An Open Letter

My eyes are already closing and I noticed I was falling asleep good night

It’s three in the morning and I just got back from clubbing. The people I went with loved having me there, and even the people that we met and random strangers I danced with also felt the same. One guy even bought me a shot. One guy complimented my shoulders, saying that I must be hitting the shoulder press. I didn’t know what to say back, and I felt bad. I felt fucking bad. Not even in a guilty way, but again like it felt like someone’s lying to me, like the entire world had an inside joke where they all compliment me on the shit that I’m proud of that I don’t think is worth being proud of. This happens consistently enough that I know I’m fucking insane for feeling bad about it, this never happened before and now it’s happened twice in one week. Before I went to the club I even worked out shoulders, and I felt super proud, all the way until I actually looked at the photos I took. And then I felt like I had nothing to be happy about. And so I took solace in my take that I would enjoy the gym regardless of how it made me look. I should be happy. I should feel attractive and I should feel wanted and I should feel like the person that I’ve become is someone that I want to live as. But instead I wonder if I’m going to be here until the end of the year, in time for D to make her instagram post. I’ve weirdly fallen upwards, I’ve just decided to do the things that make me laugh, and other people like that. But then the problem is no matter how good things look, there will always be a moment where doubt can creep in and fully obscure all sun. N sat with her legs pressed against T, and I noticed that I didn’t even want to go sit with everyone else at the end of the night. My natural tendency is to push myself lower down. I set myself up to get more evidence that I just can’t be loved, and that I’m not worth it. And no one is going to go out of their way to include me like that, and so even though I probably am liked, I end up fabricating enough proof for me to want to go home and be like the way I am.

I thought if I was attractive things would change. I was right, things did change. People treat me better, and I get positive feedback constantly. But also I was wrong, because I refuse to be happy deep down. D said that someone had a similar personality to mine, and I immediately pushed back in my mind, because I wanted to validate the fact that she doesn’t know me past this one face. It’s just a photograph of this weird constantly changing shape that I am. All of the parts that are in the shade stay that way. Unseen, and hidden. Necessary for the shape, but ignored by design.

D on the ride back while drunk, kept talking about how amazing sisters are. She also didn’t believe that I was no contact with my sister. That hurt. I would love to have a sibling, one where I could know what’s fucking happening in their life. One that I could fucking talk to once a couple months. But instead I get to have this pseudo tragic backstory that people don’t buy. What a fun fucking party trick, I get to say how I’m no contact with my mom and my sister. And I get to say in the same joking tone I always use, because what am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to fucking break down in front of people, am I supposed to tell them that I don’t think I can be loved and that I don’t have a model for it because I didn’t have parents in my eyes, hell I didn’t fucking have a life. I fully planned to kill myself constantly, and while I’m happy that I didn’t, a large part of me wishes that I didn’t have to keep convincing myself of that fact. God, why could I not have been loved. I wish I could have a hug, but instead I’ve come up with all of these surrogate methods that can keep me from remembering how fucking nice it would be to not be so deeply alone all the time.

R asked me to yell at her to go to the gym, and the first thing I came to my head was that she should just remember how much she hates herself, because that’s what I do. There’s no one else that I can hate, because there’s no one else there. And these feelings have to go somewhere. I tell myself that hurting will make me pure. I can somehow only feel proud of myself when I’m by myself. I just refuse to believe that anyone else could see me and feel proud. Just a big bundle of shame.

I hope I die of natural causes.

2 am my brain is fried but me and TTV stayed up playing arena and I got 23k hp on alistar lmao. We ended with a first that was fire I’m happy.

I had my first date with J today, and While it was good, afterwards I felt kind of sad. I realized I learned a lot about her but she didn’t really learn much about me, because she didn’t ask any questions or try to follow up at all whenever I would say something. I ended up telling her over text, and she apologized a lot and asked me questions. I do appreciate that, but it did push on a nerve for me.

I thought about SVM and how each wrongly classified instance pushes the boundary towards the more correct solution, and I think dating is kind of like that. I think I’ve learned that I really want a partner that is interested in me and wants to know more, and wants to know what I’m thinking. I remember my relationship with A, and how I started to feel like she didn’t even know me. I want to feel like I don’t have to beg someone to see me. To be loved is to be seen.

One of the memories I remember is that when I was in middle school I told my mom on the drive home that I didn’t like being Indian. She stopped the car and yelled at me to get out and walk home, and I had to beg her to not do that and to take me home. That never helped my internal view of myself and my identity. It doesn’t help that I grew up completely detached from any form of culture that was not of my own, and so I was never able to really relate or interact for that matter with Indian people. The only interactions I have were with my immediate family, and the Indian boys at school that were very crass and immature and I did not hang around them. I don’t know exactly how or when, but without knowing a lot of racism became internalized to me. I became one of those people that betrays their own group to show that they are one of the good ones, and it was never a conscious thing. But to me I believed and I would say that Indian guys were weird, and I thought Indian women were unattractive. Being Indian was always like a stain, or it was a mark of shame. I think that still carries with me now, and it’s something that’s really difficult to put down when it’s been instilled in me consistently. I always try to avoid Indian content on the Internet, because until very recently I’ve always seen it in a very negative light, and the comments are just filled with racism and it just reinforces in my head. Recently I’ve started to get positive sentiment, and it shocks me to see people saying things nice about Indian people. It feels like pandering, or people lying in the interest of equality, and the difficulty I have accepting it is further proof of how much it’s been internalized in me. I don’t go by any nicknames which is kind of ironic because I don’t really like my name. I don’t wanna change it or anything, but at the same time I always feel like I’m asking people to accommodate me and to put up with me when they have to learn my name. I feel like if anyone tries to convince me otherwise, by saying something like “it’s an unique and cool name” it would only feel like pandering. I feel like in my eyes the way to be desired as an Indian person is to imitate being another race. Whenever I see attractive Indian people online, it always feels like it’s meant to mimic white people, or when I think about Indian people in media it feels like they aren’t like me. I guess no one necessarily is like me, in the sense that everyone is unique, but there are very little Indian people online that are popular, I’m really thankful for Squeex, because he is Indian and proud about it, and it doesn’t feel like a drawback for him. I am working on seeing myself in that same light. I look in the mirror and I see my face and I hear my voice and I think of my name and I see my skin color and I don’t see Indian. Until I do, and then I just feel sad. It feels pathetic that I’ve been beat down so much that I’m ashamed of who I am, and it’s not an intense thing, but that’s mostly just because I don’t consciously identify as Indian in my mind or in my view of myself. I believe that you grow from adversity, but I don’t really know how I feel about this. This hasn’t been a loud fight or a big battle, but rather just a slow bleed that feels like it adds friction to so many of the things that I care about in life. I want to be wanted, and it kind of hurts me that no one is ever going to have me as their type. I am not a traditional Indian man, but rather I’m an amalgamation of different cultures that I see and the environment that I was raised in, none of which have anything to do with being Indian. And so I’m just a discount white person.

Getting that off my chest and seeing what sticks isn’t how I feel about myself completely accurately. Even now there’s already things that I wrote that I disagree with, and there’s things that I know that I am objectively wrong in. But I think a soft version of that sentiment does hold, I would love if I could see being Indian as something other than a drawback.

I really enjoy interacting with people over text, especially with playful conversations like flirting. Pretty much my main goal is to make myself laugh and to clip farm To myself, and I think funnily enough the authenticity goes across pretty well. I’m still confused about what N thinks about me, but I matched with someone cool just now on Hinge and they were pretty funny and I enjoyed our conversation. I took so many screenshots from my own laughing sake.

I keep reminding myself that it doesn’t have to be a bad experience to move back and forth. I think I feel scared in some ways because it’s like a change in life or expectation, and I do like that structure. I think I honestly may be more autistic than I thought, and part of me wants to see if I’m diagnosed, but also I wonder how that changes my own perception of myself. I know that I identify myself with diagnoses and I almost try to fit myself into a mold to validate that, so I wonder how that would be for something that I don’t really think I identify with (autism).

I ended up going on a like two hour walk, Including a hike for like 45 min of it in the dark. At first I was beating myself up mentally by thinking about how I didn’t feel like I fit in, and thinking about a lot of bad memories. I realized however that I was doing that, I was thinking about bad memories. I thought about the good ones, and a big thing I realized was UCSB was like going to Boot Camp for me, I went from very little socialization and being completely sheltered to being in the heart of a party town. I think UCSB overall made me so much more social, and also helped me understand much more who I wanted to be, not from a lack of choice, but rather from experience. I’m really proud of the person I’ve become, and I’ve made a lot of good memories. I’ve also learned how the people I am great friends with are completely different than the people I think I would be comfortable with at first glance. Everything will be OK in life.

I just came back from Six Flags, and I stopped at a Taco Bell along the way to get some food. I spent a lot of money, fairly casually, like $10 for a frozen lemonade here, $20 for a refill cup there, and I’m not sweating it too much because I can afford it. While I was eating in the Taco Bell a homeless person came in with some scabs and a limp, and sat kind of near me but behind me. I felt anxious and worried, and so I kept looking out of the corner of my eye, and by the time I finished I saw that they were visibly very distraught. I have a somewhat irrational fear of being attacked or stabbed by a needle and so usually I try to keep my distance but I thought about it and it’s only like six dollars for a meal. That amount of money is completely trivial to me right now, but that person looked like they were struggling for meals and battling other things. If I had to choose between getting a bottle of soda at Six Flags, or this person getting lunch, that should never be a question. I ordered a meal and waited for it and they were about to leave, when I stopped and asked them if they were hungry, and they said yes. Thankfully right at that moment the meal was ready, and so I got it and gave it and left. Whenever I feel bad or frustrated it’s nice to do something nice for someone else, I feel like that helps me focus on good instead of bad. And also I think it’s incredibly important to recognize the incredible privilege that I have, the fact that six dollars means virtually nothing to me. But that could make such a difference to someone else. I think a lot about how when I was a kid some random person online bought me five dollars worth of in game currency on transformice, and because of that I was able to finally get the things I wasn’t able to before. The world is not kind therefore we must be kind in its place.

When I was getting in my car to leave work I had my headphones in, and I thought I heard a bird singing near me so I stopped to listen. I found that it was the tree rubbing against this wooden stake both shaking in the wind. I’m so happy that I stopped to look at the world a little bit more, it makes me happy. I want to focus more on things that make me happy, that will be my happiest path. I want to stop and smell the roses more often.