An Open Letter

I was just sitting down on the couch or I have 8:00 p.m. And I started feeling sleepy and so I said fuck it I'll take a 30 minute nap, and I woke up 4 hours later. It's now 11:40 and I'm going to just try to go to bed hopefully to catch up on some of that sleep debt.

I’m pretty sleep deprived still so not fully sure what I expect to do with this post, but for some reason I just feel like writing a bit more than one filler sentence. I find myself sometimes still wandering back towards thinking about A, and the stuff that she put me through. Especially afterwards, the gaslighting and the rest of the stuff. I don’t think I deserved it, but I’m thankful that the waves have become more and more spaced, and less devastating when they hit. They’re now just a punch instead of threats of pulling me to the depths. During the cruise, I feel like I got more experience firsthand on how I can actually be someone that people want, both as a friend and as a partner. And also more importantly, I can achieve this by being myself. I can fully “punt” situations, and then way more than I’d think people would go “yeah that was pretty fun!”. I think going forward, I can be the version of myself where I feel comfortable and like I’m actually in my own skin, and still make friends, and meet people – all without having to worry about them really liking me or accidentally acting wrong. I can just be myself. I want to behave that way going forward in my new life, and I hope that I surround myself with a community of friends I love and hopefully meet someone similar!

This is meant to be yesterday's post, I got back to my room around 5:30 AM and my phone died and so I am putting this down here I guess. A whole lot to write about, and a whole lot to unpack but right now I am beyond exhausted. I guess been short feels like this has been a very nice reminder on how quickly I can start a new life, surrounding myself with friends, both new and old, and new partners.

While writing my gratitude list I realized how I was happy today about how S, B, N, and K were all proactively interacting with me. I found it surprisingly counterintuitive because I wasn't really trying to super get them to like me, and I've been pretty deranged. I'm happy to include people of course, but a lot of the time I'm happily lobbing grenades into conversations to make myself and A laugh, and actively punting opportunities (as far as I can tell) for that reason. I've been having an absolute BLAST with A, and it feels like others seeing me being so comfortable in my own skin and having so much fun makes them want to interact with me. It's somewhat adjacent to playing hard to get, but this is me just not playing any game. I'm fully surrounding myself with people who respect me and enrich my life, and then I prioritize my happiness. And then people want to join that, which is of course fine by me. Just strange how it works, and I wanted to notarize that I guess.

Ok so ngl the girl was crazy disrespectful wasting my time, she asked me several times to come to morning yoga and then didn't show up after making me and A wake up at 7:30 AM. She slept through it, and so during the entire island day I kept getting stopped and I would say that she ghosted me when people asked how the date went and if I'm from the comedy show. She again kinda bailed today, and I can NOT be asked to ignore that many red flags along with the rest of her behaviors I'm not writing down here. I absolutely know my worth and she is not someone worth chasing down, so it's now content hooray! Also my tiktok has like 14k likes which is INSANE, I can sit there refreshing and more likes come in. What a crazy time.

Sorry to myself for forgetting yesterday night, I was all over the place with preparing for the cruise and also hitting masters (hooray!).

Me and A went to the singles mixer because bingo was a bust, and we just sat in the corner not taking to anyone and dying laughing. We eventually went and talked to one person, and one thing led to another and we all made a group of people. We went to a music bar, then we brought them to the comedy show. During the main set, the guy brought up a girl on stage and I kept getting egged on so I kept cheering and clapping loudly and standing up on the balcony, and eventually the comedian told me to come down. I wasn't expecting that, but he eventually brought me on stage and asked me about my job, my fico score, and if I worked out. To the last point he asked if I had abs and to show them and I flexed as well as I could and lifted my shirt and the crowd kinda erupted; one lady in the front row stood up and started cheering and the guy even made fun of her for that. So that's a huge confidence boost LOL. But also the girl is from San Diego, and is only 10 minutes away from me! We talked afterwards and went to a club with both of our groups, and had a nice night. On the cruise messaging app she asked me to come to yoga and I said of course, and then she sent a follow up saying “im not kidding, pull up 😳😅” and sent hearts afterwards.

It's crazy how much success I can get by being myself and not having to fake who I am to fit a mold I imagine. Maybe I can be loved and wanted as I am. What a beautiful thought.

In a vacuum I think I'm pretty happy with who I am. I feel like I'm authentic to myself, and at the same time that self is someone that aligns with the values that I care about, and what more can I ask for. But that only really exists in a vacuum.

I think I'm painfully aware of the feelings of comparison, and of course that stems from childhood to some extent – but that's aside from what I was going to say. I find this comparison rearing its ugly head whenever I interact with my friends in context where I don't feel like it should even come up. I was swimming with M, and she was talking about a date she went on. I know her type is military men, and even though there's no such reason for me to do this to myself, I start comparing myself, and them convincing myself of my inadequacy. I often like to share the quote you could be the sweetest peach on the tree, but someone might just not like peaches. But it's hard for me to take that advice I guess. Even with people that I don't want to be in a relationship with, it affects me whenever I think about how I may not be someone they desire. And I'm not sure why that hurts as much as it does. I think I've come to understand that I want to be a polarizing person, because the opposite is being fully agreeable yet unopinionated. I think you have a much richer and deeper connection with people the more limited it is, and that comes from being someone that not everyone would like. And so this obviously contradicts My feelings of inadequacy when everyone does not want me.

I want to avoid a pity party but I guess my issue comes from feelings growing up of being undesirable, and how even now that's changed it doesn't click. I've had several people admit feelings for me and pursue me, and more often than not I've had the problem of letting someone down rather than being let down. Hell, even in my last breakup I was the one to call it off, and they were the ones to say that I deserve better. And so why do I still feel like I cannot be wanted?

I would say that I'm more feminine than the traditional guy, and that's something that I'm fine with and I'm happy about I guess. But at the same time sometimes this keeps me up when I think about how someone may perceive it. I really like martial arts for this reason, and I really miss doing Jiu-Jitsu and kickboxing. In those environments I can be light-hearted joking and not the traditional picture of masculinity, and I don't need to be worried about being perceived as weak, because I'm pretty good at combat sports. Part of me has these weird daydream fantasies of getting into some kind of a fight or altercation where I am justified. And then I really savor the thought of just overwhelming violence, and especially the coming to terms moment from people who underestimated me. For them to know what I am capable of, at least in this fantasy world.

I think it's of course a universal experience to some extent, but these feelings of inadequacy suck when all the people I interact with only know me in certain aspects of life. The people that know about my academic dominance don't know about my physicality. People that know about my physicality don't know about my aptitude and achievements in competitive environments. And the people that know about that don't know about my career. And it just keeps continuing. I'm so proud of the life that I have built, but there's still so much left for me to do. And part of that is trying to stop obsessing over wanting to show people all these other aspects of my life to show that I am worth it, and I have value. I'd like to just believe that I'm enough as is, and that's not something I need to fight or convince people about.

Today really fucking sucked. I had to fucking grind League of Legends ranked which is already a miserable experience, all so I can make a stupid joke about getting my master's degree and masters in League of Legends. But also F messaged again, since he again did something shitty and we weren't really talking, and I showed him how I had an 80% win rate on Leona in D1 and he just kind of tried to neg me. Same with T yesterday in different contexts. It just fucking sucks that people can't be happy for me, and that this keeps happening somehow. I know that I'm the common factor and so it's something I can control, I guess; I hope.

I was able to hang out with J finally for the first time in a while online, because everyone has been so busy and I'm really happy for that and I loved talking with him and playing with him. But even after a few hours of that when it was time for us to part for the night I realized I still felt depressed. I got outside time, I ate food, I did things, I spent time with people, and I did things that I enjoy. And I was still miserable. M canceled plans because they had a really long day which is fully understandable, and things like that are things I would want to be able to understand and accommodate as a friend. But at the same time it also did make me sad because I was looking forward to seeing them I guess. And then the whole messy situation with R, and Instagram messages from B. I haven't really done this before but I just got overwhelmed today, and I just dismissed my notifications without responding to them. I told myself that eventually I will find the messages and respond. I just really needed that space I guess.

I went to the gym in my apartment to try to feel better, and it did help. I even ran for the first time in forever, and I ran a full mile. I didn't fully stretch and my abs were cramping for a while so I stopped it there but I'm pretty happy about that I guess, even though it was at a relatively slow pace. I sat down for a while, and then when I got up to stand my quads started cramping out of nowhere. It wasn't bad enough where I was debilitated, but it was extremely tense and walking I kept my legs completely extended. And then once I left the gym I realized I didn't have my bag on me, and that was right inside the door. With my key. Both to the apartment, but also the gym. I started panicking and I realized that it was 11, and there is no one anywhere nearby even in the pool. I had to leave the building and I used a pillow to prop open the door because otherwise I might not have been able to get in if I needed to again, and I just walked around the parking lot hoping I could see someone. I saw this teen guy and girl that were there a little bit earlier, but they were in a big group of teens and they were all speaking Russian and drifting their car that I think, and I was too nervous to ask. I just walked around the parking lot for more time until I saw a car, and I waved it down and thankfully the guy was nice and parked and then let me back in. When I got home I just wanted to cry. But I couldn't so instead I just sat down on the couch and watched YouTube to try to cheer myself up.

I feel so overwhelmed.

I bought a really nice monitor for the first time in my life, and I can’t help but feel disappointed with it. I spent a thousand dollars on it, which is an astronomical amount of money – all for it to be just a pain and something that doesn’t even really make me happy. I’m super thankful for the financial flexibility and freedom I’ve gotten, but at the same time I’ve weirdly realized how spending this money doesn’t really make me much happier. At least not in the immediate sense, maybe the overall quality of life increases which does have a factor – it’s nice to have things like shelves and organizers and fancy bedframes, but it’s not like any of these things individually made me jump for joy. Out of all the things in the world to complain about this is such a nice problem to have, but it’s still a problem I guess. I feel bad about seeming insensitive around it, especially when I know that to a lot of my friends money is a pain point, and something that I’ve gotten some shade thrown at me for. I know that it’s not really coming from a place of malice or anything like that, but rather just an inherent kickback to seeing how something that’s a big stressor or issue for them is not for me, the same way I feel that jealousy for other aspects in life. It’s so strange how important money is.

I keep thinking about how Huberman said he heavily respects people who have the strength to end things with people when it’s bad, without the need for it to end in a “good” way. I’ve been thinking about that a lot in the context of A, because regardless of her I think that this is clearly not a good thing for me, and there is just so much extra time and mental stability I am paying to try to end with some notion of things being good. Maybe they don’t have to end good, especially with the consistent pattern of the way I’ve felt from her actions. Regardless if things would change, it’s not like I’m obligated or really wanting to gamble on that anymore. It’s not like there’s a shortage of people in this world, and so I’d like to have the respect for myself to be able to step away from A to make space for those people. I just went and removed her on social media, and I can’t really bring myself to block her on anything unfortunately, so she can still text me. But I think to me this marks moving on.