An Open Letter

I find it kind of beautiful that Eden’s first album was called End Credits. I ended up listening to crash several times on loop once it came on from autoplay. I guess the feeling I’ve been struck with for the last few days was like a glass bottle in freefall. The crash eventually came, and it wasn’t horribly bad or anything like that. But it did come.

So many emotions hit me at once.

I wrote something down to talk about tomorrow at therapy – my first gut reaction to a certain thought was “if I was good enough at music I think they’d love me”. I need to preemptively clear up any potential misunderstanding – I don’t mean love in the romantic sense at all. But I just was washed over with the wave of thinking if I was able to play or make beautiful things then maybe I’d be deserving of platonic love. I find it pretty painful to think about how – I guess scratch that. I feel like it’s a painful thing to think that the only reason I could be loved is by proving value. I don’t know why that’s such an ingrained thing in me, maybe because all the love I received as a child was conditional. I never really heard my dad say I love you, or at least I don’t remember any times where he did growing up. The only praise I ever heard was an occasional “good job” when I’d do good in grades, or tennis. The more I think about it, it always felt kinda automatic. Like I could have said “I got an A-” and he would have said good job the same way as if I got the highest score. I guess it always felt like I was chasing after his validation that I never got, and it wasn’t like he was there often anyway. I still find myself sad about the fact that he wasn’t there for my graduation. I told him that I wouldn’t care and it was fine for him to miss it for work, but even then I knew I wanted him there. I guess I set myself up for a trap hoping that he would somehow cancel his business trip to stay and watch me graduate highschool. Well I walked right into the trap I had set, and I can’t ever change that. I think he would have came if I asked him to.

I remember one time I started keeping track of how long it would take until my Mom said “I love you”. It’s pointless to include my dad in that as he didn’t say that anyways. In highschool when I did that it turned out to be around a year long. She finally said I love you while hugging me while I was leaving the car after I had resolved another fight she had started, and it was her way I guess of apologizing for the hurt she caused again. Every day in highschool felt like a blur, but that day especially felt like a void. I think it was irreparable damage for me to have no one to talk to or have going through all that shit growing up. When it rains it pours.

I remember one time I told J how I wanted a hug in some way or other, and she told me “Ok! The next day when I see you at school I’ll give you a big hug”. I remember I felt like crying that day, just seeing that text. The next day when she hugged me, my body fully shut down and I couldn’t feel anything. I didn’t remember what it felt like the second it stopped. I couldn’t even show emotion. I felt like such a broken person for that being my response to that. I guess I would have hoped I would have broken down crying in some ways, but the rational part of my brain quips back up again to refute that.

I’m incredibly grateful I met S, T, L, M, B, and even Y. I’m glad I had an online group of friends, they are kinda who I consider as my family. I guess I see a lot of parallels when people talk about family stuff, like them doing bad things but at the end of the day you forgive them and make up – after all they’re family right? I think it’s kinda sad to say this to be honest, because I don’t think those people see things the same way. Maybe T. But I guess I never really got to know what it’s like to have a family, so maybe we experienced the same thing. But to me it mattered so much more. I love them all.

It’s crazy how a song can tie me back in more ways than one. Whenever I hear pride, I think about sitting on the bathroom floor in San Diego for hours on end. I used to play that song on loop. Whenever I hear that song I somehow come back to seeing me in my studio apartment laying awake at night staring at the roof. God, how lonely things must have been before Hash.

I’m a bit – scratch that plenty envious of S and L. I keep thinking about them moving in together and being able to just constantly interact with each other. I know I’ve tried to process reasons why it wouldn’t be feasible for me to live with them, but I guess now I’m just envious of them both. I feel like I’m an abrasive person in some ways, I’m too specialized in my niches growing up that I find it hard to share common ground with N. I’m jealous of L for that, she has a connection over history or something. I think this isn’t a problem with N specifically, but more a sentiment I feel fairly often. I feel like it’s hard for me to meet people who get it. Like in a weird way, see it all happening around them and want to punch back against it. God knows what I’m saying at this point, I’m tired and I’ve been rambling without a filter for a while.

I know I told myself I wouldn’t consider it until I hit my 1k goal, and I did hit that. So I guess I’m free to think about it again. I don’t think I want to right now, just out of habit of not considering it. But I do think that if I could lay down on the floor and dissolve like a pill, maybe it wouldn’t be too bad. I guess I am depressed. Pretty badly so, huh? I went and looked at that guide again, and I guess I have been making that joke a lot recently. I’ve been almost instinctively saying “be honest do you want me to kill myself” or saying those kinds of jokes. I hope I just find them funny. I remember last year skipping a lecture because I planned to do it, how dark of a time that was. I think I ended up just walking to the back roads behind the rec cen and just crying in the field looking out on the airport lake. I’m glad I’m not there, or anywhere close to that now – but I’m a bit scared of the direction I feel. I don’t want to concern anyone, I am just rambling anyway. I’m barely lucid enough to process the sentence I’m writing, I can’t even remember what I just said. Thoughts really are just swarming me.

R – 3 breaths

E – I feel myself going downwards, or at least walking around that basin. Let me come away from that.

S – Let me stop listening to Eden, and listen to a bit more uptempo music again.

T – I will skip this song and go to a higher pace song.

Dear lord this must have been some sort of divine punishment. It was fun.

R – 3 breaths

E – I find myself again envious of someone for something I don’t really want.

S – Recognize the hypocrisy of the situation, and be a bit more reasonable with the fact that it is something I could have, but I consistently choose against it.

T – Give yourself a pat on the back and recognize the trap.

I realized one reason why I really like teaching. I love the feeling of being able to help people out, and also share my passion for things I love. Yesterday my section went from ~30 people to maybe 40, which is unprecedented – almost unanimously sections get smaller as time goes on. Today my office hours almost filled up the TA trailer, with maybe 25 students there just for me. One girl asked me if it was fine to swap sections, and then said she would be coming to mine, which I thought was incredibly sweet.

I spent about an hour and a half in my later class making a piazza writeup explaining something that a lot of people were struggling with, and I really hope that it helps out some people. I just like being helpful I think, and being a TA is very nice because I don’t have the guilt of being overbearing or disrespectful when I try to help people in classes I’m taking. I don’t think I come off that way, but I am always aware of that risk, so being a TA is very nice. Thank god for my beta blockers, as I’m able to talk in front of large group of people without my physical signs of anxiety which makes everything possible to be honest.

R – 3 breaths

E – I guess I’m not really doing anything wrong, and I’m at a pretty stable happy place in life right now. I can just maintain this progress and continue what I’m doing.

S – This weekend go ahead and do something from your checklist, whether it’s film something, go to the botanical garden, go on a long walk, etc.

T – Hold myself accountable.

For the last few days, I feel like I haven’t really felt anything in a weird way. Maybe it’s because I’m not really struggling with anything like I think I’m used to, but because of that, my life has felt very weirdly stagnant. I haven’t had a discord status in a while, which is weird because I find myself always putting things that I want to remember, as little homages to myself. I also can’t really remember the last real thing I’ve written here. I feel a little bit scared at this feeling, as it’s almost like nothing is changing, and I’m used to that being terrifying.

For some reason, I ended up going through a little social media rabbit hole. I was looking at different people from high school, and it was incredibly strange to compare them to the people I knew. I think there are always different metrics I can compare myself to for all of these people, to the point where I can somehow always feel bad about it. I find it hard to not compare myself to someone’s social media life, or their achievements they’ve done.

I guess I’m just a normal person after all, subject to social media bias.

R – 3 breaths

E – I feel like I’m staying still in life in a weird way, and it doesn’t help that I compare myself to other people.

S – Set up some time to interact with online friends, and not just stay relatively isolated the entire day.

T – I’ll message S to see what his plan is for tomorrow.

I finally got off the waitlist for both classes, so my life became much easier. I’ve been recently getting the feeling that life wasn’t meant to be a punishment.

One thing that really struck me was how I was talking about how I’ve been getting car tiktoks recently, and L said “Why don’t you send me them!”. I mentioned it was because I felt bad about sending her so many already, and she said she didn’t care but still wanted to see them. I said it would be too much and so I refused to, as I feel bad. She then said, “my words don’t matter I guess”.

That weirdly struck me very deep, as I had a moment of realization thinking about it. I was so convinced that I would be too much and so I forcibly have to regulate myself away, and I was so convinced of this thought that even though they are mentioning it explicitly I disregarded it. While I do think that they probably don’t want me to send them 50 tiktoks a day like I do with S and L, I realized how they can say some things and I may just automatically discard it from prior fears. I think that’s something I should be very aware of, as that feels like an incredibly dangerous thing to be used to. I’ve been praying my brain’s wrong about a lot of things, and maybe it is.

Once you walk through a door you never really take a moment to think about how hard you prayed for it to open.

I know I didn't do this two days in a row, but I've just had an incredibly hectic week. Right now my internet is out so I can't do this on my computer and it's a nightmare to do it on my phone so I'm just going to put a little pause on this one also.

I guess so that this has at least some semblance of substance to it today I had some time between one of my classes and I ended up just sitting in the sun and reading my book. At least for a little bit life doesn't need to crush you as long as there is sun outside that you can bask in and enjoy.

I’ll talk about it another time because I really need to get plenty of sleep tonight, and also I don’t want to really think about it too much just of fear of spiraling. But I did feel very excluded today by some specific actions, I was in call with S however and even though we weren’t even playing the same game just talking made me feel way better.

I guess I’m incredibly happy to have known S for so long, I have realized how much I use that friendship as a gold standard of things. I love how it’s not perfect at all, but still so incredibly invaluable to me. I also know that at least some things are reasonable to want from a friend. I’m grateful to have met him. Makes the whole ”League of Legends” thing worth it.

R – 3 breaths

E – I had a lot of insecurities and concerns triggered pretty badly today, and so I know that I will be a little bit mentally volatile.

S – I will write this down for therapy and not think about it for a bit so I can let my mind settle.

T – I will write this down in my therapy note for this week.

I spent the first part of today just tweaking and somewhat regulating myself back to normal, and I’m glad for the decision I made yesterday. I also purposefully avoided and stopped any self-destructive thoughts that I had which was something I’m very proud of.

I also did realize how when I want to spiral and be sad, I always end up automatically making jokes or being nice. I would always kinda get mad at myself for that, but maybe that’s just the real parts of me peeking out behind the clouds.

R – 3 breaths

E – I have a very hectic Saturday of plans, and I will need to get plenty of sleep for it.

S – Tomorrow I will do my laundry, and also get plenty of sleep so I am rested for Saturday.

T – Good night!

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I loosely made a decision today and I think I chose the right thing but god is it painful. I realized I could show the parts I’m innocent in, or show the parts where I am also guilty. In my mind, the fast decision was to either accept blind reassurance that I was in the right or potentially show my own wrongdoings and risk S and L thinking significantly worse of me as a person. I did the latter, for the following reasons: I cannot learn from a mistake if I do not acknowledge it fully. If I am afraid to show the messages, that is because I have something to hide. And something to hide there means I did something bad. Therefore, I need to confront that to prevent it in the future.

Now the challenge is to stop myself from giving into self-flagellation and stop it from becoming ammo for my insecurities. I struggle a lot with guilt. Like a horrible amount of it. I regret decisions terribly and they haunt me for trivial things. I’m afraid of this becoming one of those things. That’s why I’m here putting so much effort into this post, at least for me. I want to know myself and understand why I am the way I am. I want to change it, frankly.

Situation: A and I had a date, and the date went fine, the notable parts being the conversation was not bad, but also them not acknowledging the fact that I paid for their drink (only $3) or the fact that I picked them up, and that I had planned and scheduled everything. The problem however is after she said some stuff that rubbed me the wrong way, arguably because of rules I had tried to set myself to handle ambiguity.

Thoughts: Because of their past actions, and also a lack of effort I put everything in the lens of them not considering me someone worth putting in any effort into. When they told me to get them something from Trader Joe’s, I decided I wouldn’t do it unless they either asked me politely (saying please) or if they had shown any sort of effort, as then they wouldn’t just be using me for that. They did neither of those things and then said something about how “my value has decreased” to her. That kinda confirmed my fear.

Feelings: I feel like I am simply something she is using, and that the relationship would be transactional. I felt used, and like I was only really a wallet and convenience to her.

Behavior: I handled things worse than I could have. I’m partially happy I don’t really have an option to pursue this further, as I really suck at stopping myself from red flags. But that all being said, I’m pretty ashamed of the fact that my decisions were clouded by my insecurities and fears. I should have taken more time to wait before sending a response, and maybe even getting a third-party opinion, but I didn’t even think that my decision was so clouded. But that being said S could also be wrong, it’s not like they’re the objective ground truth on interpretation either. But also neither am I, so I should have considered both facts. I kinda set everything into a death spiral intentionally under the guise that I wasn’t IF she had handled things in a therapy-perfect way. It is unreasonable for me to expect these things, and so this is fundamentally a mistake I am making that I am at fault for. This is kinda like the equivalent of taking a left turn while the crossing light is turning yellow while a car is speeding towards it. In the correct world, the car should stop and I should be safe. But now I’m sitting sprawled out on the intersection because I set myself up for this crash.

Thoughts: I kinda went into the date already feeling like they weren’t interested in me due to a lack of any sort of initiative on their part, and a lack of any clear communication which led me to interpret things that way. That probably didn’t help at all, as I had everything in the lens of them not being interested in me more than just convenience I guess. The fact that this lens confirms my inherent insecurity means that I should be more skeptical about it.

God, I find myself wanting to scream and claw at myself so badly. I need to be stronger than this. This guilt is eating me alive. It’s this compounded fear with the fact I’ve revealed this shortcoming to people I care about. I didn’t sweep it under the rug like I could have, I put it out for all to see. I showed them it. I feel this guilt eating me alive right now. I feel shame on top of it for even feeling this feeling so intensely. All I feel is people staring at me for this. What a stupid fucking- I have to stop myself here because I will go down this route of self-hate if I continue. I am stronger than this. 3 breaths, then I’ll continue.

I want to be able to recognize when something that is sensitive for me is being triggered, so I can handle things in a way I have no regrets about.

Feelings: I feel bad but in a more manageable way. I feel like I’ve just been hit, but I’m recovering, rather than slowly slipping down the edge of a cliff. I feel sad, I guess and also scared for the fear of being unloveable. I fear for how sensitive I am and how much I feel and how much I’m scared of. But I am whole.

Behavior: Who knows, maybe I allow the Nova effect a little bit more. I guess I also did show myself that just because I was apprehensive the date went better than I thought. I am not a strict overestimate as a heuristic for dates, which is good news. I can sit with this feeling. I can work through this. Put your money where your mouth is, and face these problems rather than subdue them.