it aimed at the roof or get rid of part of that wall which I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to do about, and I also realized if I'm going to have people over I may want to hide some parts of the wall which I guess becomes disingenuous to the entire point of it. I also matched with one of S's friends, And I found out because S messaged me about it. She also then said that that friend is always asking her to go party and she keeps putting that off but it could be a fun activity to all do together, and that for Halloween she was going to ask me if I wanted to go to wildcat anyway. I don't really know if I believe that and I did my best to voicing my concern about how I felt a little bit betrayed with her going to parties with her new friends without a word to me because last year we all went to parties together. Combined with the other things it kind of feels like I just got replaced and she didn't think about me enough to even tell me oh hey sorry there's this party going on that I probably can't invite you to. So instead I kind of just got blindsided and have to scramble to find party friends. Oh well what can you do.

I stopped trying to initiate things so much in the friendships and ever since then, I’ve felt like a weight has been picked off me. I started intentionally energy-matching S, and L doesn’t really text anyway so it’s normal there. I haven’t asked them to work out this week and so they haven’t asked me and I’m suddenly no longer affected by that, I think I’ve mourned a decent amount already so I’m content since I have other friends that I’m going to put more effort into. Today me and L went to the library and were trying to build a taser without the library staff noticing, and at one point one came over and said “hey I just wanted to ask what you guys are making since I heard a loud crack” and we rehearsed saying that it was an example of conservation of energy and a cool demonstration for middle schoolers. In reality, I bought a cheap transformer (5V->1,000,000V) and we were using a double A battery, some nails, and a bottle to build a taser that was shooting arcs. The guy bought it, and we kept going and made good progress. Also turns out S was just busy with his finals and those ended and so he’s back and I’m happy because I love that man so much. I also found someone on Instagram that by coincidence is also going to the cleopatrick concert and they put me onto some SICK music that I’ve been blasting on repeat recently. Ever since realigning the friendship with S and L, I stopped getting that friction burn from that rope slipping out of my hands. It’s a bit of a shame that they weren’t the friends to put in the effort to maintain it, but I’m happy that I am in a spot now where I can recognize that without it hurting me.

This is right now my status, a lyric from the song Lydia – Highly Suspect. I think it’s a fairly poetic way of describing how I feel right now that I’m content shamelessly stealing. The general idea of what this line means to me is attempting something so completely pointless (shooting at the sun), which ends up with the unintended consequence of the bullet coming back down and potentially hitting someone, doing something terrible. It’s this general feeling of being so horribly overwhelmed with something to the point where you’re just so desperate for something to change you do something with no regard for consequences or if it’ll actually work. I find myself in this pattern fairly often, and it usually ends up with me injuring myself and needing to rest to recover which is miserable. Yesterday I was filled with so much rage and energy at night while listening to this song. At some point I grabbed my plastic chopsticks and was drumming along to it but somehow one of them shattered off, and then I just started smashing them against the counter until they were both in several pieces. I just threw the pieces down across my room. I don’t even know if I can say I don’t like this rage and anger because at least I have energy to do something instead of just sitting and rotting away losing more of my life. This morning in my martial arts class the warmup was a cardio drill which involved hitting a pad with the bamboo sticks. I just put as much hate and anger I could into them and just hit it as hard as I could until I had to run back and redo the circuit. That was so insanely cathartic for me, since I had been just itching to hit something of break something or just get this rage out of me somehow. I wanted to shoot at the sun.

I don’t know if this is a post that I want people reading. I am using the most dangerous writing thing so I actually put down what I want to say without bottling up like I normally kind of do. Or for this medium that usually takes the form of pulling punches and keeping things in the lense of being observed but I don't really want to do that today. I'm pretty sick and tired and it's probably not helping how I've been listening to the same angry song for the last few hours. I finally changed the song to OK – Cleopatrick, which has even more energy so maybe that'll bias all the things I have to say, and finally for the last pathetic disclaimer I don't know if I fully stand by what I say tomorrow morning. I just want to let this out somewhere.

I think I'm kinda sick of S and L. Not of them, but rather of me thinking of them as my closest friends, or close friends for that matter. I feel a bit upset at myself because I saw the concern and problem early on when S and I were talking about how we both have less friends, but much closer intimate ones. The problem with that that I've had to learn over and over again is what you do when they aren't there in that same way anymore. S has replaced me with either other people that she already knows, or with the new people from her work, or volunteering, or other classes. I wanted to think that I was someone that was important enough to her to actually put in the effort to maintain but I guess it's another one of those friendships of convenience. Nothing wrong with that, but I'm upset at myself for thinking otherwise. I am going to move on and start from scratch, AGAIN. I know that I can't be upset at them for what happens as this is normal and more importantly in my own selfish view I want to be a friend that is low effort and is fine with things like this. And so for that I just cannot put trust in them in that way. I'm really mad at mostly myself, since I'm the one who told myself that this was different and I didn't actually foster the rest of my social networks. Since I'm sitting here in this weird stupid middle ground of 2 extra years for my masters, I just haven't fostered the relationships that I wish I did. And because of that I'm now here, and I'm back at square one. I got to call V today this morning and I'm really happy I got to talk with him again. I envy him for how social he is, but also I remember when I put myself in that position how overwhelming it is and how I don't like being so dragged in multiple different directions. But right now I'm a bit starved, so time to get over this shit.

S just sent a text and it lined up with the part of the song that fires all of the parts of my brain to be angry. I'm so excited for tomorrow because I'm going to put so much rage into martial arts and the gym right after. I feel myself teetering between feeling like shit for being alone in this way, especially with all of the Halloween parties and stuff. I didn't actually try to got to any or prepare for any and so I end up left out since S is instead going with new friends I guess. And so now I just hate myself for leaving myself in this situation, and for kinda implicitly hoping that S would invite me to parties the same way I would invite her last year. But no. I'm fucking mad at myself, and I want to say I'm mad at her but I don't want to put any blame on anyone else but me. This way at least I can say I control it. But at the same time fuck. I feel like shit for so long just watching everyone go by with friends or with other people to these costume parties and then this eventually boils over until the god complex and ego kicks in. I'm happy that all of these people get stunted on by me. I'm happy that today in the tournament my random team asked me to join, and the team that lost every single game vs the team that won every game gets fucking hard stomped because of me. I am that difference, even though we were still hard outmatched on paper. I'm glad that that team felt miserable and upset afterward. I'm also glad that I'm better academically than all of the people I compare myself to. I am so fucking painfully happy that K wants to compare himself to me academically because I know he won't and he can't. I refuse to ever let the gap between us ever get lower, and so I'm so fucking happy because I see him being social and with his group of people. I'm upset how “simple” he is sometimes, and how easily he gets along with other people, by making these stupid mistakes over and over again with a group. I'm upset at my parents and my childhood for making me this way. I've had to grow up in this stupid isolating experience where I can't relate to others and as a result I've ended up this angry mess of a child that just wants to mourn what they don't have I guess. I'm happy when I blast past people in my new $60k car. I'm happy when people are envious or jealous of the money I have. I'm happy when people are jealous of the body I have or the things that I can do. I'm happy because I am so fucking jealous of them. I wish I had a community that wasn't separated by hundreds of fucking miles and countries for fucks sake. I wish I grew up with friends around my age instead of the friends I love so much I have right now. I wish I was able to see my friends, touch them, hang out with them and just not be fucking alone in this apartment all the time. I don't know if I'm the most unlucky person alive or if I just am so fucking different from all of these people I've been roommates with. Part of me wishes I got a chance to room with J and S now, because when they were so much older than me and I was just in my 2nd year of being around fucking people there was no chance we could relate. Now I bet we could get high together and shoot the shit. I'd love to drink with S and I don't know fucking fist fight. I've never thought about that until now, and I wish I could somehow hang out with them back then.

I'm upset about so many things and that anger is just thinly veiled sadness.

It was night and I launched my car around the corner into a straightaway and I felt the car slipping and in that moment I kind of felt happy, or I guess free would be a better word. My first thought about why I felt that way was because when I have the option to throw my life away that gives me some semblance of control over the day-to-day strife that upset me. Reading this now I kind of realize that's like a no-no big flag, but I guess I just really liked the feeling of everything kind of going out of my hands for a little bit.

When I was driving back there's a wide body scat that was creeping up and so I launched past them and tried to see if they wanted to race but they kept backing off and I was kind of sad. I just want to fly.

I had to wake up at 8 today and prepare for my section, and from then I was back to back in classes until 3pm where I then had to rush to volunteering where I’m now the only other person other than the main lady for this day. I was already falling asleep before then and then I had to manage 11 middle schoolers and try to get them competition ready in a few weeks, and at one point the main lady completely undermined what I was saying and I just kinda checked out. I’m going to pass out.

Oh my god, I just subjected myself to an impromptu hackathon for 0 reason, and I built a fully working Kahoot website for LaTeX in time for my 9AM section I teach tomorrow. I spent from midnight till now just trying to deploy my flask backend since I already have my frontend setup because of my portfolio I’m working on @ anshumandash.com. Oh my god I’m exhausted, but I’m so fucking proud of myself.