An Open Letter

I was talking with a close friend and I mentioned how I had a couple of ideas I wanted to do when they got back in person. She asked me if I had made a list of them, and I said I didn’t because I thought it might be overbearing. She didn’t acknowledge that and said she was going to start a list also, and I should.

For me, I have been insecure and trying to convince myself that she considers me a close friend for a while, and I have plenty of evidence to back that up. It’s still hard, because of childhood issues and a lack of constant explicit confirmation. For fucks sake, even her MOTHER told me I was a close friend of hers. But the thing I found weirdly nice was how she didn’t even consider that we weren’t close friends – at least in the sense of me being overbearing on planning hanging out when she comes back. This is something I don’t take for granted or assume, I don’t internally believe that we are guaranteed to hang out when she gets back, but I guess in her eyes she definitely wants to.

I think this difference in perceptions of the same thing is so funny. The same relationship is perceived so drastically differently, and it shows me how it’s not the relationship itself, but the baggage I’ve carried with me that skews it in this way. Maybe my friends do like me. Huh.

Situation: A close friend talked about making a list of things we want to do when she is back in person.

Thoughts: She values me as a friend. She wants to spend time with me when we get back in person, and she enjoys my company. She wants to be friends with me, and we are close friends.

Feelings: I feel like things are okay. Not in the immediate sense, I’ve been actually doing very well, but more for my inner child. Maybe friends aren’t doomed to eventually hurt you and betray you, and maybe they can just love you. There is enough love in this world for me too.

Behavior: I live happy and free from the bad experiences as a child. I look forward to future moments with her and also enjoy my present without the extra baggage from childhood reminding me all the time.

There’s no other way I’d like to see this. I’m happy. I love you drop master 💝

Hi me, it’s been a bit since I’ve journaled – and that’s mostly due to life going much better. I’ve been spending a lot of time with friends, and I’ve been doing very well mentally. When I start to do better, I tend to neglect the things that I think helped me do better – such as the routine I have set out for myself daily. I wanted to stay consistent with this so here I am.

Today at the gym I was wrapping up my workout when I saw a girl who didn’t exactly seem to know what she was doing. She pulled over a crate and tried to do a pullup, but was struggling to do it and was on a weird bar where even if she did her head would hit the top. I had been in similar situations before, so I wanted to go over and offer some help but I didn’t want to come off as patronizing so I initially avoided it as I normally do. I then worked up the courage to just try anyway, and so when we were both in between sets I went over and mentioned I saw her, and if she knew about the assisted pull-up machine – as I also struggle with pull-ups and that’s what I do instead. She didn't, but seemed eager so I offered to show her the machine which was near us, which she gladly accepted.

We struggled with the machine a bit and talked about the workout, and then I went back to finish my workout. I realized I was being a coward and was staying in my comfort zone, so after I had finished that exercise I went back over and told her my friends don’t work out and if she wanted a workout buddy, and she enthusiastically said she was thinking the same thing and was regretting not asking me earlier. We exchanged numbers and IGs, and are planning to go workout tomorrow.

Immediately after this, I maxed out the calf raise machine – my first time maxing out a machine! I then went and maxed out the hip abductor machine, which I had never done before either. In a weirdly poetic way, this kinda felt like a divine intervention – explicitly showing me how much I am actually capable of. I’ve spent the last few weeks doing 310 on the calf raise machine, when I was able to do 400 lbs 10 times in a row without much struggle. To me, this shows how I am incredibly more capable than I think I am. In the exact same vein, my comfort zone would have been to stay to myself and my music, and not go out of my way to talk to that girl. And then again, it would have been comfortable for me to not go back and ask for her contact information. And look what happened because of that!

Life may not be as hard as I make myself believe. Maybe it is that easy? Just roll the boulder up, everything doesn’t have to be Sisyphean. I originally planned on doing CBT, but I sat here for a bit and couldn’t think of any negative thought patterns I wanted to change. Life is good. Love you big doug <3

So turns out she (obviously) doesn’t hate me and does value me as a friend. I’m glad I did CBT, but I also did talk to her about my concerns and I hope she understood and internalized it. She proactively reached out to me to call, and I’m incredibly grateful for that. Weirdly enough, I also had a Zoom call with her mother after that. That happened through pure coincidence, but I talked about a lot of things with her mom. One notable thing I was proud of was her mother wanted to tell me something about my friend that I thought may have been personal, so I interrupted her and expressed my discomfort with that. That aside, her mother reinforced the evidence that we are friends – and was very understanding because we had fairly similar childhoods and struggles.

It was very nice to be able to talk to a mother figure, and have that assurance and advice I was envious of other people for having. It also was very interesting to see how inherently flawed and how many of the same struggles I deal with now are things her mom is still dealing with. We talked a lot about different issues we were able to relate to, and it was overall an incredibly healing process. Before this, I had gone over to their house to join them for dinner once, and that was the first time I had done that before. Turns out both she and her husband liked me a lot which was a very nice thing to hear. Her mom was also incredibly surprised with my awareness and emotional maturity which was a nice bit of evidence for myself. I would surprise her with the stuff I had to figure out going through life, and with my awareness of different things. She even really liked the technique I’ve come up with of having a dialogue with yourself out loud, to self-support in a weird way.

We said we would talk again sometime in the future, and she said “And I am quite fond of you in specific : )”, which made me somewhat feel like tearing up in a nice way.

It’s nice to know life isn’t the view of it I have scarred in me from my childhood. I guess time for a bit more CBT to really run this idea home.

Situation: A friend’s mother said that said friend values me a lot as a close friend, and I am insecure about the level of this friendship.

Thoughts: There is no way for her to know, this is just her saying random stuff or trying to be nice. Even if this was the case, we may have drifted apart, she could have replaced me, or I could have ruined the friendship and she finally got rid of me.

Feelings: I feel horribly alone. I feel incredibly insecure about the relationship, and I feel ultimately unloveable and unfit for friendship.

Behavior: When I have a bit of lucidity, I will overexert or put too much strain on the relationship to test if it is still there. This will inevitably destroy the friendship as I will continue to strain it to test until it snaps. I will destroy this friendship to stay consistent with my childhood worldview instilled in me. I will be alone.

If I give myself a bit of compassion and step away from that worldview, however:

Thoughts: She means it. Her justification makes sense and aligns with the fact that this friend does care for me and values me as a friend. I am not being replaced, and even if she does make new friends, that will not affect our relationship drastically. We are close friends!

Feelings: I desperately want to truly believe this. I feel like I have more than enough evidence for this, and all the evidence against it has felt shaky and ill-founded. I feel okay, and I feel loved. I feel like everything is fine in life, and that it is no longer like childhood where I was unloved and neglected. Things will be OK.

Behavior: I won’t self-sabotage this relationship, and I will also allow myself to show the best parts of myself instead of the ugly insecurities to this friend and others. I will also be overall less stressed and will have a great experience in order to undo some of the neural patterns that have been reinforced so hard in me. I will be ok.

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I stopped and started to write this down halfway through the unhealthy thoughts section; one indicator of an unhealthy thought would probably be when to try to justify it, I have several different reasonings that could be true – yet they do not coincide with each other. For example: her not knowing if it is true but meaning it, or her not meaning it and saying it to be nice are both POSSIBLE, yet one conflicts with the other. To me, this feels like me trying to justify whatever will keep my worldview consistent. This is a nice little tell I want to be more mindful of to try to avoid this stuff in the future.

The effort you’ve put in is seen, and it is incredibly valuable. I love you blight <3

Right now I’m feeling very upset at a close friendship, but my issue is I don’t know if I am reasonable here with my problems or if I am just being unreasonable and unhealthy about the way I view it. I decided to vent/CBT here to try to leave this feeling behind so I can move on with my day.

I’ve felt somewhat angry because I’ve been the one who has been reaching out and initiating about 80% of the time, and a lot of the time it’s ignored. I also want to preface that there is context and I am only telling the parts that line up with this toxic narrative so take it all with a grain of salt. But I realized I felt very shitty because the person had not responded to my messages, but was posting things on their story throughout the day. I realized whenever I see something pretty in nature or cool things I try to send them it as a way of putting effort into maintaining the relationship, but they don’t do the same. They don’t send me pictures of random things they find interesting, I have to find out by looking through their story and swiping up. Also, they’ve made plenty of promises they haven’t followed through on to the point where if they say they will do something I don’t believe them anymore. I know that this isn’t done with malice, as even when we are in person it’s the same with stuff like paying me back – but I still find it a pretty unfavorable trait. I hate playing games like this, but I’ve tried explicitly mentioning to them several times which is incredibly uncomfortable for me to do – and each time they’ve made promising remarks and acknowledgments, but haven’t done anything else, and nothing changes. I know that typically friendships can get used to the mode of initiator and recipient, but I think this situation is different due to big timezone delays. I’m kinda sick of the feeling of them messaging me as a chore, and so I think at least for the next 24 hours I’m not going to initiate. I think overall I’m going to avoid initiating for a bit to experiment and see how it feels, as currently, I don’t think I can sustain this emotionally.

They mentioned in the past while talking about something different that if I stopped initiating with them, they would think something was wrong and would go out of their way to reach out and initiate. I’d like to hope that’s true, but realistically I think they’ll just continue as normal without noticing. Maybe I stop putting this much effort into the friendship if it’s not being reciprocated in my eyes.

Venting over – now CBT:

Situation: A close friend is not reciprocating communication, and they aren’t initiating with me.

Thoughts: They don’t value me as a friend, and are enjoying the friendship as long as they don’t have to put in effort to maintain it. I feel upset because I am putting in a lot of effort to try to maintain it, and it just seems like it’s not reciprocated at all.

Feelings: I feel like shit, and I feel like this friendship is on its way out. I feel like she doesn’t care about me as a friend, and that she doesn’t actually want to maintain the friendship. I feel somewhat taken advantage of, but that it’s my fault for that.

Behavior: I pull away from her as a friend, and I reinforce the feeling that people wouldn’t want to be close friends with me. I put less effort into the relationship drastically, and she sees that as a sign that I don’t want to be friends and also stops – friendship over.

Now in a better world:

Thoughts: She just sucks at texting, and doesn’t understand how I feel about it. For example with other friends of mine that I value a lot, they text me out of the blue 90% of the time, and I’ve always just assumed that’s how they are as a person, and I have no problems with it – I actively enjoy it. She probably doesn’t have the awareness to understand how she would feel in this situation, and so there’s no malice behind it.

Feelings: I do feel upset in a way because I’ve tried to explicitly communicate and stop the miscommunication, and it doesn’t seem like she’s paid attention to it, but she may not be a bad friend or ignoring it, she might just not be emotionally mature enough to recognize and be able to empathize with those feelings. I feel like it’s a bit more understandable, and when I frame it as a personality flaw instead of an indication of the friendship I no longer feel like the friendship is deteriorating. I can also corroborate this with evidence, as she’s mentioned in the past how she’s a bad texter and she wants to improve on that. I feel more secure in the friendship.

Behavior: I may have to stop communicating about harder things for her to change, and rather look to coerce or manipulate the behavior out of her through natural means instead of expecting her to consciously change her behavior. I can do things like text her less frequently, so she doesn’t feel like there’s no reason for her to initiate if I am always willing to initiate. But in doing this I can instead be more reasonable with the effort I am putting in and have her help maintain the friendship instead of it feeling so one-sided.

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Every time I do CBT I am surprised with how well it works, which makes me glad I force myself to do it out of habit now. I think the key statement to take away is that things can be personal flaws instead of indications of the relationship. I think that’s something incredibly important I need to carry with me more often. Proud of you man, keep fighting for the life you want to live. Love you Feet Pics 💌

Hi me. Sweet lord am I stressed right now. I just found out I have a mandatory grad student orientation, exactly at the same time as a doctor’s appointment on Monday morning. I don’t know if I can cancel or move the doctor’s appointment in time, as the office is closed so I am very worried if I will be able to make it to the mandatory orientation. I also am faced with the potential decision of reapplying to UCSB as a computer science masters student, as currently I am doing computer engineering – the same as my undergrad. The problem I didn’t foresee was for masters, the departments are fully different so I am unable to realistically take CS courses – which is the thing I am interested in. I can either tough it out for two years and get a masters in a field that I am not that interested in compared to CS – or I can somehow reapply as a new master’s student next year and restart my master’s program – adding on another year.

I shut down often with decisions like this, and I don’t know what to do. I’m leaning towards just toughing it out, as it is the path of least resistance, but I’m afraid of regretting it down the line. I’m pretty scared at my own incompetence, especially since growing up I was never the one to make decisions as I had a helicopter mom. This is a huge anxiety trigger for me, but thankfully over time I have gotten better at it; it still sucks a ton.

While sitting at the lookout point at the end of my walk the other day, I was thinking about which is worse. Being depressed, or being anxious – two big things therapy helps me with. Anxiety to me is feeling too much, and depression is feeling nothing good. At the moment, while I had been depressed for the last few months, I felt anxiety or stress was trivial compared to an overwhelming lack of pleasure in life. I also was aware that it was biased due to me forgetting what stress was like – I, unfortunately, can no longer say it’s a forgotten feeling.

One of the last things I asked my therapist last session was for her to tell me that things were going to be okay. I know this isn’t something she can necessarily tell me, and she did the thing of asking me to answer my own question (and I said yes things will be ok). I sometimes wish someone would give me that reassurance on it.

It’s been a while, might as well do some CBT with the whole doctor fiasco

Situation: Doctor's appointment on Monday morning, and just found out a mandatory orientation is on Monday morning and the office is closed – so I don’t know if I can reschedule in time.

Thoughts: I have no more options, it is over. There is nothing I can do, I am going to be faced with a huge cancellation fee that insurance will not cover.

Feelings: I feel hopeless, overwhelmed, and ultimately like my life is falling apart. I feel impending doom and dread filling my body.

Behavior: I increase stress levels to an unhealthy amount, constantly panic and freak out, and do not allow myself to enjoy anything or feel ok for the next few days.

Now for something better:

Thoughts: It is what it is. I can try to contact the doctor’s office, and I have already emailed to see if I can skip the orientation. Worst case, I call at 8 am on Monday morning to tell them the situation and try to reschedule the appointment to another day or to later.

Feelings: I feel stressed, but I also feel a bit more reasonable. I feel more okay, as I am doing as much as I can do, and excess stress doesn’t help me.

Behavior: I calm down, don’t put up a mental block on doing anything to help the situation, and act through it reasonably. I don’t stress excessively.

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That does sound better, doesn’t it? Also more rational – a big point is excess stress doesn’t help here. I love you QWERTYsuman 💟

Whenever I smile only the left side of my face creases. Every time I smile the left part of my lip curves up, my cheek in tow – all while the right half of my face stays the same. I’ve beat myself up looking in the mirror about it, and I’ve also fixated on it in photos I’ve taken of myself. I for some reason don’t feel that bad about it anymore. It’s a little quirk my body has, and in a weird way, I can somewhat fall in love with that part of me.

Maybe the things I considered flaws could be good. Sure a smooth stone is nice but a chipped crystal creates the most beautiful rainbows.

A thing I wanted to talk about was the realization at the last stages of a suicide plan. For me, it manifested in me sobbing staring up at the night sky, with the only lucid part of my brain trying to call the emergency hotline for my school’s mental health services. I remember I had been long out of tears, sitting in the Uber to the hospital quietly holding the phone to my ear where the person was there helping me get myself checked into inpatient care. I remember they had taken my phone and other belongings, and I was alone in the room with only the bed, sitting there feeling like a husk. My actions had shown me I regretted it, and maybe it was self-preservation, divine intervention, or whatever else you could possibly think of – but something had convinced me I wanted to live, if not just for a little bit longer.

I was no longer hysterical or crying when I talked to the doctor, and I remember how calmly rational I was while explaining my motivation and reasoning. I still to this day think it was irrational for me to back out then, as I still don’t know why I decided against overdosing with the pills I had been stockpiling. The thing I realized however at that point was I was willing to do whatever it took to live. I ended up convincing them I was fine without needing inpatient care, and after a few hours, they let me go after giving me some resources and helping connect me to a mental health clinic. I sat outside the hospital in downtown while waiting for the Uber to come pick me up, there was a sloped section towards some lower level, and I was sitting on the side bricks. Some women walked past me enjoying the nightlife, and I stared at my phone with nothing on it to try to act normal. Eventually, the Uber came and the driver was a friendly man who tried to small talk with me, asking if I was fine coming back from the hospital. I think I said I was fine and shut down the small talk – but I was touched and I still do appreciate that warmth from him. I eventually started therapy, and I still attribute that to be the best decision I have ever made. I have therapy with her again tomorrow, four years later.

I talked with a close friend last night, and he asked how I opened up to the therapist – as we both knew how hard it was to talk about feelings or to be vulnerable as men. I didn’t know my exact answer, but the sentiment boiled down to it was either that or I try to commit suicide again. I for some reason didn’t want to die, even though nothing had changed. I went into therapy with no armor, and fully left myself open to inspection with the hopes of a better life. That sentiment hasn’t left me since I constantly have the thought pop into my head about how I will do whatever it takes to want to live. I have a nightly routine of 5-6 different tasks, I force myself to exercise rigorously to the point of exhaustion daily, and I’ve built up the mental discipline to force myself to do things my body refuses to do. I spend a few hours each day actively fighting my mental health, and I am constantly trying to learn more or try new things when older tactics stop working. Recently I’ve been trying to do research on things that will chemically increase my endorphin levels, and I might incorporate another few things into my daily routine.

I think if I hadn’t sat down on the grass overlooking the lagoon that day with the full intention of quitting life, I would not have understood how far I am willing to go.

I was texting a close friend and they said how the fact I have this blog where I’m radically open and on full display is a “brave” thing, and for some reason that didn’t sit right with me – I couldn’t accept that as a compliment. I sat with the thought and tried puzzling it out a bit more on why I felt that way, and I concluded that I am this open in a selfish and unhealthy way.

For context, I grew up emotionally neglected by my parents and ended up learning very unhealthy ways of coping with emotions. I didn’t know how to reach out to friends, or how to ask for support so I would hide little “cries for help” in any way I could, with the hopes that someone would go out of their way to see them and come care for me. This unhealthy habit persisted throughout my life, and it would manifest in me posting cryptic descriptions on my private Instagram, leaving coded messages, or trying to have visible signs of me struggling. None of these things ever worked, and it was a weird cycle where instead of realizing how unrealistic this tactic was, I believed I simply had to leave more clues and do more of the same behavior.

Now, I’m better at this – I can reach out to friends, talk to my therapist whom I see weekly, or do any of my numerous other coping mechanisms, but I guess this blog still reminds me of those cries. I would be lying to say I haven’t sometimes fantasized about certain people reading this blog, recognizing the things I’m too cowardly to confront them with or realizing how I could use some extra support. I’d like to think through conscious effort I’ve moved away from that – part of my proof is how I no longer want a friend to follow through on their word of them subscribing to this blog, (still love you sheepy!). That being said, I still feel like it’s familiar enough to evoke those same feelings of longing for that care and attention I wasn’t given as a child.

The other reason I realized I felt comfortable putting my shameful parts on public display was that I realized no one cares about other people to this extent. Maybe if someone is your partner or someone you are incredibly integrated with they would consciously follow you and be invested in your thoughts – but outside of a very small handful, people are so preoccupied with their lives to give you that much time and effort. I feel like this comes off as incredibly depressing and lonely, but to me, this is an incredibly liberating thing. I don’t feel concerned about how people perceive me, because they’re more focused on themselves to care if I go out wearing pajamas for my morning dog walks. I can be incredibly vulnerable and expose myself on this blog with virtually no consequence because no one who I interact with often cares enough to read the sheer volume of text I pump out. This could either be a sad, lonely feeling, or it could be a freeing and joyous realization. For me, I choose the latter.

I walked outside and the sun was bright. There are birds flying, people walking around, the trees are green and swaying.

I didn't want to be happy, I don't get anymore what I want.

I wish there was something I could make, say, paint or do to just put myself down somewhere. I wish I could convey how I feel, down from the highest nights to the lowest days.

I wish I could put it in such an unadulterated way, untainted by concerns of perception. I wish I could somehow put every piece of me down there to capture that feeling of wonder, and that feeling of overwhelming fear that comes as a consequence of that freedom.

I wish I somehow could