An Open Letter

Hey, long time no talk me. I guess I’ve been super busy, both to have time to do this but also partially because I haven’t felt the need to. I’ve been so busy with things that I don’t even have time to feel bad or think about other problems, kinda like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs in my crude uneducated understanding of it. I’m back to trying to figure out how to get time, that I don’t even have time to feel bad about some things. But as things have settled down a bit, I do have that time again for better or for worse.

Tomorrow marks one month into my internship, and so that also marks in a way one month into summer – away from friends. I do have to clarify I am close with my online friends thank god, and so I do get to interact with them daily. But I have been feeling bad because I’ve definitely grown more distant from S. As much as I don’t want to admit this, I feel like this has been happening for a while, and I guess I feel too tired to try to fight against it. Part of me has been convinced that fighting against it is counterintuitive, and so I’ve somewhat just resigned to this fate. I kinda knew this was going to happen, as we aren’t the greatest with keeping up remotely. She calls C and keeps up that way, but I guess we haven’t established that or set a precedent for that so I can’t blame her for it. But I guess I also shouldn’t blame myself either if I don’t blame her, as this is a two-way street.

I think a lot of this fear is probably pent up or hidden away from the whole fiasco with E. I guess that was a year ago since it was last summer, how time flies. But last summer E and I had made a plan to stay in contact, and regardless of who’s fault it was it did explode in a burning mess. This does feel like the opposite end of the spectrum however – the tide has slowly pulled apart the flesh from this friendship one moon at a time. But beaches never stay desolate forever, and I do expect that once we are in person again the life will return. But maybe it doesn’t, the beaches of santa barbara have slowly turned to porous rock with every year since. Hell sometimes I don’t even see any sand. I’m a little bit afraid to go back to that beach in a way. It’s nice whenever I go, but it does always run risk of reminding me of what I no longer have there. My happy place is laying in the sand in the sun, but when I tried the wind was harsh and the sand buffeted my body; all that’s left is a residual fear born from that experience. It isn’t a strong enough fear to steer me away if I’m already going there, but it is enough to deter me from having that as a peaceful happy place. Isn’t that poetically cruel in a way? Like something out of a tragedy or some other piece of literary art that I never consumed enough of to speak on properly. Having access to what I wanted destroyed my want for it, out of a few bad experiences.

The above part wasn’t really about the beach.

I think one thing I’ve felt afraid about was my churning of friends. I feel like I’ve gone through friends or friend groups fairly consistently, and so I feel like something is fundamentally wrong with me. But at the same time I do need to remember that I have held the same friends I interact with several times daily for over 6 years now. That matters to me. But also by virtue of my own path as an individual I think I will have changed friend groups automatically. My view on people is that they are multifaceted, and have different aspects of themselves that they display to other people. (It’s like everyone was their own vector embedding of some traits or compatibilities, and they accentuate the dimensions that maximize the dot product similarity when interacting with people.) I don’t this makes anyone any less genuine for accentuating the most appropriate aspects in their situation, after all I wouldn’t want my boss to tell me a stupid joke while we’re in a meeting with high ranking members.

Since starting medication, no since birth I think I’ve changed dramatically. I am not really happy with my childhood, but when I think of it that’s mostly because of what I percieve about myself. I was horribly depressed, and I think that gray cloud has covered everything in that familiar dreary light. Gray paint is an invaluable tool for drawing out depth in other, more vibrant colors; but when all of those colors are left with blanks the only thing left in my childhood is dark pathetic splotches surrounded by things I don’t remember. When I think about other people’s paintings, I see a childhood filled with vibrant colors or memories, but for me all I see is that disgusting dead decaying decrepit canvas. There’s a mental distinction I have between what I think others had and what I have. Some others have strong tragic red pieces, some have soft pastel tranquil fields. I see some warm brown chaotic houses bustling with excitement and life, but in my own all I see is ash pushed together into small clumps without any form or reason. The ash in a pile could have at least said left some message to be gathered together, like maybe some commentary on the finality of things – but instead I get dirty blobs of soot without any recognizable pattern. Sometimes I will see something that will remind me of what was originally in my painting, recently it was the memory of how playing Pokemon for the first time made me feel. For the next few days I try to hold onto that picture so that I can put the colors into that gray painting in my own mind, to almost try to rewrite the memory itself. But instead that memory is fading, and the new picture goes away with it too. I guess in some way this entire blog is meant to grasp for some of those straws before they’re lost also.

I thought earlier today about what I was actually afraid of. And I don’t mean this on a superficial level, because I know that I’m afraid of things like spiders, or jumpscares. But on a more existential level, what was I afraid of. I don’t think I am afraid of death, unfortunately a nice little quirk of having suicide be a safety net for most of my life is the fact that it isn’t really something I am afraid of too much. I guess it’s almost become more of an inconvenience, as in I would prefer not to die but at the end of the day it isn’t the end of the world (haha). The thing I realized I was more afraid of was being on my deathbead, and thinking “oh my god this was it? This was all my life was?”

I guess it wouldn’t matter anymore at that point, but just death’s final triumph of saying “you lost! you got nothing!” scares me. To me this is the only real thing anyone is ever given – a chance at life. Whatever the circumstances, this is the prerequisite for everything I will ever experience. What happens if it ends and I never get a chance to do anything again. What if I had some button to just beat a game, and only after pressing it I realized how I lost every beautiful piece of world building or joy there was tucked away in the journey. What if I just skipped it all or min-maxxed my way into my grave. I’m less afraid of dying early, as that would mean I chose to do it and so there would be some semblance of reason in it for at least until the last minute or so. But if I die after some time, I run the risk of realizing I made horrible mistakes I’ll never be able to correct. I already run that regret deep in my mind – I regret my childhood, my highschool, and I guess even my college. College is close enough to me that I don’t know what I would have done differently in a meaningful way, and so I just tell myself that this was necessary to grow and learn the things I know now. But I fear that in 20 years from now I’ll have those lessons without the fresh memory of where they came from, and I’ll regret my college the same way I regret my childhood. I’m 22 now, and I don’t think that’s a horribly young age. But at the same time it is depending on who you ask. I’m afraid for once I get to the point where I am no longer young, what will I have to show for it. I never got to make shoegaze music in the basement of a house in Utah, or go on roadtrips with friends on the east coast. I never lived in other countries, and never crashed at a friends place after going too wild. Hell, I know this is naive but I never got to see the messy divorce between my parents as I try to navigate that new reality within everything else a child has to get used to. What I regret the most is I felt like I had nothing. I’ve come to terms with the fact that I grew up online, and that though gives me an answer to my question of what is my community. I didn’t grow up with a church, family, or family-friends. But I did grow up with a discord server of people from all around the world. I found out yesterday that T is 30, he’s definitely told me before but I just never remembered. I was asking him about his experiences with the military and why he wanted to do it. After that I proceeded to accidentally kill us both right as we started winning the game. We both laughed about it pretty hard.

My canvas may have faded, but I’m slowly repainting it with color, and I try to use the mounds of dried gray to give it an unique depth. After all, I love art with a meaning and what else could have greater meaning than all of my experiences and memories packed into one mental object, bursting at the seams. Thanks me for writing this down.