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28/07/24: Been thinking about making this site, or at least this page, private. I dunno though, I think despite the fact that it's kinda insane behavior, venting this shit KNOWING that people could read it is part of why it's making me more comfortable talking about my feelings and opinions with others. Like, sure I'd be extremely embarrassed if anybody I knew found this, but honestly not much on here is very different from stuff I'd be fine telling people in private anyway? I think it's just the fact that it's all in one place that's making me self-conscious, more than anything that's actually written here. Maybe it's just the idea of having a public diary in general that's kinda embarrassing.

Anyway, I think I'm having a good time with that server, still. I've had some hiccups where I wanted to run away, but I don't think it's as bad as it usually is. I've been through some rough times mentally and I still like the place, so maybe I was right about it being a good place for me.

18/07/24: Well, I'm surviving. I guess. I've been struggling with a lot of things lately, and honestly it's been killing me. It's one of those moments in life where I wish I could just go through with suicide, but I don't even have the energy for that, so I stay living.

Watched Interview with the Vampire recently, both the movie and the series. I went into the show fully blind, so I was honestly surprised at just HOW heavily they leaned into the queerness. I'm not a huge fan of PDA on screen, but I think it was tasteful enough to watch the whole thing. It honestly felt kinda satisfying having it not just be a vague undertone like the movie, and instead being very explicit about the vampires being gay, lol.
I think there's a third season on the way, but honestly leaving it at season 2 would've worked just as well. I'm also honestly kinda tempted to buy the books just cuz I enjoyed the characters so much, and wanna see how they're portrayed in the books. On the topic of the characters, I really liked Louis in the series. He has way more personality than in the movie, and it probably made him my favorite character. I wasn't too interested in Lestat, purely because I preferred the casting choice in the movie... I still think the actor did a great job, I was just kinda neutral about him. It's kinda funny, honestly. I went from hating Louis for the casting choice in the movie, to disliking Lestat in the series for the same reason. At least it wasn't as bad as Louis in the movie. I still can't believe they decided on using whats-his-name for Louis in the movie when he neither fit into the era, nor did he fit the actual role. I still see his horrible looking hair in my nightmares.

Other than gay vampires, I haven't really been up to much. I neglected my unemployment chores, actual house chores, and still haven't contacted the doctor. Big surprise. A friend tempted me with hanging out, but I'd have to get my meds before that or I'd be a pain in the ass the whole time. I said I'd call yesterday, but you know how it goes. The worst part about the withdrawals is honestly how it's affected my sleep. I sleep for 12 hours a day, or I don't sleep at all. I don't feel sleepy unless I'm right about to pass out, so my nights have been getting later and later. I feel like I'm back in highschool. At least I still have somewhat of an apetite, although I'm losing weight again. I'll be fine, it just kinda sucks.

I joined a new server on Discord, and it's been alright I think. It's at the very least part of the reason why I haven't updated here for a few weeks, which is probably a good sign. The people in there are... fine? There's a lot of younger people, but most the active people I talk to are around my age, which is nice. I don't struggle as much with my paranoia in that server as I've done in past servers, likely just due to the fact it's got a decent verification system, plus being relatively small. The mods are cool too, I wouldn't consider them my friends or anything, but we get along. I think my main issue is that I'm getting those feelings of wanting to run away again, the ones that creep up on me every time I feel too close to a group of people. I try to not let it get to me, and so far it's been managable. I think it helps that there's a guy in there who struggles with the same thing as me, just slightly differently. I think I'll stay in that server for a while, it feels right.

29/06/24: Not eating again. This time it's because I feel awful, no apetite or nothing. If I can, I'll head to the store and buy some snacks or whatever. I just don't feel like eating anything honestly. The stress of trying to find a job is crushing me yet again.

22/06/24: I feel like my life is falling apart. It might just be the dissociation speaking, though. I didn't end up calling anybody, because fuck it, am I right? I really can't bring myself to care enough. I can feel my health deteriorating as the meds wear off. Fuck it.

Listening to some old NIN albums, all while I've got a migraine cooking. I should take painkillers, but the pain isn't as bad as the nausea. I think I'd just throw up if I took anything, honestly. The pain isn't good for me though, and I know that. I already skipped dinner, and the pain and hunger combined with my general heightened stress level are making me dissociate. Everything feels like I'm dreaming, but I can feel the dead skin on my fingertips against the keys on the keyboard and it's making me want to bite my fingers off. I probably could with how dulled my pain receptors are right now. I wanna get into a fight. I wanna get beat up.

It's kinda funny, how the second I feel anything different from my emotionless default, I want to get into a fight. I don't even feel pissed of or anything half the time, I just think I don't know how to seek out other people unless it's for violence. Instead of thinking "I need a hug" I'm wired to think "I need to fight". I just thought violence was an inherent part of who and how I am, but the more self-reflection I do on this godforsaken blog, the more I end up understanding myself. I don't even want to understand these parts of who I am, because I see them as shameful. Wanting to get in a brawl "just because" is a lot less embarrassing to admit, than the truth that it's the only way I can be comfortable with somebody else in my space. I'd rather someone break my nose than hold my hand. I made enemies with everybody I was in love with because the only time I'd felt something equally intense for another person was when I wanted to spill their blood on the pavement. But this is stuff I've ranted about before, I guess it's hardly something new at this point.

I think I like getting into physical fights because it's an act where a sort of mutual respect is held. You're directing all your focus on the other person, and only on them. For a brief moment you're both just animals who want eachother dead. If you're clearly weaker but still putting up enough of a fight, there's a sense of respect at the bravery, often hidden beneath the overwhelming consensis that you're a fucking idiot. But as someone who's often been the weaker one in fights, the euphoria of seeing the other person finally lose their cool is near intoxicating. Maybe I'm just some sort of fucked up masochist, but I think those were the most fun fights I've ever gotten into, because I got to feel like I had power over someone stronger than me purely because I made them snap. Basically I just like being an annoying piece of shit at the cost of a few bruises. It's fun.
I guess a bout of (considerably safer) roughhousing serves a similar purpose. It reduces the participants to just being two animals for a while, although this time not through being blinded by rage, instead just... normal sane playing behavior, lol. I've never been much of a fan of roughhousing with friends though. It's too friendly, and it just kinda feels awkward. Too grabby. Almost intimate compared to a real fight. Eugh. That's just me being kinda fucked up mentally though, let's be honest. If it's not violent enough I get weirded out, but that's because I'm weird myself.

Y'know reading this back it sounds like I've got some kinda weird fetish for this shit. I don't think I do, at least I hope I don't, but I genuinely just kinda miss being at an age where getting into fights was still somewhat acceptable and safe. Good lord I googled "urge to fight" and a quora answer straight up opened with "Fighting is like sex." GET AWAY FROM ME!!!
It's actually a pretty good answer though, not gonna lie. It's talking about how getting into fights is sometimes just a normal part of being human. They also called themselves a "fistfight activist" which is really fucking funny.

17/06/24: I don't know how long I can keep this up. That sounds like the beginning of a suicide letter (trust me, it's not), but it's something I've been thinking about lately. I'm sick, both mentally and physically, and while it's something I can treat with the right medication and the right attitude, I'm too tired. The dose of my anxiety meds is too low (if it's even doing anything at all), and I've run out of my other medication, but I can't bear to contact my doctor about it. It started because of anxiety, but now I'm just so fucking tired of pretending I care about myself, when I really don't.
It's probably just my hormones acting up, but the depression's been getting worse lately. I'm kinda scared to mention it to my doctor, because I know he'll just chalk it up to "female" bodies being full of problems by nature, and then just try and convince me to take birth control. It happened last time I brought it up with a doctor, and I don't doubt that it'll happen again. I'd rather let myself die than recognize this body as what it is. Call me stubborn to a fault, but I don't want to give up now.

I don't even know if I have a lighter note to end on. I try to do that with the real depressing entries, but not much good has happened lately.
I sat in the sun today. I think that helped, even if just a little. It wasn't really the unmatched power of going outside that helped, it was more just the searing pain of the brightass sun on my downright vampiric face that did it, I think. A form of healthy self-harm, I guess. As healthy as going out without sunscreen could be. It was nice, sitting alone with just the sounds of nature for once. I don't do it much, preferring to drown my thoughts out with music 90% of the time, but I think I'd just reached the point of depression where I couldn't even muster up suicidal ideations anymore. My mind was just empty. I guess I mentally gave up at that point. I haven't felt this bad in a very long time, and I guess it kinda makes sense that it came now. I'm not busy enough to be able to distract myself, but that also means I feel like shit for not being busy.
I need to tell my dad that I'm not doing good, and that I need help, but there's nothing he can do about it, and I know that he feels awful for that. I wish I could get rid of my depression by any means other than contacting a fucking doctor again. I'll call them tomorrow.

14/06/24: Oh my god I'm so sick and tired of how afraid I am of being rejected or seen as "wrong". Like, if I wasn't such a coward I could actually tell people how I feel and what I want from them, but I just can't. I've gone from genuinely not wanting to tell people anything ever, to now wanting to be more open and then just... not knowing how to get the words out. I know most of it comes from my stupid sense of pride being way too strong to ever let myself be seen as weak, but it's such a pain in the ass to then get that stupid pride out of the way. I know it's the core issue, but knowing that just makes me even more ashamed for some reason, like I'm admitting that I'm faulty in a way I wasn't prepared for. Sometimes I wish people could just read my mind so I wouldn't have to tell them embarassing shit myself.

I really wish I could be a chill open person, but that just isn't how I work, I guess. It's not even that I deliberately stay quiet, if someone asked me something I'd tell them the truth, but they just never fucking ask. If they ask anything, it's not the right question and I get frustrated and just tell them to fuck off and leave me alone. Maybe I'm just scared that I'll overstep some boundary I didn't even know existed, so I wait desperately for someone to give me the OK before I even try. It's what puts a huge wall between me and people I try to get close to, even when I know I'm just imagining it.

There's this guy I like a normal amount (obvious lie). I think I've liked him ever since we met, so for over a decade now? I liked him before I found out I was... Y'know. At the time it made sense because he still identified as a girl, but then he came out as trans. Obviously this made me have to reconsider how I felt about him, and while I thought my feelings would go away, it turns out he still occupies my thoughts way more than I'd like to admit, if not more. While he wasn't my "awakening" or anything, I definitely should've realized it by then. I know that he likes me back, but I really don't think it's me that he likes.
The problem is that I've never really talked to him as my genuine self, and I'm so fucking scared of showing him that. He's seen glimpses of my true self, and while he's showed vague interest when I've told him about it, I'm still too much of a coward to stop pretending I'm someone else when we actually talk. I want to tell him about myself, and about the feelings I have for him, the genuine ones. I'm just so fucking scared that he'll think I'm weird. I don't want him to lose his feelings for the person he thinks I am, but I also don't want him to secretly miss who I used to be. It's so much easier to hide behind my persona and pretend like I can be someone else, just so he'll love me. I think our relationship is reaching its limits, though. I'm spending more time working on my mental health, and because of that, it's getting harder to keep the carefully crafted persona up. It used to be so easy when I wasn't even aware it was happening.

I know it's a hell of my own creation, and that I can just stop being a coward and tell him all of this, just to have it be over with. I could send him a link to this shitty blog, tear my ribcage open and bare my heart to him, show him just how desperate I am for him to acknowledge me at my weakest and still tell me he loves me. But I can't. My pride and overwhelming fear stand in the way. I'd rather see his love for the fake version of me fizzle out and die, than to be honest for once and tell him I can love him back tenfold, if only he'd give my true self a chance.

In the end, I know this longing is for nothing. We live too far apart, and I can't admit to anything through text, so I don't really see how we'd get past the awkward "hey this made me think of you :)" stage. Verbal communication is too difficult for me, and when you're long-distance that's all you've got. I don't even know how to show affection through words in the first place, I'm probably a pain in the ass to be together with, lol.

On a lighter note, how the fuck are you even supposed to do that in the first place? To properly convey how you feel about someone, I mean. I can barely tell people that I don't actually hate them in response to them sharing something heart-felt with me. How am I supposed to convey that I actively love and enjoy talking to someone??? I see people being sappy and gross all the time online, but thinking about myself saying anything even remotely similar to that makes me cringe. Or someone else saying that to me, honestly they're both extremely uncomfortable thoughts. I just don't get how people can act affectionate in a normal well-adjusted way and not feel like jumping off the nearest cliff.

07/06/24: Someone recently told me my life probably feels like shit recently because I've gotten out of my usual reward system cycle. It caught me by surprise, and I hate to admit it, but I think they were right. I hate the way it makes me feel like a child or a dog or something, but my life felt the most in control when I went to my therapy appointments and then got myself a reward after, regardless of if I even made any progress in therapy or not. Like it or hate it, I'm a slave to routine and basic psychology.
That's something that keeps me up at night, honestly. The fact that I'm so suceptible to basic psychology tricks, more than most other people I know. It also means that I apparently do even worse with the negative effects of it all. If I'm missing my reward system for barely a month I want to kill myself. It's so fucking stupid.

A negative that comes with this chokehold reward systems have on me, is that I keep subconsciously witholding "rewards" from myself if I did literally anything that wasn't overwhelmingly positive. I got asked politely if I could wait until someone else was done with something, and obviously (like the sane, perfectly stable person I am) I immediately broke down as soon as I was out of view. Tears and snot and all, it was gross. Anyway, I now (several hours later) am ignoring how hungry I am because deep down I feel like I don't deserve to eat, because I (almost) did something "wrong". This is the fucked up logic my brain runs on 24/7, by the way. No wonder I had a fucking eating disorder as a teenager, I'm batshit insane at this point.
So the thing is, am I gonna grit my teeth and force myself to eat despite feeling like I'll throw up if I do? Of course not, I don't have that level of self-dicipline. I'm gonna sit here feeling like absolute shit for no reason because I'm stubborn. I don't even think my dog brain logic makes sense myself, but I sure will follow it.

I think 90% of the reason why I hate the idea so much is because literally the only time people my age talk about this shit is if theyre either, 1. fetishizing it, or 2. trying to debunk it or call it inhumane. That's probably a huge reason why I can't read those... God this is gonna sound insane if you don't know what I'm talking about, but it's probably why I can't read those dom/sub verse fanfics, other than the fact that I just find it all gross. I can't read that shit because a "sub" character will be like "to deal with my nature I established a strict reward/punishment routine in my daily life... *edgy hair flip*" and I'll stare at myself in the mirror at 3AM with the realization that I can relate to a character in a shitty porn fic more than literally anything else I've ever read. God it's embarrassing. If I was into that sorta stuff it would've been great I guess, but I'm not, so it just gives me this overwhelming feeling of dread. Honestly, that kinda goes for everything. People sexualize the weirdest shit and for some reason I always end up finding the most mundane shit about myself sexualized online, and obviously I can't forget about it and now just live in constant misery. That's mostly a joke. Mostly.

Maybe that's a reason why I hate dealing with people in general, especially online where people act like idiots with no sense of shame (which extends to IRL when they're chronically online tbh). I feel like people go from "it's okay to be [trait]" to "being [trait] is so fucking hot" way too fast, like, I don't wanna know that someone I've only hung out with during lunch breaks finds my wavering voice hot. That's crazy to say to someone they barely even know, and it's actively gonna lead to me not wanting to talk around them.
I know I'm overreacting, and that they definitely didn't mean it to be borderline sexual harassment like how I'm treating it, but come on. They should know better than to think everybody's as comfortable with that shit as their usual clique. I may have annoying boundaries, but I feel like it's pretty easy to tell that I'm a prude from my extremely awkward... everything. Or maybe they didn't wanna stereotype me. Touché.
Either way, there's a lot about me that I'm painfully aware that others are into, and I don't think there's a single thing I considered a confidence boost to learn about. I can ignore it somewhat if I see it online, or at least pretend I don't care. When it comes directly from someone talking about me though, I don't know what to do. It just feels disgusting. I end up wanting to change that thing about me to avoid it, but at some point I snap and decide I don't care, just for the cycle to repeat.
The weirdest comments I've gotten have probably been uhh... I think the ones about behavior I wasn't even aware of? Stuff like my unsteady voice (as previously mentioned), my accent, and even the way I look at people...? It's not even that I'm acting oblivious to humble brag, I guess I can see what they mean if I really think about it, but like... huh? Where the fuck did that come from? I'm still really confused why they thought that was appropriate to mention just out of nowhere. Especially when they're things I'm also pretty consistently made fun of for. Why even draw attention to it at all? And no, I'm not just autistically not catching hints that they're into me, because they (seperate people) definitely were just acting normal other than those comments. It's weird. I don't like it.

05/06/24: It's so fucking cold in my room it's driving me insane!!!! I thought summer was finally here to stay, and then it got really cold for some reason. I'm too stubborn to close the window while my PC's still running (it makes my room extremely stuffy and gross), so I'm stuck shivering until I finish this entry. It might be short for that reason, but you know me. I would rather freeze to death than not rant about random shit for like two hours.
Alright, scratch that, I closed the window...

So anyway, uhhh... Getting the blues again. I think I've been dissociating a lot, and my escapism habits have gotten stronger. I try not to do the usual shit I do when I feel like this, but it's hard to resist. I let myself indulge in candy and snacks, and that's kept some of it at bay, but I constantly feel this urge to just... I guess it's an urge to get completely swept up by something, like a book. I've been trying to do some writing, but I have a hard time letting myself just write whatever I want, and keep realizing how shitty it is, and ending up frustrated and deleting it all. My best attempt was making a new OC that I can shove all my weird dissociated feelings into, and that's going alright I guess? I dunno.
I could make one based on myself and then just write self-indulgent stories about them getting everything they ever wanted, but that would kinda suck. It would just make me feel worse.

So I've spent the past week or so just kinda doing whatever to get out of my head. Mostly re-reading some old manga and webcomics I know get me too obsessed. At this point it's practically self-harm. The escapism, I mean. It's not like I mean to, but it's literally the only thing I can think of, and regardless of if I do it or not, I end up dissociating the second I stop actively trying to keep in the present. It's fucking awful. And the worst thing is that I don't know how to make it stop other than giving in, something that would make me have to admit I'm not strong enough (which is a bad way to think about it, I get it). I just feel like a failure when it takes control, y'know? It's not even like dissociation is harmful or anything, I'm just sick of it taking up huge chunks of my life, and of being out of control.

29/05/24: Helios finally snapped out of it and reconnected with his friends, I think that's gone pretty alright so far? I'm still on the fence, but it feels good to have stuff back to normal at the very least. At some point I'm gonna have to bring up my issues with them properly, but for now I'm fine just coexisting. Two steps forward, one step back. Normal stuff.

Finally got my economy somewhat sorted, which feels good. I'm having trouble finding a job still, but at least now I get some money to keep me afloat. Had a talk with my dad about the future and stuff, I'm relieved he's offering to support me, but I also hate recieving help so I doubt I'll take advantage of that. I ended up weeding the yard just to feel like I'm not a burden. I know I don't have to, but I'd hate coming off as spoiled. Maybe it's just to convince myself that I'm not.

Been reflecting a bit on this glorified blog of a website, and the various kinds of progress I've been making between self-obsessed venting (lol). I think I'm kinda proud? I dunno. I'm definitely seeing progress in how I handle my emotions and stuff though. I feel like I've gotten a lot more relaxed in general, not constantly bottling up all my emotions until I explode. I'm also kinda genuinely happy about the stuff I'm figuring out about myself from just letting myself do whatever and ramble about anything and everything. You wouldn't know unless I told you, but a lot of the stuff I realize about myself is stuff I realized mid-writing. I just erase my grumbling paragraphs and rewrite with whatever realization I had. Not all of them, but more than one for sure. It's theraputic, like, it's literally helping me deal with stuff that used to keep me up at night. Crazy what a journal does to a motherfucker.

Been lamenting about love again, like I do. Y'know it reaches this point every so often where I'm questioning if I'm even cut out for it at all. I see Helios talk to his partner and I'm just... I don't get it. I can vaguely understand it through the writing I read, but when I see real people in real love I don't get it at all. Maybe I just hate PDA so much it makes me grossed out. Honestly a very valid possibility, now that I think about it.
There's also always the extremely boring explanation that I'm too traumatized or whatever. Yadda yadda. Don't care. Womp womp.
I mean it's probably also objectively true, but still. It feels like such a bummer move to go "I'm too damaged for love... *flips bangs emo-ly*", even for someone like me. I like to think I'm capable of it, and try to stay optimistic. I may seem like a self-depricating piece of shit, but around real people I'm actually painfully normal, other than my complete social ineptitude (lmao). I actually kinda hate dudes (other people do it too, but let's be honest, it's mostly men) who make their whole personality about how they're "such a bad person". Like, yeah. You are. Get over it or stop terrorizing everybody you meet. Lord.

08/05/24: It's weird craving love and affection and intimacy when I'm absolutely disgusted by it at the same time. I kinda go back and forth between desperately wanting to be loved and thinking other people are gross and too much work. If I could just find someone who accepted me and didn't question me even when I'm doing something objectively bad, I would finally be comfortable seeking comfort in other people. That, however, is an awful relationship that's bound to end up toxic, if not abusive. I guess that's why I'm prone to fantasy instead. I read sub-par fanfiction and overly depressing poetry, and I imagine myself as a different person who's capable of accepting love without questioning the motives behind it.

Luna likes selfshipping. Helios has the tendencies, but Luna's the one that's out and proud about her relationships with fictional characters. I've... I guess I've given it a brief thought before, to have some source of comfort until I get the guts to actually meet new people. It just doesn't click with me, apparently. I dunno. I try to put myself in the shoes of a blank slate character, like in a dating game, or an "x reader" fanfic, but it just feels so... unrealistic. The character supposed to be "me" is always received too well, or doesn't act like I would, so I just can't see it as myself to begin with.
People seem to use selfshipping as some sort of escapism, a chance to be more confident, or accepted as their true self... Meanwhile, I'm too stubborn with who I am, and how I want to be percieved. Despite lamenting about how horrible of a person I am constantly, and about how much I hate myself, I can't actually see myself being any different. Being a sad and pathetic little guy is practically the core of who I am, and changing that feels like it's not even me anymore. At the same time, a lot of selfshipping stuff is directed pretty obviously to feminine people. Selfship "imagines" that Luna tries to shove down my throat are about being taken care of, and being small and frail. The ones aimed towards guys are pretty much always aimed towards transmasc people, and while the posters claim they think trans men are just like any other men, the way the shit's written definitely shows they think otherwise. I had that same issue scrolling through the MLM tags on tumblr, and literally all of it is exclusively t4t. It's really weird, but like... not in a particularly negative way. Neutral weird. I just feel kinda alienated, even when I probably shouldn't.

It reminds me of how I see content about/for trans men, and I don't see myself in it at all. I don't think I ever have, honestly. It probably has to do with me being otherwise mentally fucked up, but I just can't see myself as a trans person, especially not compared to other trans people. I guess the dissociation is at fault; my body doesn't really feel like it's mine, it never has. The parts attached to it don't really matter to me because of it.
I'm honestly debating even saving this part of the entry to the site, since it feels kinda uncomfortable letting people know something about me that I don't really care about myself. Like, what if someone reading this blows it entirely out of proportion? What if I'm once again reduced to the difference between my sex and my sense of self, instead of just seen as... I dunno, a person?

I don't really feel dysphoria. I don't care when strangers call me a young woman, or when people I know slip up and call me "her". I hate telling people my pronouns, because I feel like they should just know. I'm a man, I've always been one. The only difference between me and my other male peers is the body I inhabit. I don't feel dysphoria, but I feel depersonalization. I can stare at myself in the mirror and recognize that it's supposed to be me, but it doesn't... look like me. It never has, and I'm not sure what I'm supposed to see in the reflection in the first place.
Since I don't care about the body I have, I've never really done anything out of the ordinary to "masculinize" it. I even let my hair grow long, since it's annoying to trim it constantly. I dress exclusively in men's clothing, I never wear makeup, I don't shave... I literally just do whatever other men do. Me "breaking the binary" and doing some risky "gender non-conforming" behavior is literally just the same shit any other guy does, shitty eyeliner and sloppy nailpolish. My point is that I don't fit any real "type" of trans man that I see online. I'm literally just some dude.

It's uncomfortable only really being able to relate to cis men. When I'm by myself I don't see any issues with it, and I barely even remember the fact that I'm different. I get painfully aware when I'm around other people though, especially when I'm around cishet men. I definitely also notice it when I'm around cis women and trans people (and to some degree, cis men who are otherwise LGBTQ+), but their overfamiliarity is pretty easy to deal with compared to the terrifying realization that I'm prey to cishet men. The worst I get from the others is that they assume I've got some shred of femininity (or understanding of it) in me, and once they realize I don't, I just have to deal with being treated like any other cis man (technically a win?).
When I'm around cis men, I tend to forget that I'm not one of them. I connect better with them, and that leads to me being generally just more comfortable. I tune out the high pitch of my voice, and lose my awareness of how small and weak I am in comparison to them. It's only when I shift how I sit, or stand, and their eyes lose contact with my eyes, that I remember. Most cishet men have already realized that I'm completely unappealing to them by that point, and it's rare that I've had cishet men try to get with me after I'm comfortable being alone with them. Rare, but not unheard of. If they weren't het, I could've at least had the comfort of convincing myself "at least he saw me as a man".

06/05/24: I feel like I'm fucking everything up again, I can't keep making the same shitty mistakes over and over. I need to get my shit together or I'm never gonna get better, but it's so fucking hard. I keep befriending new people with the help of others and then once I get a little too comfortable, they realize I'm a piece of shit and I start slipping up again. I feel so fucking stupid but there's nothing I can do about it and that's what's more frustrating than anything else. It's out of my control despite it all being my fault. God, I hate being myself sometimes.

It doesn't help that what I'm doing is affecting other people too. I did it with Helios and I'm doing it again with Luna, I feel like such a piece of shit even though they're both so disgustingly kind and accepting of me. I feel like I'm their shitty overly dependent friend who will just keep leeching off of them until everyone just ends up miserable and alone and the only people left to love them is me. But I don't. I hate myself so much that I can't stop thinking about myself when dealing with others. I'm incapable of loving people that are actually there for me because I don't think I deserve it. It's tearing me apart and all I can do is sit and watch as I ruin the lives of everyone around me just because they love me when I'm not capable of loving them back. I don't even know why I try anymore. There's so many parts of me that are capable of love, but the only ones actually in control are the ones with gnashing teeth and soulless eyes, the ones who keep crying out for something they can never have and hell will sooner freeze over than someone let them have what they want.

I need to get back to Helios' friends soon, and that's been stressing me out. He still isn't talking to anybody and while I know he's gonna be alright in the end, he's completely incapable of actually hurting himself, I still wonder if I'll ever actually see him face to face again. I'm scared that the old Helios I knew is gonna be completely overwritten by whatever this new broken version of him is. I know change is inevitable but what the fuck am I supposed to do when that change is ultimately for the worse, and all because of me?

The worst part is that I'm not even suicidal anymore, I want to get away from everything but I sure as hell don't wanna kill myself. I'm forced to deal with the consequences of not dealing with my trauma early enough. For letting myself get this fucked up by it all. I don't even want to get better because I'm so scared that I'll lose who I am once I'm "fixed". Learning that I'm not who I'm really supposed to be, that I'm just a manifestation of my own fucking trauma has ruined me. I know this part of me won't die once I'm better, but it sure as hell feels like it.

I need to speak to Helios' friends, but this time without him as some sort of safety net. I have to explain to them what happened, and that I'm the reason everything went to shit. I have to make everything alright again so Helios can get back to his former self, but at the same time, he left out of his own free will. I feel like I both have to take responsibility of my own actions and someone else's just so things can be normal. Who can I even blame for us being M.I.A. for so long? Luna? For distracting us? There's so many things wrong about this shitty situation that I can't even point to whose fault it really is. We're all just cowards at this point. I saw a glimpse of the former Helios yesterday night and it scared me, because that means we're getting close to having to actually deal with everything for real.

02/05/24: It's may! Great! Woo!... I am actually pretty excited about it. I thrive best in summer, honestly.

Sometimes I tend to kinda just doubt everything I know about myself, when I've gotten too comfortable thinking I have my psyché figured out. I get it especially bad with my C-PTSD, thinking I'm just overreacting, and that surely I would've needed to have a way worse childhood to end up traumatized. Today was one of those days, surprisingly, considering I literally spoke to my psychologist earlier today about going ahead with finding a therapist more adept at treating C-PTSD. Anyway, I fall into these doubt spirals sometimes, often when I'm doing a bit better for once. This time I ended up scrolling through the C-PTSD subreddit (I lurk there sometimes, but the traumadumping and venting there kinda keeps me away), probably to further fuel the lingering feeling that my trauma wasn't bad enough. I found a post, however, that was someone just like me, who was constantly thinking that they almost would've been happier to have experienced more concrete abuse, because it feels weird being able to relate to other people with C-PTSD when all you really went through was your parents not being emotionally present enough. As a reply to that post, someone linked a video about emotional neglect, and I obviously clicked on it, because I'm predictable like that, lol.

The video is this one, by the way. It's a really good video going over emotional neglect and how it presents in adults, and when she started talking about behaviors someone might notice in themselves after experiencing emotional neglect, I finally felt... Validated?
It's kinda strange how so much of what makes me... well, me? is actually just symptoms of emotional neglect. Stuff like struggling with decisions, self-abandonment... Hell, I even scrapped a blog entry yesterday that was literally about my issues with just wanting to do whatever people say, despite also hating being controlled. I'm ashamed of being so predictable, but that shame is also a symptom of what makes me predictable in the first place!!! AAAH!! It's so frustrating!!!!!

I'm guessing you can kinda see the weird eureka moment I'm having right now. It's something I kinda hate being aware of, while at the same time it's almost euphoric; finally realizing that the stuff I'm insecure about is stuff directly related to me having a tough childhood, and it isn't just how I am as a person. Where it gets kinda terrifying, is that this is stuff that is so inherent to who I am as a person that I have literally no idea of who I would be without it. There's a huge chance that re-learning how to be a person will end up with me being completely different, and at this point the one thing I care the most about is being able to be myself as I am now. I'm genuinely getting kinda upset thinking about the potential that truly healing as a person will end up with me no longer being who I thought I was, who I'm comfortable being.

21/04/24: Dissociating again. It's pretty bad. It's hard for me to write properly but I thought it might help, I rarely dissociate for no reason.
I guess it started earlier today when I put together a shelf. I wanted to vacuum while I was at it, but something just... felt off. I ate my lunch like normal. Made a cup of tea that I barely even drank, it's just been sitting there. Had dinner at some point but I can't remember anything I did between lunch, the tea, and dinner, honestly.
I think I just got stuck on thinking about how much stuff I should get done, but haven't. I have an important call in a few days, and I need to find a therapist. Like, one who actually knows how to deal with my issues. I also gotta call my mom. That's probably the thing I wanna do the least. I don't like her. I can't anymore. I've had enough.

I've been listening to this one video while the dissociation is at its worst, a "calm before the storm" ambience video. I'm an hour and a half into it but it feels both like it's been days, and like it's just been a few minutes. That's how I notice my dissociation. My sense of time gets completely fucked up, and that makes me feel like two weeks were just a few days, or that something happened a year ago, when in reality it was closer to 5. It freaks me out, although I don't really feel that now. I know it freaks me out, though.
Medical professionals keep asking me if I suffer from memory problems, and while I can remember most things, I don't know if my memory loss is normal or not. I don't even notice it myself until I'm asked to go through events step by step, and I realize I'm missing parts of it that I should be able to remember. I think I'm just forgetful, though. I can be a hypochondriac sometimes but I genuinely don't think I suffer from memory issues more than any other burnt out person. I actually think I'm normal for once.

I was gonna write more but it's so hard to think. I'll just go to bed.

15/04/24: I get these moments sometimes where it's physically painful for me to tear my eyes from my computer screen. I just get really immersed in what I'm doing, and then when I realize how deep my brain has melded with the computer, it becomes extremely uncomfortable to get back to real life. I guess it's dissociation, but it's so weird how it kicks in for no real reason. I just get so distracted by the internet and my computer as a whole, that it becomes the only thing around me.

"Excessive Internet use is associated with higher levels of dissociative symptoms." I guess that makes sense. I started noticing this phenomenon back in my early teens, where I'd sit at my computer, playing with my friends or something, and my depth perception would drastically change pretty suddenly. I recognized it as dissociation but didn't really connect the dots that it was related to me being on the computer for an extended amount of time. I guess old people were right when they said too much time on the computer is bad for you. Huh.
It's not like I'm gonna change my habits or anything, I have nothing good to do all day, so I might as well get absorbed by the world beyond the screen for a while. I feel like it's not ruining my life or anything. I still do stuff I wanna do whenever I feel like it, and don't really feel a pull to get back to my computer until I start getting bored.

Speaking of absolutely nothing, I've been so tempted to get back into Second Life recently. I quit playing it cuz I kinda ran out of cash to spend on items, and I knew my addiction-prone brain would just go "just 10 bucks wouldn't hurt..." until I was stuck without money and overdue loan payments. I'm hopefully gonna get an income soon though (although I was really hoping for a proper job...), so maybe I'll get back into it. It's kinda dying out though... I can only hope the sims I used to frequent are still thriving. There's not much to do on there other than go to parties where nobody talks, or waste money on items. Unless you're one of the majority of users who just use it for virtual sex, I guess. I don't really see the appeal, but I'm happy the economy is thriving?

I've been using Pinterest a tiny amount again, nothing major. It's nice having a place to gather inspiration for my style, although I keep just saving pins of depressing quotes... I feel like half of my saves are just quotes at this point.
I hate that it doesn't have a blacklist or "don't show me these kinds of pins" function. At least the building frustration from seeing pins I hate is enough to make me not scroll endlessly, but the amount of random weight loss content it keeps trying to shill to me is honestly disturbing. No wonder kids still have eating disorders. At least my adblock works on it, otherwise I'd refuse to even visit the site, honestly...

13/04/24: I made a carrd the other day actually. No real reason, just thought about socializing more online and thought it would be useful to have a place (separate from this extremely personal site) where I could gather all my info. Take a look if you want.
It's nothing too different from what you'll find here, but it's a bit easier to digest. I decided to just roll with the same theme I have here, but adjusted to fit the limits of the free carrd membership. It's pretty low contrast, but that's for my own accessibility needs, so if anybody complains I can also pull the ableism card, lol. I actually can't read my own blog on the actual site because the contrast is too high, which is kinda ironic. I haven't thought to change it because I can just read my stuff in the editor. That is, if I can bear the anguish of reading the cringy shit I wrote in the first place, which is rare.

12/04/24: I wanna cut my hair. I don't mind it being long but it really just doesn't feel like me. I dunno though. Having it be long is a lot easier to deal with than having to constantly style it when it's shorter. It kinda just lays flat so when it's short I have to actually put effort in to make it look decent. It's whatever I guess.

11/04/24: Feeling absolutely horrible right now. I was struck with this weird anger earlier while cleaning up after dinner, and it just kinda kept getting worse and worse until i had to just sit and gnaw on my hand to take my mind off of it. Now I'm instead so insanely fucking lonely that I don't even care about writing about it here. That's how terrible I'm doing.

I'm not exactly secretive about being a pretty lonely person on here, but I keep forgetting about it until it's back with full force to absolutely beat the life out of me. I'm so fucking lonely, man. I have this deep, almost primal need to just... be touched? Like, I just need someone who isn't my family to give me any sort of physical contact or I might go absolutely batshit crazy one of these days. I'm so touch-starved that I'm legit thinking about picking fights with people again just so I can have an excuse to grab someone and feel warmth that isn't distant.
I've tried keeping it at bay by giving my parents a hug when we meet, or the brief moments of contact I have with Helios, but it's just not the same. I need something that isn't too familiar. Something new. Something that actually has a meaning and doesn't trigger my brain to dissociate it away like with family. I just wanna be held.

I opened up to my psychologist about my identity issues, something I've been wanting to bring up for a long time, but never was able to. She suggested I seek a more qualified therapist, but not before telling me something that really just... got to me.
She basically just told me that I probably never had an actual emotional connection with anybody growing up, and that that's probably why I'm so shut off now. I literally never learned how to accept or give affection, or establish an actual bond with people. I mean it's so obvious now that I say it, but fucking hell. No wonder I struggle making close friends. I don't even consider my family anything special, which explains why it doesn't cure my loneliness when I'm around them.
I know I'm capable of feeling affection and love towards other people, I think I just automatically cut myself off emotionally before that even happens. It's depressing to think about how all my discomfort around people is just because emotionally I never actually got past thinking of them as strangers. Ugh, this makes me genuinely sad to think about. I don't know how I never even noticed it before someone else pointed it out. I feel stupid.

There's this one image stuck in my mind, of me and some other people. Two, maybe more. I live with them, not out of inevitability or practicality, but because they want me there. In this daydream, I've just come home, and I walk over to the couch they're lounging on, and I flop down onto it without having to ask, I'm just allowed there as if it's nothing. One of them grabs me and ruffles my hair and puts my head in their lap, and I fall asleep right there as if it's natural.
And that's all of it, the whole thing. Just me coming home to a place where I don't just belong, but a place where the people actually want me there. It feels so weird thinking about it. Obviously people want me to be places with them, and they have in the past, I just have never felt it. I feel like all places I've lived, all places I've stayed, I've just been thinking about how it's temporary. Even when living at my parents' place, it's their place, and I was never actually part of it. It was my parents and then me. Not us as a family. It's fucked up how that's just how I've always thought of it, with no real reason to.

I don't know where I'm going with this. I'm just gonna go sleep. Goodnight.

06/04/24: I've always had this connection with the concept of dogs and wolves. I don't particularly like dogs, but I'm pretty sure we've all seen "dog poetry" in some form and gone "wait, why can I relate so hard to this?". I'm talking specifically about webweaving in my case, since that's my preferred form of "poetry", but I know there's other stuff out there. I think the post that kicked it off for me was this one, but there's countless ones like it that are equally powerful, I think.
In any case, I think a good way to describe me on a deeper level would be to say I'm like if a stray dog was a man.

I didn't have a great childhood, and I definitely don't have a good relationship with affection, even though I try so hard to be normal about it. It probably comes from being an outcast for a long time, and not really understanding the fact that people can and do love me, as friend, family, or even romantically. I just can't... get it?
Like a stray dog who learns not to trust people anymore, I went from accepting any affection I could get to running away from any and all of it. Like a beat-up stray dog I bare my teeth and react to affection with violence; I don't know any better.

In a way, trying to force myself to enter society as a somewhat normal person (and not stay as a loner or delinquent) has really made the metaphor fit better than ever. I know that acting like a feral dog wasn't gonna be good for me in the long run, but god, it's so hard to go back to being tame. Even shit like trying to date normally feels so... foreign. How the fuck am I supposed to feel safe naked with someone I love, when I've never done it out of my own free will before? It's messed up. I'm messed up.

Getting close to me is honestly really similar to trying to tame a near-feral dog. I don't trust easily, and while I can exist near people without freaking out, the moment my escape route is closed off, I panic. I want affection, and I want to socialize, I just can't get over that part of myself. I have to trick myself into trusting people, and force myself into situations that make me uncomfortable, just to seem... normal. The whole time I'm just thinking about how much I want to get away from it. So I isolate myself, at least emotionally. It's something that gives me a lot of issues in therapy, and it also leads to me shutting off and just going along with stuff without actually wanting to. It's like I don't do what I want, ever. I'm to afraid to speak up about what I want, and too tough on myself to admit that I don't want something. It sucks.

I don't like talking about the stuff I've been through on here, and that's honestly just because I don't like admitting it to myself that it actually happened. I haven't even told my therapist, although I'm pretty sure she can figure it out by now.
It's almost funny in how sad it is. I don't victim-blame, but when it comes to myself I'm suddenly so certain that I could've put a stop to things if I just manned up. It's hypocritical and so, so sad. I know I was put through stuff I shouldn't have to, but I guess I'm still too affected by it to properly admit that I didn't deserve it. Hey, at least I don't romanticize it to "cope".

I guess that's where my weird relationship with specifically intimacy comes from. I know I'm mostly not interested in it, but the tiny percentage of want that still exists is surrounded by terror.
I dunno. I know I'm on the asexual spectrum somewhere, but considering I've never actually been in a situation where I was the one who actually, y'know, wanted to? it's hard to say where I am on that spectrum. I guess I'm just scared to go through it all again. It went horribly before, so it makes sense that I'm not exactly enthusiastic about putting myself in the same vulnerable situation again. I just don't trust people enough. It almost seems easier to just do it with some random person so I can be prepared for it to be awful and then be pleasantly surprised (← delusion). Doesn't help that I feel more comfortable around men, but trust them less. Women just... eek. They see right through me, and that's scary on a whole other level.

I'll probably figure it out when I get out there more, and actually meet more people. Hopefully I'll be able to get over my past trauma too, but ehhh... Exposure therapy is scary. It's why I miss college. It felt so natural to be around people. I should've been more open back then, maybe I wouldn't feel so broken if I stopped caring and just let loose for once. Who knows. I'm probably going back to studying eventually anyway, I've got more chances, I'm sure.

24/03/24: Yeehaw. I've been on a bit of a cowboy spree again lately, actually. I had a cowboy phase back when I was like... 17-ish? but I honestly forgot about it up until recently when I listened to some of my old favorite music.
I was super into this artist called Orville Peck. He's got the whole cowboy aesthetic going on, but makes it pretty unapologetically gay. I liked it because it completely captured the vibe without feeling like it's pushing an agenda like a lot of other country music does these days. And by agenda I obviously mean conservative values or whatever. Oppression, basically. Peck is a breath of fresh air, and got me into country/western music.

I've always liked cowboys in general, their whole thing is really nice. I like the idea of a western outlaw or vigilante, but a regular ol' cowboy is good too. No action-filled adventures, just tending to a herd in an environment that's out to kill you. Blistering dry heat, freezing cold nights, a society that's still unregulated and a world that still remains unexplored. I'm grateful for the modern era, but just like any other young adult, I yearn for something simpler. I don't even care that I'd die young out there, I feel like I'd be happier in the short time I'd get.

Surprisingly, I haven't watched a lot of western movies. For a long time, the only one I'd seen was Blazing Saddles (which, to be fair, is a great one), but a year or so ago Helios' friends had a western movie phase, where they watched a bunch. We joined them on a few movie nights, but only like... halfway through the movies. I'll probably watch one or two today, since I'm procrastinating chores as usual.

23/03/24: Holy shit it's been that long since last time?
Anyway, the high's over I guess. Thought I was okay enough to read a potentially triggering manga I'd been putting off reading for the sake of my mental wellbeing. I was, uh... very wrong. Got snapped out of my good vibes daze in an instant. Well shit.

I mean, I knew it would end eventually, but it still hurts feeling it end. You only really know how bad you're doing when you get too used to the good days, I suppose. Fucking hate myself for testing my limits, but when you're feeling alright you don't realize how fragile that is until it's over. God I hate myself.

At least I'm not doing horribly. I was really irritable earlier, and made a pretty big ruckus while cooking dinner. Think that got most of my big feelings out at least, but I'm not proud of it. I don't like being angry, and especially not when other people are home. Nobody seemed to notice much though, at least they didn't care enough to bring it up, so it's whatever. I should probably talk to them but fuck, I really don't want to.
It's not even that I'm scared, I'm just ashamed that I let my emotions get to me just because I saw something that I didn't even realize triggered me until I'd gotten too far into the story, and at that point it wasn't just mild discomfort, it was genuine distress. Hard to notice it through the dissociation though. Always is. I'm so fucking stupid.

That's something I'm painfully aware of about myself that I really wish I wasn't. Like, how stupidly traumatized I am without realizing it?
I vaguely know what kinda topics trigger me, but unless I'm actually making sure to check beforehand, I don't actually realize how bad it's gotten until I've dissociated enough that I don't even wanna keep reading/watching anymore. I'm just struck with this feeling of suddenly being disgusted by whatever I'm doing, and need to get away from it in any way possible, usually defaulting to fight instead of flight.
Usually I try to get through it by writing shit, but sometimes I don't even realize I've been dissociating, and I lash out at others instead.
It fucking sucks, and you'd think I would've learned how to spot it by now, but apparently that's beyond my shitty brain to do.

At least I'm lucky enough that my PTSD only manifests as anger and anxiety, and pretty much no other emotions. Helios gets suicidal and Luna gets violent, so I'm pretty relieved to be the one person in this fucked up group that only lashes out verbally or at objects. Still feel like shit whenever that happens though.
I ended up picking a fight with some random person or two that I was chatting with, and I'm not exactly proud of it, even if they absolutely deserved it.

I'm just so fucking scared of ending up like my dad. He's the reason I repress my anger so much, and also probably the reason I have so much of it to begin with. He's fine now, but he was an awful dad when I was still impressionable, and boy did that fuck me up bad. Like, real bad.
Having a dad with anger issues means growing up constantly in a state of fight or flight, and if you do that long enough, your brain doesn't even know how to be normal again. That's me now. Constantly pushing down the urge to pick fights with every single person I deem a threat, and always running away from shit instead of properly dealing with it. I can't even be mad at myself for that, cuz I realize just how fucking sad that is. God.

. . .

On a slightly less depressing note, Luna's thinking of introducing me to her new clique. I'm a bit less scared of these people since Luna's a lot more lax with the people she hangs out with, and drops them as if it's nothing whenever she's bored. It makes me a bit less nervous to be myself around them, I guess. It's not that I think I'll get a better reception than Helios' group, but I'll feel less bad for ruining shit if it ends badly again.
They seem like decent people, but as per usual she keeps them far enough away that they can't hurt her, which basically just means no preferential treatment, and no one-on-one conversations. She thrives in groups where she can't be singled out, I guess.
I guess we're opposites in that regard. I prefer to talk to people alone, or in small groups, while she would probably rather die than be alone with someone she can't trust yet. Funny how life does that to you. And by funny I do mean tragic.

Helios is still being sneaky, and while he's around sometimes, he's not really making himself known much. He's still ignoring his old friends and everything that has to do with them, so I am too. He seems to miss his best friend a lot, but there's no good way to just reach out to her without risking having to deal with her girlfriend. It sucks. I wanna see him happy. I feel like I haven't seen him smile in ages at this point. He's acting so much like me these days that it's actually giving me a reality check of how depressed and pathetic I look to others. Meanwhile I was having the time of my life, lol. Funny how we switched places. Not that it matters now that I'm back to normal, though.

This one's getting long, huh? Might as well keep going.
I'm on new meds. Antidepressants, although I'm taking them for my anxiety mostly. Not an active dose yet, so right now I'm only dealing with the negatives, but I'm upping it any day now as my body gets used to it. I'm a bit scared to see what'll happen, but hopefully it'll just be a vague calming effect, and nothing too drastic. At least these might do something compared to my old meds, so honestly I'll take anything it throws at me without any complaints at this point.

Drowsiness is getting to me, cya. Take care out there. World's a shitty place but at least love and kindness will always perservere or whatever. God, I need to be held or something.

11/03/24: I feel great tonight. It's kinda crazy how good I feel, actually. I was completely exhausted and extremely depressed all day, but now I feel like... Near manic? I wanna fight someone but like, in a good way. Like when you're just roughhousing with a friend while laughing the whole time, that kinda fight. I feel alive.

I'm listening to my normal depressed music and instead of feeling like crying, I feel hopeful. I don't know what to do. I haven't felt this good in years.

I think the reason has to be Luna. We don't talk much, but she's been able to get my mind off of what I normally think about, and despite me not liking her much as a person, I can't really help but be thankful for her being here. Holy shit. I mean if you also suffer from chronic depression you'll probably get what I mean by feeling completely out of my mind because I'm not depressed for once. I never realize how bad I normally feel until I have my one good day, and it's such a big difference people think I did fucking coke. I feel invincible and I don't even care that it's gonna be over by tomorrow morning. Fucking hell!!!

07/03/24: Heyyyy... I'm back pretty soon compared to my recent sparse entries! I've honestly been feeling surprisingly good recently, and the initial anxiety of cutting off Helios' old friend group has kinda worn off by now. It's been... what, like a month? Maybe more? Either way I'm feeling good. Free. Feeling like a brand new person, honestly. I guess some of it definitely comes from Luna's influence on me. I don't like her, but it's not that I hate her either. These past few weeks I've grown pretty alright with being around her. She pushes my boundaries sometimes, and I keep catching myself doing shit I'd never do if I was sane and on my own, but I dunno. I kinda dig it.
It's weird for me to feel spontaneous and free to this degree, and I guess that makes sense since I usually tend to take shit extremely seriously (anxiety check, lol).

We even went out today, me and her, I mean. Went to a thrift... market... thing? We grabbed fries while waiting for it to open, and though we kinda had to rush to finish them, it was pretty great. I haven't gone out to eat since I got back from college, and I didn't realize how much I could enjoy just sitting at a gas station eating fries with way too much ketchup.
There's no doubt I'll catch a major cold from this outing though. There were so many others at the market (including kids...), that it would be a miracle if I didn't catch something. I made sure to properly sanitize my hands after getting home, but it's probably futile. Whatever.

God, I just took off my undershirt and my hands were so cold I actually jumped. I still haven't really warmed back up from being out, I guess. It was a crisp -2°C, and so humid it felt closer to -10. I also was stupid enough to just wear a flannel over my sweater, so I got a pretty bad chill by the end. It's better than sweating my ass off in my winter jacket though. Wriggled back into my sweater at the speed of light, but it's gonna be painful getting into my PJs later... When it's this cold outside it doesn't really get warm enough in here to be comfortable in anything less than like... 3-ish layers. I'm legit wrapped in a blanket as I'm writing this. Cozy as fuck though. You wish you were me right now.

Been thinking about the social aspect of Neocities lately. I'm actually fully comfortable like this, completely unaware of who, if anybody, is reading my stuff. I think that's best for me, honestly. Though I do feel a bit bad about not knowing if anybody actually wants to say anything to me, the uneasy feeling of not knowing if/when somebody will say something, and the horror of having to respond to stuff just isn't worth it. I'll just assume there's one single person reading this, and have my own weird parasocial relationship with this imaginary reader. If you actually read these, you probably have the most intimate knowledge of me as a person out of anybody in the world. That's kinda weird and uncomfortable to think about, huh? I think it would be weird, at least.

06/03/24: Had a weird dream last night.
Dreamt about being new in college, and ending up hitting it off decently with a girl who was also new. She was the typical extrovert with no sense of personal space, but somehow instead of feeling threatened like I normally do, I honestly got like... butterflies? It's rare that this happens, and even more rare that I dream about people in general, so I was honestly pretty sad when I woke up. Although with how the dream slowly turned into some overly convoluted adventure, it's probably a good thing that I woke up before it got real weird.

I'm a bit conflicted. Ever since I got out of college, I haven't really been meeting new people, and the few people I do meet every day are kept at a distance. I've only had a few dreams like this, and I always seem to spend the rest of the day thinking about them, probably because of my general isolation. I feel kinda pathetic saying the closest thing I've had to a crush in the past like... decade? was people I literally met in my dreams. God that's sad on a whole other level...
I don't actually mind it though. I think the dreams I have of developing crushes on people are the closest thing I can get to feeling safe about having feelings for other people in general. Although hopefully I'll get that worked out in therapy eventually. Maybe one day I'll be able to form a genuine emotional connection to someone without repressing my feelings so much that I'm convinced I hate them, lmao.

I guess I could talk about that here? I feel comfortable enough.
I dunno really when it started, but at least since I entered highschool I just kinda ended up full of anger. It's probably because of my living situation changing, and not really fitting in with the other kids. I started getting into fights on the regular, and drifting away from my old friends certainly didn't help. At first I got into these fights just to relieve stress I think, but after being an outcast for a while, that was the only time I felt like anybody really saw me. I guess it didn't help that I only ever looked people in the eye when I was fighting them. So, like a wild animal I only associated locking eyes with violence. Now, even something as gentle as the loving gaze from a partner makes me tense up, so I stopped seeking that stuff out.
I was filled with so much anger and restlessness that I think I associated something as simple as jealousy and longing with hate. "This person makes me feel bad, so I hate them; I should fight them". That kinda thing. I'm sure that at some point it kinda did that thing where I liked the rush of fighting someone enough that I ended up with some weird hate-crush on them. I liked fighting them, and I wanted to fight them more, despite not having a reason to do so.

There is something kinda queercoded about fighting, huh. I was gonna say it's "homoerotic", but I was like... 15 at the time. That's weird. You get what I mean though.
I think the first webweaving I reblogged to my (now dead) tumblr was about the homoeroticism of getting in a fistfight with your fellow man. Can't believe that's what got me into web weaving but here we are. It was also one of the first times I held my breath and let myself confront my sexuality for the first time. Wild. Now I'm tempted to just go all-out and plaster my room with pictures of larping knights fighting eachother.
...Yeah that uh... That became like. A thing. For me. Crazy how the human mind works. It's almost like suppressing your sexuality and taking out your frustrations through something else makes that "something else" a new interesting way for your brain to give you crazy doses of dopamine. I mostly just think it's neat how so many other people also find fighting combined with cool armor hot instead of just another way to reinforce masculinity. Through my adventures rummaging through AO3 I've seen the weirdest interests turned into gay pining fanfictions. Apparently the formula 1 racing RPF community is thriving. Who would've guessed. I don't get it but I guess it's the same kinda thing as my knights. I kinda got off-track though.

Anyway, as I was saying, I kinda have a fucked up relationship with affection and... just... other people in general because of this. I guess you could compare it to a stray cat being so far removed from living with humans that it's practically feral. Deep down it's still tameable, but it's a long and frustrating process even just getting the damn thing to eat near a person again. I'm trying to work on it, and going to college definitely helped a bit, but it also made me realize that after that I'd be on my own again, left to wallow in my own loneliness if I didn't get my ass to therapy. Which I did, by the way. Not to brag, but yeah, I'm in therapy. (Literally the bare minimum.)

22/02/24: Learning to coexist a bit better with the girl. I'll call her Luna to complete the theme somewhat, I guess. Didn't think she'd stay long enough for me to have to make up a name for her. Kinda hoping she'll leave so I can have my privacy back. The living room is my territory. I don't need the girl I used to constantly fight to be literally less than 6 feet away from me at all times. I'd honestly prefer if she was 6 miles away at this point.

Helios has peeked out of his room a bit more often, so that's good. It just doesn't feel the same around here when he's not his usual self. As much as I like to claim I'm a solitary person, living with Helios is kinda the only way I can function at this point. I don't think I mentioned moving in with him in the first place? Oops. I moved in with him when he split off from his friends, since I was worried about him being alone. It's a cheap apartment with one bedroom, a bathroom, and a tiny kitchen/living area. I sleep on the couch most the time. Helios asked me to sleep in his room a few times since he feels worse at night, but since he tosses and turns I end up just crashing on the couch after a while anyway. Sleeping on a thin futon on the floor isn't all that comfortable either. We mostly just talk until one of us falls asleep, and that seems to be helping him from completely imploding. I wish I could be more emotionally present, but I'm kinda dogshit at expressing my feelings and dealing with sensitive people. Helios knows that though, so I think he doesn't mind how distant I am. That's what I hope, at least.

It feels kinda weird sharing this much about me and Helios on here. I guess I've gotten more comfortable with the idea of people reading these entries, and my general paranoia about existing at all on the internet has died down. I haven't used my discord account in months now, though. I think I just prefer being on my own for the most part. Helios is an exception, but he's not really the same as other people. I've already talked about that though.
It's still weird to me how much I've opened up on here. I think isolating myself from the social aspect helped a lot with that? The feeling of being watched always freaked me out a lot, so not having that anymore makes me feel a lot more free. That and just chilling out a bit more. I'm a very paranoid person with anything new I try, especially socially. That's just kinda part of how I've protected myself over the years.

Fucking... Luna won't let me write in peace, I'm gonna kill her I swear... (Not actually. It's a joke. You get that... right?)

Anyway, what was I even rambling about...? Whatever. I'm taking a fucked up dosage of my meds since I messed up my routine after moving in with Helios. I'm suppsed to lower the dosage anyway, but taking my meds sporadically probably isn't how I'm meant to go about it. Fuck it though, I don't care (I absolutely do).
Luna keeps distracting me. Her attention span is absolutely horrible, apparently. She can't help talking to people if they're nearby, now that includes me. Bye for now.

20/02/24: Another week goes by. Wee. I'm honestly kinda just wasting away at this point, but it's cool. Helped my parents empty out a storage unit a few days ago, so I've been going through some of my old stuff. Found some of my favorite clothes, including a flannel shirt and a sweater I'd been wanting to wear for the past like... 3 years? It's been a while. Also found a rainbow tie-dye shirt. I forgot how wild my tastes were like... 6 years ago? I used to refuse to wear monochrome colors, but now even my whole website is various shades of grey. I guess I'll give the more colorful clothes to Helios since he's more into that than I am these days. Torn on a dope as fuck shirt with blue flames on it. It's pretty silly but the black and blue goes kinda hard, honestly. It's good for summer since it's short sleeved, so I'll have a lot of time to consider.

It's getting warmer, although it's very slow. The birds have started going at it already though, and their singing has actually been helping my mood a lot lately. I'm honestly a pretty big fan of nature, and I've been looking for some better treaded shoes so I can go take a walk in the local forest. Skater shoes are fine for normal roads, but one slightly wet tree root on a path and I'm coming home with a concussion. Been there, done that.

12/02/24: It's already been a week, huh. Not much has changed, hence the lack of entries. Not like anybody cares, but for me it helps to explain gaps in entries. Whatever. Anyway.
That female "friend" is still hanging out, she seems to be thriving at least. She's definitely made this a lot easier, and now time just seems to fly by in its mundaneness. I've been hanging out a bit more with her, but in general we just kinda coexist in the same space, and haven't exchanged more than a few words. It's peaceful at least. We had a tendecy to argue a lot more in the past.

A person halfway detached from that friend group reached out to us just to check if we're still alive, and after letting him know we're just not in the mood to bother reconciling just yet, he thankfully left us alone. I'm not sure when we'll get back to talking with these people, but we're gonna have to at some point. Helios left his entire discord account and stopped using all social media, which means he also ditched his girlfriend and all of his friends from outside the group. I've suggested contacting them from my account, but I think he's avoiding them to get out of thinking about it at all, too. I can only do so much, and stuff like this is honestly out of my control. It's frustrating but that's just how it is. I might end up contacting that one friend I actually kinda like, but since we've never properly spoken before I'm honestly too shy to go for it just yet. She needs to hear a proper account of our perspective since she's probably being fed straight up lies from the person we fell out with, but ehhhh...

Haven't been feeling in the mood to listen to my own music for a bit, so that's why there's a lack of new recommendations, by the way. I've been listening to the music our little freeloader puts on, and it's not horrible, so I haven't bothered trying to listen to my own playlists.

06/02/24: Helios had a fight with his friend, and now we're both ghosting all of them for a bit I guess. He's hiding away most of the day, honestly I only think I've seen him twice extremely briefly the past two days. We'll be fine, but I guess I feel a bit bad. I feel like my concerns about not getting along with them influenced him to get argumentative. Try as I might, I still can't affect what he decides to do in spur-of-the-moment situations.

Since we're ghosting that friend group for a while, another ..."friend" is freeloading with me. She usually stays away since she hates Helios' friends, but now that there's no risk of her meeting them, she's settled in "nicely". Been busy with her for the past 3 days. She's not really someone I'd consider a friend, but Helios likes her too much to take her more destructive behavior to heart. She makes me uncomfortable, but at least she somewhat listens to me. Sometimes.
She's mostly just spending her time chatting in a new server she joined apparently, so she's been pretty harmless. I think she's the reason why Helios and I aren't doing too bad, honestly. She keeps the place lively and that probably helps us keep a bit more chipper. But yeah, that's what's happening in my life right now.
Activity will probably be sparse until this blows over, or until our freeloader leaves, lol.

03/02/24: Feeling absolutely dogshit once more. Decided I would force myself to write so I could vent whatever I need to.
Feeling really fucking tired of pretending to be someone I'm not. I know I do it as a defense mechanism, and that it comes easier to me than just being who I am, but I hate it all the same. I don't like the people I've surrounded myself with, but the fact that I like them sometimes and that Helios loves them means I'm stuck with them. I want to just ditch them all once and for all and have it be over with. Rip the bandaid off so I can be free. But I can't. So much of my existance is tied to these people, to the point where I'd have to start completely anew online. The only person I like out of my current friend group is dating the person causing me the most pain, and if I ditch one of them, I have to let go of the one person who actually treats me well. The only other option would be to speak up about who I am at my core, and that's for sure gonna make them judge me.
I can already see how it would play out in my mind. The person I'm struggling with would think I'm being dramatic and blame Helios for allowing it to happen, straining the relationship between them. The one person I get along with would get super stressed out about it, because despite not having spoken more than a few times in private (and me honestly actively avoiding her), she accepts me for who I am. She's probably the only person I could confide in, but I'm scared that it would strain her friendship with Helios. I feel like I would be taking advantage of how close they are, even if she's constantly reassuring both of us that she's more than happy to be my friend too.
I just feel like if I could separate myself from Helios I could finally live at peace with myself. I could find my own friends, someone to love for my own, and have my own place in the world. But I can't, because me and Helios are inseperable, whether we like it or not. We depend on eachother and there's no way around it. Where he goes, so do I, and vice versa.
It's a bit ironic. Usually the sun and the stars are rarely seen together, but we almost always are.

01/02/24: Happy February I guess. I feel awful. Like, I feel way worse than normal and I have no clue why. I mean, I guess I can somewhat guess that it's about having to call some places and stuff like that but like... y'know. Why do I feel this bad??? Ughhhhgghhhgghh...
My back hurts like hell too, so I can't even do something as simple as exercising to get my mind off of it... Shit, man.

Filled in some papers at my psych appointment yesterday at least, so maybe I'll be able to get that stupid fucking diagnosis before I'm in three miles of debt. God I'm so pissed off about that. I haven't even done my shitty fucking godawful activity reports because I haven't done shit and therefore they're just EMPTY!! UGH!! I just want to curl up and die at this point. I haven't been suicidal in a long time but at this point I feel like doing it just out of spite. Fucking hell. There's nothing I can do about it either which is why it hurts so much more. I feel worthless for no reason. PlanD save me. Cooking videos are the only thing keeping me sane these days, I swear.

At least the new Dungeon Meshi episode releases today. Yay. Woo. Having a lot of fun watching it with my friend and his buddies. I should really give him a pseudonym huh. He'd probably not care about whatever I decide to call him, but I want it to be something that doesn't seem weird to hear without context.
Looking at name generators... It would be kinda funny to call him a stupidly affectionate nickname like "honey" or "sweetheart" but people might actually believe I'd call him (or anybody) that unironically, and just the thought of that is giving me goosebumps. Because of the meaning of his actual name, Helios seems fitting. It makes our names match a bit, too.

So anyway, I've been watching the Dungeon Meshi anime with Helios and his friends, and it's pretty alright so far. The low budget is definitely noticable, but I'm relieved they put a decent amount of it into the food shots. If the food looked average it would absolutely flop. The subtitles (as I've mentioned before, I think?), are sub-par though. I really don't like the way Netflix does subtitles for anime, since they just kinda do it based on vibes and not actually on the actual dialogue. It makes a lot of jokes fall flat or end up delivered way too unnaturally, and because the manga is way better translated, it makes me frustrated. I'm guessing it's done as a piss-poor attempt at making it easier for overseas fans to digest, or to appeal more to people who don't really consume a lot of Japanese media, but it kinda sucks watching something and having to go "oh he actually said [something 10x funnier]" all the time for the people I'm watching it with to not think I've overhyped it. At this point I'm just going "oh you should really read the manga" like some elitist, just so people can appreciate it in all its glory. Plus the art in the manga makes a lot of jokes hit better, so in general the anime's only really good for getting people started.
Sorry for the rant, that got longer than I thought it would, lol.

Been studying a bit more Japanese recently, too. I'm trying to tackle kanji and grammar, and so far it's going alright. I haven't really tested out my new kanji knowledge, but I'm actually remembering the easier ones alright.
I've always struggled with more complicated kanji, which put me off from learning them for a long time. I'm not dyslectic, but I struggle with telling stuff apart sometimes, and kanji like 聞 (hear) and 間 (time, space) keep tripping me up. It's at those times I realize that learning to read kanji as their building blocks instead of as a whole is extremely important. I know the kanji for ear (耳) and the one for day (日), which are easy to tell apart. I just have to learn to analyze every single part of a kanji sign before trying to read it... Which slows down my reading even more. At least I can read them, I guess.

30/01/24: Yo yo yo. Got some teeth pulled the other day. I feel fine today, although I did have a suspicious headache with a mild fever. It seems to be healing fine though, since I haven't tasted metal since yesterday night, and the pain's getting better. I looked fucking ridiculous yesterday though. Hamster cheeks and bloody drool certainly is... a look. Like a vampire who ate too much.

Got that psych appointment tomorrow, hoping I can pretend to be normal enough that I just get anxiety diagnosed, and not uh... *gestures vaguely at self* everything else.
I'm not that concerned, I'm just annoyed that it might take more time. And money. It's mostly about the money.

I feel like I should have more to talk about, or some sort of introspection to go on a rant about, but in all honesty I'm just kinda sitting here. I'm like an NPC who's run out of side quests to give out.
I guess that's one of the bad things about not having a lot of energy to do anything. I don't really feel like doing anything new, or exploring the world or whatever, and I definitely don't feel like putting myself out there and socializing. I mean I guess I do, but I don't feel like putting in the effort. I'd rather just wallow in my loneliness than put an ounce of effort into meeting new people. Once I start working it'll be a bit easier to meet new people, but for now I'm stuck reading like... slow burn pining fanfics while repeating "I wish that were me" in my head like some sad mantra. I'm so... something.
I might be talking a bit too much about these kinds of things here, but to be fair I do just kinda use this site to deal with my loneliness in general. It's working, too, if only a little.
I'm not the kinda person who's bad at talking to people for whatever reason. I just have a hard time finding people I feel comfortable talking to. I've talked about this before, but yeah. If you've read my previous entries you also know my struggles with other LGBTQ+ people. In real life it's a lot more bearable, but the way people treat me tends to gross me out a bit. A lot of people have just kinda known I wasn't straight since way before I myself did, and I mostly didn't confirm or deny anything until it got too annoying. I found out the way other queer people treat me honestly feels worse than your regular homophobe. Just assuming I'd be totally down with hooking up with whoever strikes my fancy, or assuming shit about my sex life in general? It's gross, and I don't understand why people think that's cool to do. And then when I express that it makes me uncomfortable when people assume shit about me, they think I'm not interested at all and start calling me their token asexual friend. Sorry that I prefer keeping my sex life private??? Ugh.
I know it's important to allow LGBTQ+ people to exhibit sexuality just like cishet people, but the way that's turned into people just thinking it's fine to joke about and stereotype others (especially queer men) is fucking weird. No wonder I stayed in denial for so long, jesus christ.

I think my fever's getting worse.

23/01/24: My dad recommended I get into programming since I'm decent at computers, but I don't know. I only really know how specifically my PC works, so saying I'm "good" with computers is a bit of a stretch. I act as tech support for most of my friends, but all of my info is just from me knowing what to look for online. My own knowledge is limited to the OS I've used for the past decade, and is also just... memorized from my frantic googling. Honestly the biggest issue is finding a language I want to learn in the first place. I'm not interested in game development, and I'm not interested in pretty much anything else either. My dad suggested Python, but what would I even use that for? I'm more into the design part of programs, rather than the actual like... creation of them. Plus I like mundane tasks, optimizing that is taking out an aspect of my daily life that I actually enjoy.
I wanted to make a visual novel with a friend a few years ago, maybe I'll do that kind of stuff? There's already a thing for that, but we want a mix of actual gameplay and then mostly visual novel elements. Maybe it would be fun to try...? I dunno.

22/01/24: Well, don't know if I mentioned it, but I'm having some teeth removed soon. First time I'm having surgery, it seems. Uhh... Thought I had more to say about it but I guess I don't. I'm a bit nervous but it'll be fine. The healing is gonna be the worst part probably. I'm gonna look like one of those dogs that ate a bee. My reputation is over. Hehe.

Finally finished cleaning, so that's over with. My dad's not feeling great today so I felt kinda bad going around him. House is clean now though, so I'm finally free to think about other things. Can't say I've had much to think about though.
Loan payments start next month, so I'm genuinely nervous about that. I think I have enough for at least two payments, but we'll see about that. Hopefully I'll get an income before that. All I need is like 300 bucks a month, so I'll be fine with anything, probably. It would be nice if I could get enough to rent my own place soon though. I wanna start cooking for myself but I refuse to use my dad's kitchen so... Gotta get my own place. At least apartments around here are affordable for my needs. Just a studio with a working kitchen and bathroom. If I could get a washer in there I'd start praying to a god. Any of them.

20/01/24: Been thinking about finding a new name for myself. The name Aster is good, don't get me wrong, but I've been wondering if there's a better name for me out there. I picked the name Aster on a whim, same as my legal name. I guess it's not much different to having your name picked for you by your parents, but I feel like there has to be a better way to go about this. I started going by my real-life name back in 2016, and had it legally changed in 2019, I think. I didn't hate my old name, it just didn't suit me. I picked the first name that came to mind, and that's what I stuck with out of convenience. It still suits me alright, but I like having a different name online.
Aster was, as mentioned, another spur of the moment decision. I was making my first blog on Tumblr, and needed a name that wasn't just my legal one, for privacy. Aster's techinically a girl's name where I live, so that prevents me from using it IRL anyway. I like the association with stars, and I like that it's the name of a flower, although the flower itself is actually pretty ugly. My favorite symbol to use (✦) is actually a star, so it kinda just aesthetically fit together nicely. I like the sound of it too, the -er at the end is the same as my old name, and it still feels very "me".

The issue is honestly just finding a name I like. A lot of masculine names just aren't all that interesting, and those that are seem very... well... transmasc? Like you could totally see a trans guy with a more rare masculine name, but for a run-of-the-mill cis guy it doesn't hit the same. It feels fake on a cis guy, because to be honest, what kind of parent would name their kid something actually cool? All the interesting names are already claimed by those cringy E-boys and shitty love interests in romance fiction, and I'd prefer not being associated with either.

Gotta go vacuum more before nightfall, "to be continued" or whatever.

Alright, kitchen vacuumed and vacuum filter changed because that thing was basically on its last legs (wheels?). Came up with a bullshit explanation for my dad but with some googling I was actually right. A full filter fucks up suction and can damage the motor. The filter wasn't actually the issue either, some hair had gotten clogged in the ... head? the thing at the end of the... thingy. Sorry, I'm not well versed in the anatomy of vacuum cleaners. Kitchen's clean and that's all that matters.

Back to the name issue. I haven't actually tried looking for names, all things aside. It's kinda boring to just look up a site full of names to try and find one you like. I've looked at my fair share of names in general when looking to name characters, but I've never found something that felt like something I wanted.
I'm parusing a name site right now and the only things that stick out to me are Japanese names, probably because that's where like 90% of the stuff I read or watch is from. I don't wanna be that one white guy with a Japanese name though, so I'll pass. I'm pretty tempted to do another Greek-ish name though, and mythology is a minor interest of mine, so maybe a mythological name would fit. The name Achilles is actually one I really like, but I'm not a fan of people who only know it because of the recent popularity spike in stories about him and Patroclus. If the hype ever dies down, I'd definitely put it amongst my top 3 for potential names. Azriel would be fun, but angel names are a kinda hit-or-miss for me. My nickname "Az" is what makes me like that one, fyi.

19/01/24: Had two days of not really feeling like myself, but now I'm back. Same depressed self as always, lol. Got some cleaning done today, though. Just vacuumed a small part of the house, but I'll get the rest done during the weekend. The feeling of being back to myself kinda knocked the wind out of me, so I had to stop halfway. Bummer.

Thinking of what else to put on my pages to pad out the sides. I refuse to add all the blinkies and shit on every page, but it's hard to figure out what else I'd even put on there... Maybe I'll find some pics that'll look good. Yeah, that seems like a good idea actually. I'll do that when I feel like hunting for images. Think I'll just do manga panels cropped to the right size.

17/01/24: The apathetic feeling is kicking in. Wish I liked violent videogames so I could feel something. I'm listening to some angry music at least, it's helping, I think. Thank god I'm not a violent person, because these episodes already scare me afterwards without even doing anything. I had a period during college where I was real low on sleep because of my shitty neighbors, and I think one more month of that hell would've made me snap. Right now I feel good though, nothing matters, I can't feel my anxiety. I feel like I could kill God.

Mostly I just wanna go wash my hair, but I'm waiting until after dinner for that. Maybe I should just do it now?
The lock to the bathroom is fucked up, so I don't like taking long showers (i.e. when my hair needs washing) when people are home. I used to have a great routine (washing my hair when my parents were off to the city), but now they haven't been going much, so I'm forced to shower with the fear of someone walking in. These freaks don't even have a proper shower curtain, it's a fancy expensive glass booth instead (literally why would you have that??? so you can feel extra exposed?? so the deer outside can see your junk??). My parents confuse me so much. Do you just lose your sense of modesty when you hit 50? Is that it?

Had a real annoying amount of snow again. It started to melt away a few days ago, but now it's all back. Ugh. At least we were better prepared this time, so hopefully we'll be alright.

15/01/24: Y'know, the worst thing about chronic depression is that while sometimes there's stuff to vent about that makes it better, most the time it's just... chemicals. I kinda use this blog page to vent my feelings about stuff (badly), but when I could actually use some venting, there's just nothing bugging me. Sure, I'm still anxious about getting a job in time for loan payments, but if I'm lucky we're gonna get those papers (that I needed... like a year ago?) sorted at the next psychologist appointment. Hopefully. At this point I'm honestly just praying.

Oh, the moon's right outside my window today, nice. It's a really pretty waxing crescent, peeking out from behind the trees.

Anyway, as I was saying. I guess the biggest thing bothering me right now is those psychologist appointments. I don't really take well to these kinds of things. While I've come out of my shell a bit more and actually started talking, I'm still sitting there, tense as all hell. I honestly get so tense during these appointments that I legit get sore muscles the day after, it's crazy. It doesn't help that every single thing my nervous little brain decides to say provokes a reaction from the psychologist. I mentioned I don't like touching my own body (because she suggested doing that thing where you rub your arms to warm up as a way to calm down) and she quickly jotted that down without saying anything. It hasn't been mentioned yet, but I kinda fear the day it does come up. As much as I'm there to get psychoanalyzed, I'm not actually all that into having someone actually make note of all my weird behavior. I'd prefer being miserable and ignorant, rather than being miserable and hyperaware of how fucked up my brain is from shit I either had no control over, or did to myself as a way to self-destruct.

Not to talk about my depressing love life all the time, but I've been thinking a bit more about labels and shit. It got me into a whole new rabbithole of thinking about who I could even imagine myself dating in the first place. While I think I definitely have preferences that made themselves more obvious when I actually entertained more than one option, I'm also realizing just how wrong I was before.
I honestly don't think I could genuinely fall in love with a woman, like, ever? I've had several "crushes" on women and feminine-aligned nonbinary people, but when I actually think back, I never actually thought about the whole romance part of it. Maybe that's why I had a reputation for being awful at doing anything except empty flirting and shallow relationships in the past. All my "relationships" (most of them weren't even official) never actually got all that serious, staying surface level at best, and becoming genuinely pretty neglectful at worst. The only other examples I had to judge myself against were men who were shitty for less forgivable reasons, so I never thought I was all that strange for not caring about my partners. I honestly was seen as one of the better than average ones (because at least I wasn't a fucking rapist or abusive), which is terrifying. I feel bad for women, the options really are just different kinds of dogshit.
It makes me a bit sad thinking about it, honestly. I like women, and I still find them attractive, but I just can't do romance with them, which allegedly is like 90% of the fun of dating women. I feel like I'm missing out, but I also feel like surely I'm offending someone by not wanting have the orientation I actually have.
This kinda just leaves me with men and nonbinary people, although I'm unsure about the latter. Most the people I hang out with are pretty exclusively attracted to feminine-aligned people, and that feels kinda... weird. The ones that do like men to some degree, have completely different tastes from me so I rarely even mention these things. I feel so alone in my thoughts about all of this, to be honest. I can't really gush about what kinds of dudes I like on here without feeling like an extremely cringeworthy teenage girl (as opposed to an extremely cringeworthy grown man), so I either have to give up trying to seem even remotely cool, or I'll have to wallow in my feeling of having no outlet. Maybe I just need some friends with similar tastes to me so I can say a character's hot without making the call go completely silent in shock, disgust, or even worse, getting an "of course you do". I've always said these things, but I feel like now that they know I actually mean it, the reactions are so much more visceral.
Anyway, I think I can pretty pathetically conclude I'm probably some flavor of homoromantic bisexual. I like the label "achillean" though, so I'll probably go with that. I still need to finish Song of Achilles, by the way.

Anyway, weather's nice, huh?.......

14/01/24: Hey... Did you know that depression sucks major ass? Yeah. Heh. I'm kind of an expert on the topic. *flips hair or something*
So yeah, my depression's acting up again. I don't know why I get surprised every time but I guess I keep forgetting about it. It's fine though, I'll perservere as per usual. Eating copious amounts of sugar despite my dentist's pleas, but at least I'm not drinking more tea than usual (got scolded about stains last time...).

Uhhh... What else... Been watching the Dungeon Meshi anime with some... "friends"...? I don't really know what we are, to be honest. Same friends of my friend stuff that I've mentioned before.
The anime's alright so far, I'm not a fan of the subtitles (Netflix is kinda infamous for just doing vibes-based subtitles instead of actual translation), but I'm enjoying seeing one of my favorite mangas animated. So far I'd still recommend reading the manga first, though.

13/01/24: Good afternoon to whoever (if anybody) is reading this. I'm feeling weirdly talkative. Listening to some really awful nu metal music. I don't know why I even try giving it a chance when the one nu metal band I like isn't even genuine nu metal, lmao. As I finished writing that I switched playlists. You can only take so much "white men rapping between sub-par growling to a dogshit beat" before it causes psychological damage. No harsh feelings towards nu metal fans, but your music sucks ass. Although I guess I'm not one to speak when I listen to music only 16 year olds find cool. Anyway.

Booked an appointment for blood tests... like 3 weeks late? It's fine, I can just blame it on being busy or something. That's the pros of it being close to new year's still.
I'm honestly really squeamish about getting my blood drawn. I just hate the feeling of having something in my arm. The pain is nothing, but the feeling of the needle in the vein makes me break out in a cold sweat every time. Vaccines are even worse, have you seen how long that needle is? Ugh.

I've also been thinking about getting my hair cut again. It's gotten crazy long, and it's getting bothersome trying to do pretty much anything. The longest parts go down to about... the bottom of my lower back? Although the shortest layers are only a few inches past my shoulders. Because the shortest layers are long enough now, I can't fit it all into any of my claw clips anymore, so quickly getting it out of the way has gotten pretty annoying. I could tie it into a ponytail or a bun, but I feel like I look way to much like a woman from behind if I do that... Or an ex-metalhead. Neither fit my vibe, to be honest. It's fine if it's loose, but then it gets stuck in jacket zippers and falls into my fucking food.
So I'm thinking of chopping it all off to the same length, a few inches past the shoulders. I like having long hair, but it's so damaged anyway that I might as well just cut the long stuff off. I'm still on the edge if I really should, but I think in the long run it'll make a big difference.
I've been considering getting an undercut again since that helps thin it out more, plus I'm a big fan of the feel of the shaved part, to be honest. I think once it starts getting warmer I'll see if I can get my hands on a hair trimmer. The upkeep is pretty awful, but it's worth it in the end. Last time I only did the back of my head/neck, but this time I wanna properly go all the way to the front, so it peeks out if I pull my hair back. It's real hard to find pictures of it because all of them are showing off the shaved parts... Trust me though, it'll turn out good.

12/01/24: Had another psych appointment today, felt brave enough to actually talk about stuff, like my mother and all that. Hated every second but I think we actually made some progress. Getting evaluated for stuff next time in a few weeks by a proper psychiatrist, not sure what we're gonna do, but I'm guessing it's for the anxiety stuff.
I never really considered what exactly was traumatic in my childhood, but the psychologist's reaction when I talked about my mother kinda told me all I needed to know. That wasn't a normal thing, apparently. Not going into it here, cuz I'm not a freak who overshares. Ignore everything else I've ever said on here that definitely proves that statement wrong.

Update after a few hours: took the world's most restful nap and now I feel like a whole new person. Rejuvination? More like reincarnation *badum tss*.

10/01/24: Already up in double digits for january, it seems. I spend most of my days doing fuck all, so I barely notice the days flying past me. I wish I had a monotonous job and my own place so I could let the days pass by in peace, but I have shit to do and vague deadlines of other shit that needs to be done. I wish I could just live a life of routine and not have to think at all. Ugh.
Still snowed in, although it's a bit easier now since my dad finally rented a car that could tackle the snow. It'll get above freezing soon too, so if we're lucky, the snow might evaporate a bit. Hasn't snowed more, luckily, so that's a big relief. Other than that, I've spent today listening to some new music. Mostly industrial rock since I found a good playlist, but also a weird song youtube recommended to me, it's pretty good, though. Might put it in my recommended music if it sticks with me.

And the moment nobody's been waiting for: Rambling time!... *single cough from the audience*
Anyway, I feel like I want to share more personal thoughts on here, since that's the reason I made this site in the first place. Having an audience of maybe one or two people at most should feel freeing to me, but I'm so weird about not wanting to be seen at all. I made this to get used to the idea of being myself, but even with the anonymity of nobody I know having access to this page, and the general anonymity of just being a guy on the internet, it's still a bit scary. It's whatever though, I'll get used to it eventually, I suppose. I'll just write out what I came here to write about, and in the worst case I'll just erase it all. I don't think I will though.

So, there's this guy I'm pretty sure I have a (huge) crush on. We met back in July or August, I think? He's usually the kind of person I can't handle at all, so when we managed to click despite that, I was really taken aback. He's this puppy-like guy, not a single shred of evil behind those big brown eyes. He's pretty childish, despite being older than me, which is why I assumed we wouldn't get along.
We don't meet all that often (because of various things), but when we do, I get so overwhelmed by feelings of affection in a way I've never really felt before. It's something pure and gentle, something completely different from the usual affection I feel for people. I think it's because I know this guy would never hurt a soul. He's probably the most harmless person I've ever met, and he sees me. Knows the type of asshole I was in the past, sees through me like nobody else has, and still likes me so much.
I haven't confessed my feelings for him, but he's told me that he knows, anyway. I guess I'm really bad at hiding how I feel when it's someone I can't bicker with like I usually do. I can't hide my feelings behind a wall of aloofness, so my flustered reactions are laid more bare than ever. Normally I'd be uncomfortable as hell with something like that, but when he looks at me with so much adoration in his eyes despite it all, I suddenly don't mind it anymore.
I know he likes me, he says it all the time, but we both know it's not in the same way. He doesn't want to hurt my feelings by properly telling me, but it doesn't take a psychic to know he doesn't see me that way. He's told me he wishes with all his heart that he could reciprocate, but doesn't think he's able to. I guess he's aroace or something. The fact that we only meet once every few months is honestly a relief to me, I don't know how I could manage seeing him every day.
I think I should just move on, find someone new, and let my first love fizzle out before I get too deep into something that'll never be real, but it's not like I can control these feelings. I don't think I'll be able to find someone without comparing them to him in the end.

Speaking of gay shit, there's this one dude I met in college that's bothering me. I didn't realize it at the time, but I definitely had some sort of thing for him in college. He's the kinda guy that gets overly attached to people who don't just constantly pick on him, so me being a reasonable mature person who gave him good advice and treated him somewhat well, he latched onto me pretty fast. I liked the attention (having a guy who looked like a literal model chasing after you, tail wagging, is always nice), but he also tended to piss me off most of the time. We kinda naturally drifted apart once I graduated (he was my junior by a year, so he's still suffering in there lol), so I thought I could just leave it and let my feelings disappear along with him. And then my stupid friend invited him to the group chat with all of "our" friends. The guy from college wasn't all that active, so I could avoid him by not being active much either, easy. Until we start playing a game he likes, and suddenly he's active every day, well shit.
The big reason I never really thought about my not-so-pure feelings for him in college, was that he (probably) doesn't like men anyway. Why question my own sexuality when the guy I'm interested in isn't even gonna pose a challenge? So I let my feelings stay in the back of my mind until he broke up with his girlfriend, and started dating another girl pretty soon after. The jealousy I felt was chalked up to being pissed he never told me about it. I didn't even know he was single between them, honestly. I also thought he was ace until he off-handedly mentioned he had fucked his girlfriend. Cool. Great. Now that image was stuck in my mind for the next like... what, three months? I definitely couldn't look him in the eye for a while. Somehow I still believed I was 100% straight during this whole ordeal, by the way.
Anyway, so now we're talking regularly (in a safe group setting), and it's weird. My feelings for him have mostly been replaced by pure annoyance since he's pretty dumb and naive (it gets on my nerves a lot...), but I still feel these lingering feelings of just kinda... I don't know, honestly. I think I just kinda want him for my own. I don't really like him all that much, but I get weirdly possessive over him. I don't like that he's getting along with other people. Maybe I'm just weird. It's this feeling of both wanting to beat him up, and wanting to do just about everything else to him too. I wish my heart could just make up its mind so I can get him out of my head for once.

06/01/24: Happy new year, I guess! Kinda forgot to use this thing for a while. We're currently snowed in so I'm growing pretty restless. Got a whopping 2 and 1/2 feet of snow a few days ago, and my dad's car completely keeled over from the cold. It's been towed away for repairs so we're currently stuck at home. Store's too far away to buy more stuff, so we're just kinda stuck in here with our dwindling supplies until either dad finds a car to rent, or the car gets fixed.
There was a pile-up on the highway nearby too. I think around 1000 cars got stuck as a result, and the snow just kept piling on. If we lived further north this would be an easier fix, but we usually only get a few inches of snow at best, so this took everyone by surprise.

Been thinking about more stuff, too. I realized just how hard it is for me to be myself around my friend's friends. I'm pretty sure I'm straight up traumatized by rejection at this point, because it physically pains me to not just pretend I'm someone more palatable. I had fun yesterday playing videogames together, but the entire time I found myself thinking way too hard about what to say, and mostly just left it to my friend to speak for me.
I really don't like being myself, and that gets reinforced every single time I speak up and someone reacts negatively to it. I feel like I come off as overly toxic, but that's pretty much the only way I know how to communicate. I'm not trying to be mean, I'm just used to poking light fun and being a bit bossy? I don't really know how to phrase it... I feel like I've got a similar personality to my older brothers, since I took after them a lot. We get along really well because of that, but I guess my friend doesn't really hang out with people like us otherwise. Makes sense, though. We got along horribly for the first few years we knew eachother, (which was 100% my fault, by the way). I feel like I've softened up considerably, so the fact that I still don't get along well in that friend group just hurts so much more.
It discourages me quite a lot. I have to really push myself to be super kind and easy-going around these people, and it drains me real fast. It doesn't help that if I say something even the least bit harsh, literally on the same level as another person in that group, I immediately get scolded for being unreasonably mean, despite it pretty obviously being a light jab and nothing close to what the other people say sometimes. It's not even me being autistic and not being able to read the room, I'm literally just being shot down for not acting painfully submissive around them. I get that I need to be careful with one of them, and I absolutely am, but the others frequently dish out and recieve this kind of banter, and I've been part of the group for as long as most of them, so it's not even that I'm an outsider acting too comfortable. Ugh. The more I write about this the more I realize I need a better friend group. I've known these people for a decade and I still don't consider them my friends.

31/12/23: New years eve. Feel kinda awful. No clue why, just feeling super tired and depressed for like... No reason? Ehhh...
Been scrolling on my computer with my head literally on the desk like I was trying to make my already bad posture even worse, lol. Idk why I feel so shitty all the time, honestly. There's the obvious "Aster, you literally have depression." thing, but I'm not sure why it just randomly gets so much worse. This time I'm pretty certain it's not just loneliness like it usually is, I'm actually feeling pretty damn reclusive (at least more than usual...).
I should probably tell my dad that I'm feeling awful, but it's new year's eve and I don't want to ruin the mood. Maybe I'll just excuse myself after dinner a bit sooner than usual. We're getting a full three course meal though.... Ughhhhhrrrghhh....

Otherwise I've been uh... thinking. About stuff. And things. I dunno. I think the feeling of guilt for being an intruder in my own home is starting to kick in big time. I'm not doing great. Feeling like an intruder in my own body is making me feel guilty enough. Ughhh this sucks lol... Whatever, it's fine.

25/12/23: Oh hey, it's Christmas for a majority of the world. Not for me though, don't celebrate it today. Just another Monday night here, and boy am I not feeling good. Not really sure what the issue is, legit almost broke down in tears yesterday... Oh well.
Getting the shirt I wanted sometime next month, real excited for that! A friend of my one (1) friend was feeling generous I suppose... Think we'll probably have to fight over the shirt, honestly. We both had our eyes on it. I don't mind sharing, though.
That leaves me the Christmas money to pay for... Uh, therapy, I guess. Great.

Anyway, barely been active in that server I joined. Honestly kinda forgot about it. I send a message once in a while, but I'm still not sure how long I'll be active in there. It's not really my kind of crowd, but it's somewhere I don't feel like... threatened constantly. Eh.

21/12/23: The Discord server search continues... At this point I'm honestly just having fun spying on people through previews. It's great.
I've noticed a pretty clear pattern in the servers avaliable to me so far, and let me just go through the basics. Hover over shit for more info.

My Super Basic-ass Requirements:

1. No homophobia, racism, or gross pedophilia memes???
2. Adult-only, or like... majority adults at least?
3. No obnoxious welcome messages + has to be pretty big.
4. Not full of terminally online gen Z type people.

That's pretty much my only requirements, and it's still so fucking hard to find something that fits all four for some reason? I don't get it, honestly. Most of what I see fits one or two at most. Some advertise themselves as fitting all four, but actually lack all of them. I go through the LGBTQ+ tag, and it's all either servers full of children, or with a femboy theme??? I'm not really comfortable with either of those so... No thanks. I've even seen "femboy" servers with a 13+ age requirement, which is... really fucking weird? Like, femboys are a fetish thing. They're pretty much entirely associated with porn, I don't wanna know why literal children have started calling themselves femboys now. You're not a femboy, you're prepubescent. God it's gross.
Another issue I've found with the LGBTQ+ servers is the overwhelming presence of pretty obviously terminally online gen Z-ers. Like, caring way too much about irrelevant infighting and shit. People who have never stepped foot in a gay bar or met a gay person over the age of 30. It's horrible.

The other thing I look at are general like... anime and gaming servers, not because I'm all that interested in either, but because I usually mesh alright with that crowd compared to the dreaded "normie" AKA people who aren't clearly neurodivergent, lol.
Anyway, the big issue there is the extreme prevalence of all kinds of xenophobia badly masked as "edgy humor". "Your honor, clearly my client isn't racist, because the racist remark was just a poorly done attempt at shock humor! I swear he's innocent!" type shit. Again, it's extremely cringeworthy and I can't stand these insufferable freaks.
Anime and gaming fans are also pretty well-known for their weird opinions about underage characters, and that shit freaks me out. I feel like the only sane person there because I'm the only one who isn't drooling at a panty shot of a 16 year old anime girl. Or posting memes of cropped CP. Which is surprisingly enough a real thing I discovered in one of the servers I peeked at. Disgusting.

The last thing legit made me sad. I took a look at a Radiohead-centric discord server. It's full of 16 year olds who definitely discovered them through Tiktok (yes, I am boomer-coded). I literally looked in it right now as I'm writing, and the first message I see is someone going "im so eepy". The other music they listen to is shit like Lana Del Rey. It genuinely makes me sad. I thought at least here I'd find some boring 40 year olds that I could bond with, but it's just teenagers all over again. It fucking sucks being an adult on the internet these days.

Edit: Decided to join the Radiohead one, felt impulsive. We'll see how long I last...

17/12/23: Did you miss me? Yeah uhhh.... I'm finding it pretty cathartic to use this site to vent my thoughts, to be honest. So I'm back after only a few days. Rejoice.

I've been feeling pretty shitty ever since that appointment. I really think we fucked up by mentioning something I was fully against. I legit tried my best to stop the words from coming out, but they sure did. Either I get diagnosed as fucking psychotic and get put in the psych ward, or it doesn't get taken seriously. Both are horrible. God.
Been eating a ton of candy too, so I'm currently trying to wean off of the sugar addiction I so painstakingly got under control during the past few months. Ughhhhh......

Still haven't joined a server yet. The anxiety has worn off mostly (thanks to the preview thing, thanks discord! that's one of the few good new features in the past few years...), so now my only issue is the fact that I literally just can't find a space for myself where I fit in. I guess that's to be expected when I act like a dickhead but actually have pretty sane beliefs and morals. The only people I got along with in college were the few (very autistic) conservatives. And that probably says enough about my dilemma.
I'm not conservative, like, at all. Being non-hetero is already getting too close to crossing the line, god forbid they find out I'm pro-xenogenders and therianthropy. They'd probably drop dead on the spot.
Do I find that shit cringeworthy as hell? Sure. But it's not hurting anybody so why should I care? Go roll around in the grass to feel closer to your canine soul or whatever, I'll just look away. Actually, in that case I might join, that sounds pretty sweet now that I think about it.

Speaking of therianthropy, when I used tumblr it kept recommending me posts about it because I reblogged a post about relating to mistreated dogs or something? And tumblr's algorithm decided that was a great opportunity to introduce me to the fantastical world of canine therians. Honestly that's probably part of the reason I left tumblr... I just couldn't stand it anymore...

Uhhh what else... I've realized I've got some weirdass tastes. Whenever I'm reading fanfics or something, I tend to zone out a little and just click on whatever tag seems interesting and then just read like, 10 fics in that tag if it fires off the neurons right. I've gone down some really strange rabbitholes.
Now, I'm not a fan of sharing... well, anything about myself beyond surface level info, so I'm telling you about my venture into the wing grooming tag like it's my deepest darkest secret here. Anyway, it's such a niche tag, and made me learn way too much about Good Omens than what I'd like to admit, but something about it just hits right. Like, yeah, tenderly caring for your loved one's wings is a pretty nice concept. These fangirls have a good point sometimes.

I feel like the more I write these blogs while under the influence of decent company of a friend, the worse my image gets. Fanfiction reader, man considerer, therian defender. God forbid someone finds this before getting to know me on their own. The whiplash would be insane.

Coming at you again, like... ~2-ish hours later probably. I don't keep track. Whatever.
I realized lately how easy it is for me to dissociate when on my computer. I find myself sinking into the world of the world wide web, and slowly but surely I forget where I am, and that I have a human body to begin with. I had a moment like this just now, and honestly it's still going on. When these things happen I'm suddenly thrown back to my life as a teenager. I spent a lot of time skipping school just to fuck around on the internet all day, dissociated more than I was aware, probably, judging by the impressive lack of memories from back then. When there's so little going on in your real life that seems appealing, doing reality checks now and again is pretty important to stay present. I find myself often neglecting to do said reality checks, and I pay a hefty price for it. Coming back to reality again, like I'm trying to right now, can be extremely distressing after a certain point. It's like trying to snap out of a dream that you just cant seem to wake up from, or, more accurately, like trying desperately to stay asleep after gaining lucidity. I don't want to be aware of reality. I don't like how my body doesn't look like me, and I don't like that I'm living a life I never asked for. I'm doing the best of it that I can, but how far am I really supposed to go before giving up?
I'm making it worse. See ya some other day.

15/12/23: Psychologist appointment today. Awful as per usual. Don't wanna talk about it.
Trying to get the confidence to join a discord server for the first time and it's proving... difficult. Very difficult. I've been hovering over the "Join" button for like... forever. God help me.
At least I made a cool bio using a few unicode thingies. Also decided to change it from my name to a nickname instead. Being myself so openly on the internet is still scary. Don't know why. Aster's not even my legal name.

On another note, I procrastinated joining servers by looking into the terrifying world of the LGBTQIA+ wiki. Tried to find a label or something I didn't feel weird about using, but honestly it's been pretty difficult since I barely even know what I feel like I am. I've been vaguely going by "bi" since I had my big eureka moment a few months ago, but I'm not even sure if that's accurate for me. Who even gives a shit? I don't even have anybody to tell that to for god's sake...

Made use of discord's little preview function they've got now to peep on a few servers I was interested in. Didn't really find anywhere I liked. The LGBTQ+ servers I took a peek into were either way too small (making me feel extremely... exposed?), or full of children (I'm not really interested in talking to kids all day...). The adult-oriented ones were either porn-centric or insufferable, and the few anime servers I took a peek into had the same issues, PLUS being casually racist and homophobic. Great.

13/12/23: Feeling like shit lately. Getting nothing done except rotting in my room. I made a discord account a while ago to see if I could muster up the courage to join a few servers, but I literally haven't even used it since I made it. I'm trying not to beat myself up too much about... everything? but it's pretty hard not to. I genuinely just don't like who I am. Nothing much to do about that.
On a similar note, I'm finally accepting the fact that like, 90% of my issues stem from just being kinda lonely. Depression? Lonely. Anxiety? Don't get out enough. Fucking... Back pain? Probably related to me not going outside and meeting people enough. God, I need therapy.

I've also been thinking about who I am as a person at the same time. Like, not superficially, but really what my core values and shit are.
Like, for example, pretty much all my life I thought I was straight. Turns out all I am is completely out of touch with my own feelings. Who would've thought. Yeah... I feel kinda stupid in hindsight. To be fair, I have been just completely hating myself so much that I didn't even consider myself capable of feeling anything for other people, so I guess it makes sense.
I'm still not sure how to really handle this part of my identity. I never really liked the concept of labels, and it's definitely gonna take a lot longer before I can really feel pride in who I am. It's not that I don't support the LGBTQ+ community, I just never really felt like I fit in with that crowd, y'know? I mean for fucks sake, look at my depressingly bland looking website. I literally chose a colorless palette. A pride flag in this monotone hellscape would stick out like a sore thumb... Whatever, I'm going off topic.
What I mean is that a lot of stuff that I'm figuring out about myself the more I just... Let myself exist? The more I realize I kinda just... don't like that. It doesn't feel like me. It's a completely nonsensical way of thinking, but I guess that's just the kinda person I am. I can't really see myself being open about shit like being [redacted] in the same way a lot of other [redacted] people are.
I don't even know what label fits me, honestly.

This entry's getting long so I might as well go full throttle and keep it going. Bringing the topic of loneliness back, I've been having these fucked up daydreams whenever my thoughts start to wander. Or, I guess "fucked up" isn't really a good descriptor but like, y'know, they startle me. And you'd wonder "so what terrible fucked up thing is happening in Aster's thoughts???". It's literally just me hanging out with an imaginary person. Not even holding hands or anything, just sitting and chatting on a couch or bed like friends do. That's my wildest daydreams. It's so incredibly embarrassing that I don't even know where to start.
It's something so mundane, something that most people do on the regular, and yet it's so inconcievable to me that my brain treats it like a wild fantasy. God, it's FUCKED. UP. Like, in a pathetic sense.
I know the easy solution is to just... make a friend, or get out on the dating scene or something, but I don't want to actually socialize. I want all the comfortably casual cozy moments without actually having to open up and be myself. It's almost depressing how difficult I'm making life for myself just by being so closed off. Whatever.

08/12/23: Thinking about buying a Radiohead T-shirt. Stuck between the Ice Caps and Everything one. I like the print color in Ice Caps more, but Everything mentions one of my friend and I's favorite songs. Tough choice. Buying it with whatever money I get for christmas, so I've still got a while to make up my mind. I kinda wanna get more button downs to layer with, but our limited money is daunting. Ugh. We have so much shit we never wear... Should probably sort our "closet" soon, although most our clothes are in boxes somewhere.
Need to do laundry too, will probably get that done today or tomorrow.

06/12/23: We went to the psychologist today. Hated every second of it. I hate talking about my emotions and shit, it's just... unnecessary to me. Whatever. We need to do this to get the papers for assistance, so I gotta grit my teeth and bear it.
Anyway, watching Merlin with a friend. It's fine. I'm not a huge fan of medieval settings in... anything really, but I'm a decent fan of knights and armor, and I guess the show has enough of both that it's not completely horrible. My friend ships Arthur and Merlin which is insufferable to listen to, although I do see where he's coming from. The writing isn't very subtle about it.

01/12/23: Another month goes down the drain with literally nothing happening. I'm getting real tired of this cycle. We have two appointments next week, and then I'm guessing this month's gonna have absolutely nothing happen either. I was supposed to get a note from a doctor half a fucking year ago now, and I'm only just getting started with the process of getting it NOW. Ugh. Whatever. I have enough money to cover my loans for a while.

30/11/23: A friend suggested we make a website for me since it wanted to make a neocities in a completely different style, and here we are.
I'm not sure what I'll use it for yet, but I'm thinking of just using it for basic rambling diary entries (like this one), and for talking about music I enjoy.
I've tried to use Tumblr in the past but I really didn't enjoy the social aspect of it (like having people be aware of my interactions), since I'm basically a stereotypical introvert, lol. This might actually be useful for me, since the social aspect is limited to what you let people do (I'm probably not gonna allow like, any contact to be made with me, honestly).

I think the progress we made today was pretty impressive, to be honest.