An Open Letter

I think as much as I don’t want to think about it, I need to bridge that mental disconnect between writing to this blog with the intention of it being private combined with the reality of how I have it attached to my discord and how several IRL people know of it. I’m only really able to fuel this honesty today by playing Moonlight on the River – Mac DeMarco.

I think I’ve been under a lot of stress for a while now. Every few days my Dad sends a text and asks me if I’m all good, and I just respond with I’m ok, just very tired. And that’s because that’s how I’m feeling then. I think navigating that weird liminal time period of not having consistent friends to reach out to fucking sucks. S hasn’t really been online much because he’s busy with his own life I guess, and L has been busy with school and doesn’t really get on much. T has his computer broken but either way, our schedules don’t line up too much. Same with even F. I get to play with A fairly often which is nice, but he’s a pretty impersonal person so I don’t know much about his personal life and I kinda mirror that. IRL, S and L have definitely drifted apart from me and I think both of them have kinda tightened their circles and it’s just happened where I’m out of the zone of convenience and so what can you do about that. I’m a little bit grateful for that, since because everything got so bad that was enough of a catalyst to push me to forcibly socialize out again from scratch. I went and talked to some people at the gym, and the first person was a bust, and I was kinda just resigned to that. I saw another person who seemed really friendly and spotted me but they left before I got over the anxiety of asking them to exchange numbers or something. When I finally saw them leaving, I just laughed because it was another reminder about how an opportunity for something great can be there but fear of whatever may hold you back from that beautiful future. The next day I decided out of nowhere to go to the gym at a time I probably shouldn’t have, and I ended up seeing her again. I told myself this was a sign to stop being a pussy and just go try to be friends with people. She was also happy to exchange numbers since we both wanted another gym buddy and so we did that, and we talked a bit about other stuff over text. I asked if she was interested in gymnastics and she was also a beginner and so she came along today. I signed up to carpool again and I met another person who was also pretty friendly after getting to know her a little bit, and so that’s another friend now! After that, I had martial arts, and then after that L came over and we fucked around in VR and then rocket league for a bit, which he was fully new to. It was fun.

I keep forgetting how easy these insurmountable challenges can be sometimes. I’ve been sitting in this weird little loneliness pit for a while now since I’ve felt like some of my newer friends have moved on while I’m stuck in limbo, but a really nice benefit of the life experience I have is how I’ve done this before and I’ve shown myself how I can do it again.

And now I guess to the part that I’ve conveniently tucked behind a wall of safe recollection of the good parts of today. I think A is an incredible person, and I can’t think of anything wrong with her. But at the same time, I’m still almost afraid, and I feel this kind of fear and anxiety makes me want to just avoid it. After dropping her off I was as close to blushing as I think I can get, and I didn’t even play any music, but just drove back in quiet. I was thinking about her while falling asleep, and I felt peace. I don’t want to say perfect since I think that word puts pressure and is overall just bad to describe someone as, but from our one date A was someone who I found myself happy with I guess. As in I was happy on that date with her, I didn’t feel like I was making someone else happy in the people-pleasing way I’m trying to avoid, but I actually enjoyed that. And she did too! Meaning she enjoys my attempt at being myself, or at least as close to it as I can get. I’m almost worried I’m doing this super weird meta-dance of trying to imitate myself not imitating anything. How weird is that?

All of this made me think about how I may have swung the needle too far, I used to identify with the anxious attachment style, but I may have gone all the way to avoidant. I’m a little bit afraid of intimacy now, and I think it’s because there’s so much stress behind it. I almost don’t know how to act around it, and especially since I’ve been changing so much mentally these last few years I almost feel like I’ve been dropped into a game without the tutorial. I want to sit in this safe little zone that I’ve carved out for myself, and I never want to leave this dirt hut. I find myself automatically rushing to these thoughts of interactions or intimacy, and I just can’t think about how they will go since I don’t feel like I have enough experience to actually form an opinion from. This is like explore vs exploit, and I have 0 exploration on this path, and so I’m terrified. What if I get traumatized for a few years like has happened in the past? This kinda feels like someone just started driving and on their 4th drive they got in an accident and broke their arms. That’s enough fear to be terrified of that for the rest of their life, or at least it feels that way to me. I’m afraid of this unknown because I don’t know how it will go. This fear manifests itself in these avoidant behaviors and I end up miscategorizing them as small little minute traits that I find issues with. This clouds my judgment on everything so badly and I’m a bit afraid about that. I am however happy that I can write these things down here and feel this way, since this means I at least have a path to go down and explore with my therapist, but also with just independent research and introspection I guess. Maybe I should do some CBT here.

Situation – A is someone I want to go on more dates with. I think I like them.

Thoughts – What if we emotionally get more intimate or something like that and it’s something I fuck up? Or what if we have such fundamentally different childhoods that the scars on mine are something she can’t overlook. Or what if she’s just not interested in me. Or what if something flips in my brain that makes me no longer like her this way.

Feelings – I feel fear, and I feel anxiety. A better way of saying that since words don’t do justice is I feel like a small child being crushed in from all sides. I feel like I’m in a safe place but at the same time no one can stop what’s happening to me and I just need to resign to this fate. It’s this feeling that no one can or will come to stop this impending doom.

Behaviors – I’m horribly fucking anxious overall for the next few days, and also I start to associate this with A. I may ruin the opportunity for something great because of anxiety brain.

Thoughts – We hit it off, the same way I would hit it off with a friend that would be super fucking close to me. Or at least it started off the same way, but this also has the potential to blossom into something even more than that, an experience so rich in life that it’s worth the pain and risk to try for. At the end of the day, I can classify all of those fears into a few consequence categories: rejection, traumatic experience tainting the future, and reverse deus ex machima.

For rejection, who cares lmao. As you were telling N earlier today, there’s virtually no consequences to things like this in life. You can just force yourself to go to a few events and then if it sucks, then don’t show up again! What is the possible consequence for that other than a story and getting stronger at that rejection? This one’s not a real concern man, cmon. On top of it, I’m pretty sure she’s physically attracted to me, and even if she wasn’t that’s fine! I think growing up ugly has given me the benefits of understanding my worth in other ways. But now also I have the incredible boon of loving working out no matter what, but that dragging the consequence of being muscular and all that. Plus, the confidence has to be, honestly, most of it. Even in the vain sense, if she doesn’t find me attractive other people still will, but that doesn’t even matter.

For traumatic experiences tainting the future, I just need to ask myself am I a pussy. And then immediately rephrase that question into do I want to be a pussy, and my answer to that is no (not fully sure about the first one lol). I was trying to learn how to do a backflip today and I just started jumping with the pads on the floor without a spotter, and I almost landed it! My first time trying that was with a spotter and I landed on my eye which hurt like a bitch, and I also did land a few times even today badly which hurt. But I just went did something else or sat down for a bit, and then sent it again. I also go to Jiujitsu consistently even though I get hurt or bleed enough where I don’t even find it as a special occurrence. I’m not someone to be afraid of chasing after things I find worth it, even with the risks. This is something worth sending it for, and the fear here is of my mind trying to extrapolate this experience forwards. You already have enough bad experiences, what’s there to lose lmao. It’s not like you’ll ever be SA’ed as a 12 yr old again so only up from here king!

And finally the reverse deus ex machima. If by some divine intervention things fail and it’s not something I could ever have prepared for then lmao what the fuck do you expect me to do about that? Should I never get in a car because final destination already covered what could happen there? No that’s fucking stupid. You won’t die, and you won’t end up any worse than you started before. But you could end up way way better. Tell me that’s not a sweet fruit worth jumping for.

Feelings – I feel peace, and I feel the joy of being human. I’m still a little bit scared, but instead of anxiety that’s almost like an excitement. I’m excited, how beautiful of a shift that is.

Behaviors – I’m more confident, I’m happier, less anxious, and just excited to see what life has to offer. I am who I want myself to be.

I’m happy you spent like 40 minutes on this one Suman. I’m glad you took time for this, and more importantly put the effort into it. Also please note how CBT helped so much. I feel happier and I was able to actually process things without the depression mind trying to speak over my thoughts constantly. I hope that reframing of it helps you do it more. Love you bud.

It's 1:30 in the morning and I should really be sleeping since I need to pick people up tomorrow, but my first date with A was incredible. They were so interesting and funny and I also felt super comfortable just being myself around them. We basically picked out a Halloween outfit for each other and then went to the abandoned school to take photos. I had a wonderful time and I really can't wait to see them again. Plus they're even prettier in person which was insane.

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.