An Open Letter

Kinda quick, because I forgot yesterday but have been doing better anyway!

Situation: potentially drifting apart from friend

Thoughts: Don't want to lose it, don't know if I will get it again.

Feelings: feel afraid, alone, and anxious.

Behavior: will be way more insecure around friend, will try to force it to not leave. Will not enjoy moment.

And for better:

Thoughts: enjoy the experiences I had with them, I will have more, maybe with them and maybe not.

Feelings: more in the moment, peaceful, less dependent.

Behavior: more independent, and so more secure. Not going to push person away by being clingy! Also more happy and more present.

Hey me, I wanted to say this with love:

You will never be good at guitar, singing, programming, league, or the other things you worry about also. You won't be loved like you want, you won't find that perfect soulmate or group of friends you crave. You won't find your BFF when you go talk to that person in class for the first time, nor at the activities you push yourself to do.

Isn't that liberating in the sweetest way? If you can believe that there's no more pressure to succeed or a fear of failure. Go ahead and try that feeling on, it doesn't feel as bad as it looks!

Try to carry that with you when you go push yourself out of your comfort zone and fail as many times as you can. Enjoy it!

Hey me, fancy seeing you sitting out here again! How’s it going?

For one I’m feeling much better, partially because CBT took another massive dub, as the close friend was NOT leaving me, and was not upset at me. I’m very glad that I took the time to do CBT, and really thought through my actions instead of letting the sense of impending doom motivate that false urgency. I’m feeling less depressed, but still struggling – but hey, I’m fighting it! I talked to several people today, so I’ve been doing my best to combat isolation, I spent some time doing creative stuff and caught up on some YouTube videos that made me laugh.

Speaking about the close friend, turns out I was correct with CBT – they were very busy and stressed packing – SORRY THAT WAS A WHOLE ASS-RAT THAT RAN PAST ME. I hear it rustling around. But yeah, they were just super busy with packing for Europe, and it wasn’t any reflection on our relationship as friends. I feel pretty silly in hindsight with how stressed and sick I felt, as I just kept reliving past relationships. I will say, there are still some toxic thoughts that are poisoning my sweet, summer mind but thankfully CBT tortures those thoughts into a blissful, almost orgasmic new one – so let’s go ahead and do some more, shall we?

Situation: The close friend is going to study abroad, and has mentioned how they are not one to cling onto friends past when appropriate. They also mentioned how over the summer our friendship dynamic was different, and that won’t be the same.

Thoughts: They are ready to leave me. They were only friends with me over the summer because there was no one else, and I kept bugging them to do stuff. They are going to replace me once they find someone more desirable, and any mistakes I make will only accelerate that process. I am about to be alone.

Feelings: I feel like crying, feel betrayed, feel like I need to either cling on tighter or fully distance myself first, and ultimately no matter what I am doomed to be unloved.

Behavior: I will fall into a depressive episode, I will be overly clingy to friends, and I will not be able to enjoy myself in interactions around them. I will feel like I am always walking on eggshells, as they are about to leave me, and making a mistake might be the final straw. I will feel like people do not want to actually be around me, and that I am truly unloveable. I will kill myself, NOW (insert a picture of low-tier god).

Now for a LOGICAL, and REASONING based thought:

Thoughts: She mentioned not clinging to friendships that are no longer good. Do I think I am that friendship? No. In the future may we change as people to the point where we have different friends? Yeah, but that’s not a bad thing. Also, over the summer our friendship WAS different, we had SO much more free time, and also fewer options of people to hang out with – so of course it isn’t going to be the same with life back in full swing. We both will be busier, so we aren’t going to be less of friends, we just may not spend as much time together. That time won’t be idle for me however, it will also be filled with other things! Being tied down to one person is also unhealthy, so it is a good thing for me to spread my eggs into more baskets. This all being said, they have explicitly said, and I quote: “I don’t want to lose this, and I’m going to put in the work to ensure that 💯” (from the friend). ARE YOU DAFT? THEY ARE EXPLICITLY SAYING THEY WANT TO STAY FRIENDS, AND THEY VALUE ME AS A FRIEND. YOU STUPID FUCKING GOOSE! BROTHER, WHAT ELSE DO THEY GOTTA SAY?

Feelings: Silly goose moment. I am catastrophizing for nothing, as literally NOTHING IS HAPPENING. I am not being left, life sometimes changes and that isn’t something you can change. Just because the dynamic might change a bit, doesn’t mean that suddenly I’m alone for life, or that I’m being left. Yeah, there is this feeling of dread or a falling feeling, but that is FULLY ANXIETY. Nothing bad is happening, there is no reason to ruin a wonderful relationship over someone (Anxiety) lying to me. I cannot stress enough that nothing unfairly bad is happening to me.

Behavior: Honestly, I become a big chiller. I do not need to feel horribly bad, or like a close friendship is being destroyed by my own hand. I am not a horribly insecure person, who ruins friendships at the evil whisperings of Anxiety. I do not fulfill this self-fulfilling prophecy, and nothing bad happens. I will get cool souvenirs from Scotland!

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I honestly feel pretty silly in hindsight, because I was going through a saved note of positive evidence and quite literally was slapped in the face with a direct mention of “I am not leaving, I value you as a friend”. Kinda funny how Anxiety has been trying to lie to me for the last week or so telling me how all hell is going to come crashing down, and how I need to kill myself. In my mental eye I see Anxiety having that expression of getting caught with a lie, but being so belligerent to not take accountability or finally confess while red-handed.

CBT: 4, Mental Illness: probably a lot but at least not versus CBT these last four times!

Proud of you for doing this again, good job Ithaka. Love ya man 💓

Hey me, it is currently dark outside as I sit in the backyard of my childhood home typing this. Today was kinda rough, but to be fair the last few weeks have also been pretty bad. I know I talked a lot earlier today, but I guess I started to feel my mood dipping as it gets later towards night. I guess I don’t know what I wanted to talk about, but I just wanted to say something.

I’m glad I’ve started doing CBT frequently, as that’s helped me a lot. I’ve also been doing several different affirmations and other techniques to try to work on other issues I have, but those take a lot more time and don’t show results nearly as fast. I still feel kind of depressed, which is unfortunate as earlier today I thought I had broken out of that depression.

I guess I might do a bit more CBT, as I feel still kind of sad for some reason, I guess while waiting for a friend to respond to some messages. I guess I might also quickly delve into that just to put it into writing: With a friend, we worked out a system where I can spam them with whatever I want on Discord, where there is no urgency to respond to the messages, and they aren’t really important. If I need to get their attention, or if I want a response then I send them a text. This works out, as I get to spam them with all the stuff I want to without them feeling overwhelmed or pressured to respond – while still having a method of asking important things that I want to be addressed. A bit ago I was feeling upset and using the fact that they respond slowly to my messages as evidence that they do not care for me, when I realized that ultimately this was what I explicitly told them.

Honestly, that ones on me – but it still did feel “right” to get hurt by that. But even if I logically can think about how this is fully reasonable and has no indication of anything bad, the fact that it’s 10:35 p.m. and that she hasn’t responded to my Discord messages yet. I guess ultimately I still have a lot of issues to work on, including ones about this – so I’m going to take some steps in the right direction and CBT this bad boy:

Situation: A close friend is not responding to Discord messages (which we agreed is fine to not immediately respond to).

Thoughts: She is upset at me, and ghosting me. She doesn’t want to interact with me anymore, as I’ve been overly clingy and I’ve ruined this relationship. She will slowly and progressively distance herself from me until we do not interact anymore, or she will fully ghost me as Christine did.

Feelings: More insecure, like I need to reach out for MORE reassurance, feel like she hates me or doesn’t want to interact with me again.

Behavior: This leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy, as I will isolate myself away from her and other friends more, while also reaching out to her solely for reassurance on my own insecure thoughts. This ends up with the worst of both worlds, as I stop being a good friend or someone who people want to interact with, while not making anything better for myself. I will also lose a friendship I value dearly.

Now for a better view:

Thoughts: She is respecting and utilizing the mutualistic agreement we came upon. She may not always want to text or have the time to get into a conversation, and she may value properly talking about the things I bring up rather than just quickly acknowledging them in passing. She also probably has this in a ritual or habit, where at the end of the day when she is done she goes through and texts back to the Discord messages. (She also has been good about responding to text messages!)

Feelings: I feel content. I don’t feel insecure about our friendship, and I feel like she values me as a close friend. I don’t feel the need to ask her for assurance on this, as I feel secure about the system we have going on, and that it works for BOTH of us.

Behavior: I am more lighthearted, fun, and secure overall. I do not ruin this friendship over something irrational, and I am able to stop this before I ruin this friendship. I am able to interact with them about good things while not needing to constantly ask them for reassurance or support. Friendship is saved, and healthy!

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Honestly, I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off my chest – as in the past I have ruined a close friendship by doing exactly this and I wasn’t even aware that I did. I even had someone relay her sentiment about this, and I for some reason was not able to see it until now. Unfortunately, that ship has sailed too far to take accountability for it, but I can at least focus on stopping this toxic trait of mine now. I WILL CHANGE. Proud of you Big <3

In the last few weeks I haven't been the greatest friend, and I wanted to apologize for that. I cannot promise I'll be perfect, or close to that – but I can promise I'm doing my best to change for the better. I'm putting in effort every day to change from who I was yesterday, and so I'll ask you to be patient with me. If I could change overnight, I would – but unfortunately this takes time for me. I will do as much as I can, and I'm committed to being a good friend/person. Thank you for having patience with me!

So I feel like this would actively be damaging to the friendship to read, so to the person this involves please do not read this. Or do, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. I guess this is a direct example of why I’m partially grateful no one is subscribed to this/reads this frequently.

EDIT: On writing a bit more, please do not read this. The things I’m writing are not my thoughts, but rather anxieties and childhood trauma. They do not reflect me, or you as a person, and I would really hope you do not read this as I portray myself in an incredibly horrible way, and I think it would ruin our relationship. I’m afraid of the consequences of you reading this.

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We got off the phone a bit ago and had a perfectly good conversation, but I guess it made me have to confront some feelings I REALLY don’t want to. One thing we talked about is how our friendship is going to significantly drop in intensity and that it was more or less a summer thing while we were both proximally close out of convenience, and also about how eventually in the future we most likely will not be close, if we even are currently. I’m right now giving myself a bit of room to slip and be anxious and insecure, so please take this with that lens, but god damn. It honestly feels pretty horrible to both be faced with the idea of how at some point in the future we will not be close friends, if we even are close friends at the moment. I know that this is a HUGE insecurity of mine, specifically revolving around “best” friends, or being someone’s #1.

I get it, I know I’m completely unreasonable here and in the wrong, but I had a small part of me hoping that you would care about me more than anyone else, which is fully due to the emotional neglect as a child I endured. You’re FULLY in the right, you are doing absolutely nothing wrong – this is something I need to work on in myself.

But also fuck, man. I wished as unreasonable as it is that you would enjoy my company so much that you would be willing to hold the potentially unhealthy delusion that you would do virtually anything to maintain that level of intimacy and friendship we shared over the summer. It feels pretty fucking horrible to think someone I consider one of my closest friends is prepared to move on past me when the thought of losing them as a friend makes me feel sick.

I know, I know. I’m completely toxic in this viewpoint, but God damn does it hit childhood all over again. I feel like I’ve found someone who I feel safe with, and I want to grip onto that as much as I possibly can. I know that realistically we will drift away from how intensely involved we were, while that was the only thing convenient – but I don’t want to lose you, at least not yet. It makes me feel like crying to think that you’re already more or less mentally prepared to give up and accept that we aren’t going to be this close. I stopped typing during that last sentence because I had to hesitate to say “we” and “close” since I kind of doubt how much I mean to you.

You mentioned how the cycle usually goes with you being close to someone, and then eventually you realize they care less about you compared to how much you care about them, and then you hang onto them until you can find someone new. I’m worried that that’s going to happen to me, where sometime in the future this ambiguity gets cleared up and I find out that you mean more to me than the other way around, and then I get left as the alone child neglected all over again. I know it’s just a fix to the symptom, and not the cause itself, but fuck man – I wish you cared about me so violently that it would make up for the deformities burdened on me from being the child left alone.

I know I don’t mean this, but in my mind, I’ve found I feel cared for when I’m interacting with you. I wish somehow that feeling could never end, and that you would want to give me that warmth forever. I wish by some stars aligning you were so starved that this was something you would want to hold onto forever. I wish I wasn’t the only one hungry here.

If you somehow end up reading this (you know who you are), please tell me directly. I debated whether or not to include this section here, but I trust you to do me this grace. If I didn’t trust you to tell me if you read this, I think I would self-sabotage our friendship on my own, or end up deleting this post after a few hours.

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Okay, with that all out of the way, I need to again emphasize that this was me airing out incredibly vulnerable and dirty laundry, in the interests of trying to ultimately clean it. I don’t always think this way, this isn’t who I am – I am just struggling a lot with these thoughts and they are in no way shape, or form true or what I believe. That being said, time for CBT:

Situation: The situation here is my close friend telling me that

1. This was more or less a summer thing

2. She is not expecting this friendship intensity to last forever

Thoughts: I think that she is saying being close friends was just something over the summer and that she doesn’t want to interact that same way in the future. She wants to let me down easy because she doesn’t want to be mean, but she doesn’t see me as a close friend and once she is surrounded by other people she wants to stop interacting with me. She also doesn’t necessarily want to keep me as a lifelong friend, she will ultimately look to replace me when she finds someone better.

Feelings: Feel absolutely like shit, completely hopeless, unloveable, like I’m a horribly clingy person for valuing her so much as a friend. Feel like I’m just a fuck up doomed to stay unloved.

Behavior: I will get violently depressed, stop reaching out or trying to cultivate friendships, pull away from her, isolate myself from people and friends, and confirm the insecure thoughts I have.

Now for a better way to look at things

Thoughts: Her mentioning this is a summer thing is more referring to how much raw time we spent together, specifically since we will be more busy with other stuff and also other people. It isn’t a reflection on our relationship quality, but rather how the friendship will take up as much time as we give it. While there is less time in the future, we will just make the time worth more. Also, she has mentioned she has cared less about things as a consequence of SSRIs, and so it is not an accurate representation of relationships as a whole or even this one. I will put in the effort to maintain this as a healthy relationship, and hopefully a lifelong one. But at the end of the day, it is simply a part of life that things happen, and that I cannot hold onto good things forever. I should not let that get in the way of me enjoying it while it is here. She does value me and care about me as a close friend, and even if it is not a “best” friend thing, that doesn’t devalue or change our friendship at all.

Feelings: Still feel sad, but in a way that I think is normal, and healthy. I feel less empty, and I feel more reasonable and less delusional in a good way. I feel like I am better equipt to be a good friend, and to not make things excessively negative.

Behavior: I will be less insecure, meaning needing less care and support due, since I will be struggling less. I will enjoy living in the moment and the friendship we have currently, while also being an overall more positive and energizing person. I will also not be as depressed, or likely to continue this cycle of overdependence on friends.

Wow, I feel better immediately going through all of this – I know it was an incredible amount of stuff to write so I’m grateful this is not a “blog” blog, but more a journal for myself that is also on public display. I confronted some pretty ugly feelings that are incredibly deeply rooted within me, and that is not easy to do. I’m proud of you again Suman, I’ll talk to you again. Feel better man ♥

To help combat a lot of issues I was recommended to journal my thoughts while applying CBT – so I’m going to try to get into the habit of journaling roughly daily to express thoughts I’m currently struggling with.

In a somewhat disjointed segway, I’m partially glad no one is currently subscribed to this blog (bye Claire), as I don’t necessarily have to worry about being perceived. But at the same time, that is something I also feel sad about. I reached out to a close friend and directly asked them to subscribe to this blog, I guess in a way to make it easier for me to reach out or express insecure feelings through proxy. On the surface level that does feel like something I want – as in my mind I can follow the (flawed) logical reasoning:

1. I post something on my blog that is relatively obscured

2. Someone goes digging or out of their way to find it and brings it up to me

3. I feel like I am cared for, because this person jumps through these hoops I set for them

For the not-so-idiots potentially reading this do you see the issue? The issue here is when I hide away these things, I expect people around me to somehow read my mind, or to do something so incredibly specific and out of the norm – and if they do not do this then my brain can use this as ammo to riddle my relationships with the idea that they do not care for me.

It honestly seems very obvious when put like this (which I guess is the point of CBT), but this is a pattern I’ve done for as long as I have had access to the internet, whether it had been changing my Skype about me, setting discord statuses, or writing posts on this blog.

It’s a very clear problem I have, but it’s very instinctive in me to do. If I try to psychoanalyze it a bit more, I feel like it’s mostly due to learning this behavior in childhood. When I wasn’t really given support by my parents, I tried this behavior of making subtle cries for help, and when they weren’t picked up I would just believe that they did not care enough for me, and I needed to do bigger cries for help.

But enough about the past – going forward I need to consciously stop following this pattern. To address this immediate concern let me go ahead and stop being a coward and properly do CBT:

Situation: A friend has unsubscribed from the blog + directly asked another friend and they have not subscribed.

Thoughts: The friend who unsubscribed is annoyed by my posting, doesn’t want to read my blog, and doesn’t care about me as a person. For the other friend, they do not care about me enough, as they still haven’t subscribed and they probably felt pressured into subscribing since I directly asked them even though they do not want to read this stuff.

Feelings: Alone, feel like I’m being left again, feel like friendships are crumbling and they do not care about me, feel like a burden on friends.

Behavior: I stop initiating with these friends, pull myself away, self-isolate, and begin spiraling into a depressive episode. Overall become less friendly, and push away friends.

Now for the better take:

Thoughts: I could have fully removed the first friend from the blog when I last had a bad episode, or they could have just been getting too many emails and would rather not have that constantly overwhelming them. About the other friend, they are very busy and relatively forgetful, they genuinely did not remember to follow through with this. In both cases, they still value me as a friend and care about me – they just did not recognize how much weight I put onto that, which is fully reasonable because I did not communicate that to them. In addition, asking them to subscribe, puts an unfair stress on them to deal with my constant barrage of spam and in a way takes away from my freedom to post things, as I have the constant reminder that they will be aware of it. I originally wanted this blog to be something where I did this for myself, and not with any expectation or reliance on anyone else, but also by them not subscribing it helps me break the pattern I mentioned earlier about leaving breadcrumbs and getting upset when no hansel eats them up.

Feelings: Peace, content, less insecure, still loved, happier, more independent, and also free.

Behavior: Less of a demand or undue strain on friendships, more comfortable being honest on the blog and posting whatever/whenever I want with no consequence, along with being friendly and more receptive to friends and love, as I don’t have the idea in my head that they don’t care about me.

Wow isn’t CBT magical? That was an INCREDIBLE amount of writing, good grief I should take it to a publisher at this point. Jokes aside, I do immediately feel better, and less shitty than I had been feeling for the last few days about this issue. I hope to do this more frequently, especially since I don’t have the pressure of someone being obligated to read this due to me, which I’m grateful for.

I’m proud of you Anshuman, I’ll talk to you again soon! Love you.

I’m more or less writing this because of this video that I rewatched recently. Right now I am trying a different medication (Adderall), and as someone who has struggled with activation energy issues I wanted to write down this sentiment:

You won’t be ready. It won’t be perfect, there will be several things that are wrong, and there are other things you are waiting for for it to be correct – as once you have those things you will finally do that thing you wanted to do, right? Well no. That goalpost will always move until you psych yourself out enough that you never end up doing it. You won’t be more prepared, you aren’t good enough to do it, it will completely fail, and it will be a horrible experience.

But go ahead and do it anyway. It may go worse than you’d think, it may even go better. But you don’t have the luxury to wait around until every star aligns to go out and do the things that you want to do. Just go ahead and start it, take action toward it.

There’s a great chance it won’t work, people will laugh at you or mock you, and you will fail horribly. But let that liberate you in a weird way – if you can really accept that, and still do it there is genuinely nothing holding you back anymore. That fear of failure, judgment, being worse than you thought it would be, others laughing at you, etc. if you can still do it then that’s how to really get to where you want. Do it because you want it, and because you love it.

Be unapologetically you, do the things people will mock, do the things that are doomed to fail. Put your heart on your sleeve, and live like it’s your last chance because it fully is. Live a life where when you look back, you’re glad for every mistake you made.

I ended up writing this as a blog post because it’s both vulnerable, but also something potentially weird to mention to you so I wanted to leave it in this weird limbo of a medium, where I can later decide whether or not to send you a link to it.

I just got out of my therapy session and talked for nearly the entire time about some uncomfortable feelings I’d been harboring for a while, and she started to talk to me about attachment theory and how that was relevant. As I got to understand more about myself and why I feel the way I do, one takeaway was how comfortable I feel around you. I feel like I can be myself, both the good and the bad parts of me – you’ve made a very safe and inviting place for me and I really wanted to thank you for that. A consistent thing I always reflect on after interacting with you is how safe it is for me to express myself and to figure stuff out, and that honestly comes through difficult and uncomfortable things that you’ve done, like opening up, being radically honest about private things, or even making mistakes and showing me that it’s ok to not be a perfect human being.

I know I’ve said this more than enough times, but I realized I’ve been almost suppressing how sad I am that you’re going to be gone physically for 4 months, but I’d rather this be a happy thing. I’m looking forward to seeing plenty of pictures and videos from Europe, and I’d also like to call at least once in a while so it almost feels like we’re just driving around in a car somewhere in Goleta.

I know it’s not a goodbye, but I’ll still miss you dawg

I recently realized a weird category of memories I found myself holding on to tightly.

One day I went out with a friend to go shopping at Trader Joe's. She fully was in a committed relationship, and we are platonic friends – but she mentioned that to others it must seem like we are a couple. I've had several moments like this, and I find myself looking very fondly at them.

I've felt guilt at this, as it feels like I'm disrespecting the platonic relationships I have with these friends – but I realized I don't necessarily see myself thinking of them when I feel fondly. For me, it feels like that's a casual way of them saying “hey, you look like someone loveable – I could believe you to be in a regular relationship”.

I've found with the handful of times I've experienced this, I've started to believe more that people could see me in a romantic context – not the platonic friends persay but that there's a potential in me. These memories have honestly helped me a lot to unlearn some of the crueler stuff I've heard as a child, so I sincerely thank those friends.❤️