An Open Letter

So my immediate dilemma is I have no issues being open or vulnerable here, even with knowing certain people who read this. My issue is should I still talk about the things that directly involve said people? I think it’s near impossible for me to write with the context that there’s a sizeable chance they read it. I want to say as a person I have no issues being honest, but I think it’s incredibly uncommon for relationships to have that level of full one way transparent communication. I feel like that would negatively impact the people I interact with, as it would be pretty weird to both follow social norms of playing it cool, but then turn around and write about how meaningful a mundane interaction is to me.

In more ways than one, I watch myself turn into myself again and again and again and aga-

I feel like life ends up being a weirdly periodic cycle of asking for change, receiving the change, and regretting it. I basically begged to change this mindset, even considering electrocuting my brain recently – but now when faced with that possibility I feel horrible.

I was biking back from class, and I was thinking about how I genuinely believe no one reads this and the same about my status on Discord. I wanted so badly for people to acknowledge and read this stuff, but now when faced with the possible reality that people whom I wished for do, I feel bad? I don’t get it. Shouldn’t this be something happy, shouldn’t I go cry in a field and listen to sonder piano? I just don’t get it.

Why is it so comfortable to believe that no one cares about me, while also wishing for that to change? I sit here with a blank, as I don’t know what to just vomit onto this entry – I feel like I could talk about the realistic reasons (childhood, duh) or the romanticization of suicide, but I also don’t want to concern anyone as I am nowhere considering that as an option.

I guess I just don’t know why I feel bad about this. I would normally sit here throwing a pity party all for myself, all while harboring resentment I was too cowardly to bring up. But I still don’t even know if coward is the right word, as I feel like I don’t want to burden people with things I can maybe deal with on my own. It’s weird to think I’ve come full circle to the ‘toxic’ ideology of “bottle it up”.

I guess I could vent about how stupid I feel in hindsight, or I guess more angry regarding thoughts I’ve held. Anxiety would constantly remind me how even with one of the only people I’ve felt comfortable going out of my way to ask, they wouldn’t read this blog. I don’t know if that’s even true anymore, as they said they have read it all. I honestly don’t know how much I believe that, mostly due to the fact I can’t prove it, and how I can also come up with numerous “proofs” on why they’re lying to me, or other hurtful outcomes.

Maybe I am addicted to feeling miserable? Maybe I’ve had the potential to feel loved all this time, I just want to stay the same child trying to cry on the bathroom floor for all these years. What a miserable cycle, that always ends in the same place. God, I’m frustrated; I guess I don’t want a happy life bad enough.

Hi! I just got out of my therapy session, but I wanted to write down a couple of things I thought were worth notarizing today.

1. When facing compulsions for reassurance in relationships, ideally you want to reach the point where you can recognize “there probably is a reason, I just don’t know the reason. That’s fine, I’ll trust that there is an explanation”

For me, this was a consequence of the earlier this week small thread of posts about compulsion, and my insecurities around friendships. This made things click easier for me, as a big driving force for sending the message was wanting to know the specific reasoning behind the positive alternate thought I had. I hadn’t even considered the fact that I could just accept that there WAS a reason, without having to know what the reasoning was.

1. I have an (incorrect) belief that in heteronormative relationships, men have to be more aroused or interested in physical intimacy than women. This has been ingrained in me since I was young, so it feels ‘right’, but there are several counterpoints.

For starters, there’s no reason men should be more aroused or engaged than women, both men and women are human. There’s nothing causing men to be hornier than women, at least in every single case. But also, this belief is mostly due to media, as this is how it’s always portrayed in movies and shows. This is obviously a flawed thing to generalize to the real world, so it’s important to make that distinction.

1. At least for me specifically, in situations like the gym where I could possibly make someone else insecure, the proper way to handle it is by treating it like it’s not a big deal.

In being overly empathetic, and trying to avoid potential bad outcomes, this could end up making that happen. It becomes a problem if I try hiding the weights I’m doing, or if I try to dismiss or minimize any compliments I receive. The best way to handle it is to take it at face value and just accept the compliments. I can also just mention things about how I’ve been enjoying it a lot, or how it helps my mental health.

That’s it for now, I had a couple of others but I think it’s probably not appropriate to write them down here, at least now – so till next time! Cya ßig ♥

Heyo me. Today I had (for lack of a better term) a date. We watched Midsommar -which was fucking WEIRD, walked around for a while, and then got food and drove for a bit. We are are currently still texting, and things seem to have gone pretty well. There’s a decent amount of tea there but I wanted to comment on this from the lens of a cartoon a friend sent me.

This resonated incredibly hard, especially growing up when I wasn’t allowed to have or make friends. I had always told myself a relationship would be the end-all goal for me, as I would then never be alone again, or something like that. I have long since learned that this is flawed, but I’ve reached the point where I now want to pursue a relationship again. It’s not easy, and there’s been a lot of obstacles to it. But one by one I’ve been going through and surmounting them. I’ve been putting in a lot of effort, and I’m happy to start to see the results.

There’s a life I see myself being happy with, and I will work hard to make it mine.

Hey, I just got back from 2 hours of tennis and then a mile run/walk, and my entire body is on fire with pain. My tennis elbow is very badly flared up, at one point my hand wasn’t strong enough to keep holding my racket so it fell, so I would take turns playing left-handed when I could. After all that, however, I went out and took turns running until I couldn’t anymore because of pain, then walking until I was ready to run again. It wasn’t too far, but to me, it is a massive distance – given that 6 months ago I couldn’t run more than 15 steps before my leg pain was too much. Oh, and on top of this, I worked out for around an hour and a half earlier in the day and ran 0.55 miles nonstop after the workout.

While running, I was thinking about how I’m grateful for my upbringing being shit in a lot of aspects. Up till this year, I was at the bottom of my peers in strength, endurance, running, etc. I ended up deciding that I was going to change that, I went to physical therapy, started working out, and stayed incredibly strict on myself.

It’s been a bit over 6 months now, and I’ve gotten stretch marks on my body from how I’m gaining muscle too fast for my skin to keep up. I’ve had several people ask me if I’m on steroids, and fairly consistently get recognized as a gym-goer now. My squat/bench/deadlift total 765 lbs, and my goal is to hit 1000 lbs combined before a year.

I think I would be pretty naive to discount my genetics, as they probably are helping me out considerably – given my rate of improvement. But also I’ve been going to the gym 6 days a week, working out for roughly 1.5 hours, with minimal breaks. Then after that I run, stopping at the point of injury. Some days I have to sit down for a bit because my ankles hurt so much. I don’t skip any days, even when I’m violently depressed and barely have the energy to get out of bed. On my rest days (which I have to take), I go on a several-mile walk. I currently also have roughly 8-9 hours of sports (casual albeit) a week. Over the summer I was working at a summer camp, and I was active for 8 hours a day, and right after I would go work out then run. I would burn roughly 4-4.5k calories a day.

My point here is I have worked incredibly hard for the progress I’ve made. I think this work ethic is something I’ve built due to the lack of comfortable discomfort growing up.

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Comfortable discomfort is the term I use to describe when something is not where you want it to be, but not bad enough to the point where you would put in the effort to change it. For example, a relationship that is overall fairly good, but has some kinks you don’t like. Or a job that pays well, but is draining. Things like this suck but often don’t suck enough for you to actually change it.

In this sense, I’m somewhat grateful now how many things in my life were bad enough that I wanted to change them. My mental health was horrible, and that pushed me to give therapy my all. My body was weak, and that pushed me to become strong. I was not socialized enough, and that pushed me to take that into my own hands. I was not enough at school, and that pushed me to become incredibly good at it.

I’m glad how many things I’ve built with my own hands. I’ve worked incredibly hard for so many things in my life, and in a sense, I’m thankful for having a shitty childhood. At this point, I feel like fruits have started to grow from the tree I’ve been tending for years now. I’m glad I get to taste it’s juice now.

I’m honestly fairly tired, so I really don’t want to do CBT – but I probably should. With a close friend, turns out they hadn’t been following me on Instagram this whole time. This was the same friend who didn’t have my number saved for a while. I honestly don’t have reason to think they would do this intentionally, but it’s pretty ripe fodder for my insecurities to latch onto. I guess I can skip all the explaining and just get right into CBT tonight.

Situation: A close friend wasn’t following me on Instagram this whole time, and they were the one who didn’t have my contact saved on their phone.

Thoughts: I could think that they didn’t care about me as a friend and that I was not someone close to them.

Feelings: I would feel pretty shitty. I would feel like this whole time they’ve been putting on a facade, and that they aren’t really a friend.

Behavior: I would sabotage the relationship, and try to reinforce the idea that I am unloveable.

I’m going to take a second to do a quick grounding skill then continue.

Thoughts: In reality, they’ve been an amazing friend. They also are a flawed person, which is slightly unrelated here but something to remind myself of. People can have flaws and make mistakes without them being intentional or with bad intent. That being said, they forget things a lot – this is very likely another one of those things. Yeah it does kinda hurt, and that’s ok – that doesn’t have to equate to the relationship being bad. I think that’s an important distinction, so I’m going to reiterate that. It’s fine that I feel upset about it, but that doesn’t fundamentally change the fact that they are a great friend to me.

Feelings: I feel a bit sad, but not nearly as sad as the thought of them not wanting to be friends with me. I feel like I’m unlearning something toxic.

Behavior: I probably won’t bring it up to them, as I don’t know how well they’d handle the conversation – not for any bad reasons, I just don’t think they would say the proper things there. I can forgive and forget this, and I don’t end up sabotaging a great relationship.

Glad you ended up doing CBT. It’s funny how every time I don’t want to as I tell myself it’s not needed, or won’t help, and every time without fail it does. Thank you for all the work you do for me Karyios. Love you <3

https://youtube.com/shorts/lfTzbrvhzdc?si=TnNl_73C3W-wZFaF

It’s 9:50 AM and I was getting ready to go to the gym, scrolling through YouTube shorts when this came up. I looked at the comments, and god it hit me.

One of the boys sent that to the group chat and we all rushed to his place. It was like a fucking FBI raid, we jumped onto the balcony, into the backyard, front door, garage, windows... when we got into his room, he was crying because the girl he was texting told him that she wanted to go on a date and he was thanking us for giving him the confidence he needed. That's what the boys are for.

This was one that made me start crying. I don’t know what to write with this honestly – it could go several ways. Maybe I could go in the direction of how men love; tell me this isn’t pure love. I’d like to think the people around me would react the same way – I think I want to believe that.

I could also go the way of remembering Kady in high school after I had written my suicide letter and planned to hang myself, how I ended up sending her a text after and she frantically called me and wanted to drive to my house. She was willing to sneak out, drive all the way over, all to make sure I was okay.

I think I’m loved way more than I understand.

Hey! Honestly, we’re so back. I worked out with a new person I just met, and I had an absolute blast. I hope we become better friends, as I really enjoyed their company. I think I’ve sat around speculating for long enough about what will happen, and eventually, it did. I think the nice part is even if for some reason this friendship doesn’t work out, I have the confidence that people like me exist out there and that I’ll be able to meet more of them!

Life’s not that bad – to quote a cool Tumblr post: You aren’t unloveable, you’re just sad right now. Let’s get you some soup.

And the soup makes me happy right now

Hey (again). I wanted to write a bit about the thing I steered away from earlier, specifically about the difference we hold on the topic of looking at the things people make/say/write.

When I was growing up, I adopted the view that my family couldn’t handle me and my sister, since she would constantly rampage over us with my mom. As a result, I learned to just bottle things up and behave as well as I could, to make their lives easier. This didn’t actually help me with any of my own issues, so I would just bottle things up as much as I could – at one point my plan was to become an “emotional punching bag” by listening to as many problems as possible from the people around me, and then kill myself so all the pain goes with me. I think I was around 7th grade here.

When I got older, I didn’t know how to reach out for support or anything like that since I never did earlier. What I would do was post on a private Instagram account I had, and at one point I even made a fully anonymous one with the unrealistic hope that my BFF at the time would somehow find it and help me (she didn’t obviously).

I evolved into setting my statuses to vaguely cryptic things reflecting how I felt – including when I would struggle and wanted people to reach out to me. I never felt comfortable asking people for support, so this was my way of leaving out cries for help hoping people would see it and reach out to me. There are plenty of problems with that, but the biggest thing is it’s unreasonable to expect people to do that for me, no one wants to jump through hoops for that.

In some ways, this blog is a manifestation of that behavior, but I’d like to think I’ve corralled it into a manner where I don’t expect anyone to read this. I still feel incredibly loved when someone does, but I’ve gotten to the point where it doesn’t really bother me when friends don’t read it, even if I ask. But to me, when someone reads it it’s essentially giving me something to hold onto as evidence to try to unlearn scars from childhood. To me, it’s a sign someone cares enough about me to go out of their way to take an interest in how I’m doing, or what I’m thinking. It’s a concrete way to show myself that some people do like me, enough to want to know more about me, and that’s an endearing feeling.

I’ve been trying to unlearn the only things I’ve known growing up, and it’s one of the hardest things I’ve faced. I can’t even say “the hardest thing I’ve done”, as good lord it’s been about 4 years, and feels like there’s barely any progress. I think writing like this resonates with me, and potentially other neglected kids – so I kinda wanna explain something that feels obvious to me, just for catharsis's sake.

Imagine growing up with no love. No hugs, words of affection, praise, sympathy, or even physical contact for that matter. As a child, you don’t really know what you’re missing, especially if you don’t get to see other families with their dynamics. It’s a very strange way to grow up, reaching the point where you realize it’s better to be alone rather than to be around family – at least that way you don’t have to act as a mediator for issues or have to tolerate various different things. This goes fundamentally against biological instinct, the urge for maternal love and parental care.

I don’t think that’s a good way to raise a child, and while there are some benefits – the cons heavily outweigh them. Growing up starved of love makes that the baseline. As you get out of that household, you start to realize how much you’ve been missing – when you see relationships, friendships, or whatever other love exists out there. The cruel part is you still can’t internalize the fact you are loved, because your brain is so locked into the mental patterns of that lack of it.

That’s why to me having that quantifiable measurement of “Hey look, this person went out of their way to show they care about you” is so important. Somewhere inside me is a child who wants desperately to be seen.

Italics – pi.ai

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See it makes sense. And in theory, I want to do that, but I also have the message to [FRIEND] I sent asking for a bit of clarification. I at least resisted it originally, by not sending the insecure thought I had. I then journaled for a bit, did a grounding skill, did CBT, and finally sent her a message asking for clarification on some things. I ended up sending her this:

Wow, it's really impressive that you were able to delay giving in to that urge for so long. You did a lot of things to try and resist it, which is awesome. Can I ask, how did you feel after sending that message to [FRIEND]? Did it end up giving you some relief from the anxiety, or did it make it worse?

“Regarding Tumblr stuff, [… CENSORED FOR THEIR PRIVACY] (which is fine, I just feel sad)”

Wow, it sounds like you are really trying to understand where [FRIEND] is coming from, and to be understanding of how different “sides” of ourselves can be expressed in different social contexts. You're being very compassionate and mature about this whole situation. And it's really important that you recognize that even if you feel sad, it's okay for her to have different boundaries around different groups of people, and that doesn't mean she values you any less. How did she respond to you?

She hasn't responded yet, my thing is I could in theory still delete these messages and she wouldn't see them – somewhat going against the compulsion. My issue is I REALLY REALLY DON'T WANT TO DO THAT. I feel somewhat better after sending the message, and I am looking forward to that reassurance

Hey, it's okay to feel that way. You did what felt right to you in that moment, and it sounds like that brought you a sense of relief. So let's not worry about whether you “should” or “shouldn't” have sent that message, but just focus on how you feel after doing it. Can I ask, what would the reassurance look like to you? Would it be her saying she values you, or that you're an important part of her life? Or something else?

I guess the reassurance here would be the thing I wish I asked her during that conversation – I want to hear her say something along the lines of “yeah, Tumblr is a different side to my personality but I still do feel comfortable around you. I do feel comfortable being vulnerable and opening up to you”

Wow, it's really clear that you are looking for that validation and comfort from [FRIEND], and it makes sense why you sent the message you did. Even if you feel anxious about her response, it sounds like it was important for you to get those thoughts out there. Can I ask you, if you don't get the exact response you want from her, how will you handle that? Do you have a plan for what to do if you don't get the reassurance you're hoping for?

I think the only bad outcome I can think of is her saying “I don't feel comfortable with you seeing this”. Now that I think about it, if there's any doubt at all I might start digging into this and convincing myself she is lying, or that there is reason to believe she doesn't feel comfortable around me. I can see how this can become a cycle

That's really insightful of you, and you are spot on. That digging and convincing yourself of worst case scenarios is exactly what we want to avoid. It can lead to a spiral of anxiety and negative thoughts. I'm impressed that you are aware of how your thought patterns can work against you. So, maybe a helpful strategy would be to give her the benefit of the doubt if she doesn't give you that exact reassurance you're hoping for. Can you give yourself permission to tell yourself “maybe she feels comfortable around me, but she just isn't comfortable sharing every aspect of herself with me”?

See, in this case wouldn't it be a good idea to delete this message before she sees it?

Hmm, I don't think that would be a great idea. By deleting it, you'd be erasing the chance for you to practice being vulnerable and expressing your needs, and practicing dealing with the uncertainty of not knowing how someone will react. Even if you don't get the exact response you want, this could be a really good opportunity for you to learn to tolerate the anxiety of uncertainty. You can practice accepting that she may not give you exactly what you need, and that doesn't mean she doesn't value you.

Ok I guess I'll try to handle this, and NO MATTER WHAT I WILL NOT SEND A FOLLOW UP MESSAGE AFTER THIS CONVERSATION!! (Because that would give into compulsion)

Hahaha I love your enthusiasm! 🙌 You're absolutely right, sending another message would just be continuing that cycle. I know it might be hard, but it's really impressive that you're trying to handle this without giving in to the impulse to repeat your anxious behavior. It takes a lot of strength to resist that impulse. Do you have any strategies for how you'll cope if you feel like giving in to that impulse? Maybe you can do something nice for yourself if you successfully resist it?

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