Author: vbird

mmmmmm. 3 pm on a sunday and i’m feeling all right.

it’s been a minute. not sure the best way to catch you up. don’t know what’s important to me.

i’m playing acnh with m right now. visiting her island is nice. it’s nice to do things for me that don’t feel like a compromise with what r wants/expects of me. feels like a relief, even if it also feels like i’m putting myself at risk of r not wanting to spend time around me or be interested in me. if i were trying to get his approval, i’d do pt, then go for a walk, then cook a healthful meal using all ingredients we have here (spoiler: we have like, enoki mushrooms, 2 handfuls of kale, and carbs, not enough to Actually make good healthful things), clean up after, and then put on some stupid documentary. and then my day would be gone and the work week would begin. it gives me panic sads thinking about it.

and in the meantime, with me out of the way, he’d be jerking it in here or something

or, idk, maybe i’m wrong. i feel like this and he acts so distant bc he gets really into whatever Thing he’s doing, and then after he’s done with the Thing, he becomes more talkative and friendly. is it bad that i feel like i can’t trust it to be genuine, or is that…. sensible?

i feel like he would only like me if i accomplished things a lot of the time and didn’t do anything frivolous that furthers none of my stated goals…. but like… that was how i spent my time today. m and i ran around her museum and hit each others’ characters with bug nets, for a satisfying and silly thwack of haptic feedback. and that made me happier than like, checking a bunch of boxes would have.

i am actually really struggling to do things, though. i’ve been just barely keeping up with my PT exercises every other day… sometimes it takes me 2 hours to do all of them… and it’s so. i feel like they’re plateauing a bit. they’re helping but like, i think there’s a component of this that’s going to keep coming back from my posture at work, and like…. there’s some kind of stability in my knees that i still don’t have yet so sometimes i put weight on a leg and my knee just slams backward.

and i have these fleeting thoughts of how I Could be…. walking or running daily, reading new books all the time, sewing cool clothes for myself and a mask here and there, making more delicious salads, drawing things that i get ideas for…. and then i think about the beginning of the work involved and i just wilt. how stupid and useless. i need to get over/around that.

and i feel shitty about my current friend sitch….. aka nothing…. l doesn’t try to talk to me at all unless i say something first. peeps at work barely ask me about my stuff even though i try to take an interest in theirs and try to remember things about them. r’s housemates barely tolerate me. i got excited for arranging a little xmas music swap thing and was talking to r and s and a about it in the kitchen the other night, and then after i’d described it and invited peeps to come listen or participate, j was just like, “fuck christmas. christmas sucks. it’s everything that’s wrong with our system.” like…… on the one hand i totally get that sentiment in general, but literally never have i ever tried to organize anything here in this house for myself and the one time i do, you immediately shit on it in front of half the house? Oh, and then a few days later you say you have a secret music thing that you want to perform as part of it?

people really don’t like me. and i don’t know why. or how to fix it. i’m not always amazing at conversation starters or like, questions for people, or thinking of things to say in a convo… but i try to be nice and kind and funny and present. and am probably failing to be those things.

🙁

a few days left until xmas. i need to work on gifts for my parents and grandmother and r and k. buy books, buy running lights, buy running pants, buy light layers.

drive around forever.

do pt.

be a worthwhile human.

sleep.

pay rent.

i’m at home-home. in *my* room. jesus fucking christ.

lately i’ve been really fucking bad with the hurt and insecurity abt r not wanting to fuck me. he tells me “I *want* to want to,” and then when he’s by himself, left to his own devices, he tells me he’s jacking off multiple times a day.

i don’t want to lose you. but…. i need this settled. are you ever going to be attracted to me? are you ever going to want to share your sex and your body with me? If the answer is “no” to both of those, then what are you thinking with regards to the future of our relationship? In the same conversation as the want-to-want-to, you also said some roundabout thing that basically suggested “aside from the whole kids thing” tht we haven’t figured out, you were thinking you and i would end up married.

i can’t figure out if i’m okay with having a relationship of some sort with you still with no sex. i feel like i need to figure out how to give that more consideration if i really want to be real and… confront myself and my polyamory, even if *you* said *you’re* monogamous. like, you’re a great guy…. i like you a lot…. but i’m really attracted to you, and the rejection hurts. is this what m went through with me, basically?

sometimes when i’m uh. “lucid” and not totally lost in my own freakouts, my thinking is that i’m probably more attractive to him when i have my shit together and have good boundaries and am being my own person, rather than being the person who falls apart bc of not getting dicked the way she wants. it’s occurred to me multiple times. i don’t know exactly how to bootstrap that shit myself. i could try to get a therapist. i can make lists of next steps to take. but lately when he says something snippy and dismissive to me it’s like flipping a switch. like this is always simmering under the surface and i don’t know how to let it go. and of course quarantining in one place means i’m in his room cause of course he’s not going to choose to be in my place and of course his shitty tiny room that he doesn’t know how to clean is not a calming, enjoyable space for me to be in, and of course i can’t alter it much bc it’s a shitty old house with plaster walls (i think? there are issues with wall mounting things, this much i know) and few power outlets. Cold empty thin walls and not my space. And basically 6 ppl sharing the upstairs bathroom.

And then, when i think about my lease here ending next march…. i don’t want to leave my crap here, either. i want to be able to access my space and all my nice things. and i’m tired of leaving them to ppl who refuse to care for them.

first step: set up initial appointments/meet-and-greets with prospective therapists.

second step: make a plan for how to manage/mitigate my sads rearing their head in a variety of situations. ask for reassurance. drive here for space or something. make sure i always have money so i can treat myself or afford to drive somewhere or w/e.

third step: try to be my own person and take responsibility for my feelings instead of leaking as much on r. planning helps w this. if i have intentions, setting out the requisite materials can help it be easier to roll into that thing next instead of getting stuck on my phone or my feels.

^actually step 0. part of my problem is needing to reframe. right now when i’m in r’s space, it’s my first instinct to let it leak because it’s his fault, right? it’s his fault i feel this way. he’s not meeting my needs. he did something to set me off.

a more helpful way to reframe…. i’m having a knee-jerk emotional reaction rn. but i can keep that separate from the other person in this situation, bc they have every right to feel however they wanna feel about sex. it’s on me to keep good boundaries and realize what will upset me. (like the wordless Sex Button Time… I don’t think I want him touching my junk with his hands for a while. or having my boobs grabbed casually) idk i haven’t always been good at thinking of new ways to frame things i Have Feelings about, this probably needs work.

fourth step: cultivate the activities that feel like uhhh “team-building”. where we’re good at coordinating and collaborating. i got that feeling the other night when we went grocery shopping. heh…. i don’t know what else. it feels like it’s very much up to r’s mood whether we’re a good team or not. he can be judgmental like hella. sometimes working on the room remake was teamlike. cooking is rarely teamlike. planning helps me with most things.

i know i’ve been a drain and a drag lately. i’m sorry that my ability to control and/or conceal my emotions has not been sufficient to avoid that. i’m gonna try to work on it. i understand if you’re not interested, but if it’s not too much to ask, i could really use some reassurance that you don’t see me as just a roommate. that you want me here as your girlfriend and that you are currently interested in sharing not just your life and space with me, but also your sexuality sometimes. and for the record, even if i’m trying to work on this, i’m still going to need reassurance from you…. maybe kind of a lot.

*assuming* everything goes fine…. i’ll probably need to reference the ideas in this post a few times.

tryna talk to m about house and pandemic things, like i’ve said before. dared say the house is hurt and angry and scared bc her direct, active decisions have introduced risks to their physical safety. risks that would’ve been easy to mitigate. and her response…. i don’t know why i’m surprised. her response is the same as it’s always been even just with her and me and like… the fucking dishes or w/e. deflection and pointing the finger at some random “traumatic” thing someone else did to her several months ago where like…. she never even tried to talk about it after the fact, and just decides that the price can come due now.

especially funny bc literally all i said was that it’s “understandable” that k wouldn’t be perfectly nice, and she can’t even let that slide. like, no, it’s somehow not understandable… not because any part of the context of his actions is missing or unconsidered, but because people clearly are never allowed to be less than flawlessly polite to you, regardless of how you’ve treated them, if they’ve ever had conflict with you in the past.

what you mean isn’t “it’s not understandable,” but “it’s not fair.” but one of those sounds like a better argument stance, doesn’t it

“too busy attacking you?“ he literally said one mildly critical sentence

if you really want to talk about mutually supporting each other… when we have these uhh tense talks and you bring up stuff you’ve contributed to the house/other ppl using them as a reason why ppl aren’t allowed to get mad at you or why you’re doing your part for the house… as awesome and fun as the various media server projects are, they’re not exactly essential to house functioning, and can’t replace what is essential. there’s certain non-negotiables, the most obvious of which is paying rent/utilities in a timely fashion, but then you also have things like picking up after yourself and communicating w housemates about time-sensitive shit.

the general way that group houses work is that we come together and establish rules and practices that we agree upon, even if it’s hard or if some folks have to compromise. and that can be a formal process, like with house meetings, or sometimes looks like ppl discussing stuff on the fly in text/discord/etc and coming to an agreement there.

house meetings have been weird since we haven’t all been in the same space, and extra weird bc this turned into such a fraught topic, but lbr. everyone else in the house has wanted to take certain precautions to avoid bringing this virus into the house. getting you to agree to some of those things has been a series of awful, friendship-wrecking fights, followed up with like… *some* eventual adherence to safety measures, but no direct amends for the hurt from the previous fights, just unrelated stuff like buying the house beer/food or doing cool media server shit that can be shared with peeps. which it seems are like, cool, and appreciated, and are nice short-term ways to interact with peeps to show them that there’s still care and thought there, but… seriously. people are hurt really bad by the things you’ve said and done, and that’s not going to go away without you directly addressing it. if you don’t, people will keep feeling hurt and angry.

kind of like how you still have feelings about the carpet cleaning times, for some reason? i have no idea what kelley said—i remember you being frustrated with tadhg that their offer of help was limited to the night before carpet cleaning, but never heard anything about kelley interactions. but anyway yeah… in both cases, unless people are able to discuss them directly (and also presumably take responsibility for their own actions and feelings) that shit tends to stick around.

this dynamic used to mostly happen just between you and me, talking about apartment cleaning stuff at the old place. i would bring up a current apartment maintenance-related thing, and generally your response would be to get upset and start bringing up things from months ago that were also upsetting for you, BUT crucially, these were often things you were bringing up like this for the first time. The last few times this happened, I started responding to those situations with a specific thing, which is the reason I’m bringing up that dynamic: if you feel shitty about an interaction? if you need someone to address something further? it’s largely on you to let them know. it’s on you to bring it up to the other person and try to collaboratively figure out how to make it better. shit’s not going to magically get better by itself. talking isn’t a guarantee of your perfect desired outcome, either, but it’s still a necessary step. and it’s a shitty thing to do to yourself and to the other person, to silently sit with something that someone else did that hurt you/made you feel angry, and not give them a chance to improve that behavior riiiiiight up until they’re trying to have a different conversation with you… THEN throw it in their face as loudly as you can.

that’s something i’ve told you before. it 100% applies here. kelley made an off-hand, kinda harsh remark about the house discord you keep sowing, and *now* you want to bring up a carpet cleaning interaction, and say that he has no right to talk to you about his thing until he’s addressed this random thing that you’ve never tried to get closure on until now? … your concerns can be valid, and it can still be a deflection. i’ve never known your queue to be 100% linear, and i think for relationships where you want to show up and do the work, those two conversations could totally happen simultaneously, or around each other. my best guess? you straight-up don’t want to address these things on others’ terms, and this is the best way you can think of to justify how angry you feel at the loss of control in being called out.

–

she keeps coming back to the chat and adding more tone policing about carpet cleaning. i don’t fucking want to spend my day off on this, fuck.

this weekend didn’t start out nice, but ended up pretty great.

• i freaked out at r for leaving for walkies w j, after me (long ago) expressing enjoyment of and interest in going on walks w him and him ending up being like “actually walks are alone time”, although come to think of it there were other things that day… the basement flooded and he, j, and i were the ones to clean it up (i found it and dumbly asked “um… did people already know there’s water on the floor downstairs, or … ?” like wow way to be smart about home maintenance and how other ppl would respond) and neither of them said a word to me the entire time, they worked together and i was off in a corner doing my own thing trying to help and had to keep asking what i should do… so i felt like i was being left out of things already that day
• i stayed mad on and off until yesterday, when after work r was like “hey do you want to walk w me?” and idk, at first i wasn’t into it bc we were going on a very Functional Walk that he would’ve done anyway, but i could see that he was trying to figure out how to do something nice and relevant to make me feel better, and i appreciated that.
• while we were out i visited a new bubble tea place and it was… aight. i ordered online for pickup and ended up having to go into the store to prompt them to start my order, and then they still fucked it up. also, salted partly whipped whipping cream is a very weird topping.
• i took naps on… both friday and saturday? or both thursday and saturday? i think friday and saturday. what with r’s new job, it’s hard to do whatever i want if i have days off during the week. and then sometimes i just get sleepy.
• today i participated in a virtual race thing w/my fam. i haven’t been exercising mostly and it was tough, and i have a blister on my heel bigger than a quarter and 4x as thick at the bubbliest point.
• i miss exercising. i felt the good body drugs at the end, walking home, and was kind of floating. god, i used to do that every day.
• after working out, i took it extremely easy all afternoon with a little sdv and a lot of online shopping. i think i figured out some mechanical keyboard plans, which is nice. it’s a black hole and it gets prettier to me with every passing day.
• last night i finished my 2013 playlist and accompanying album art. really it only needed a few finishing touches…. or idk, maybe i could’ve done a lot more, but i feel like this is sufficient.
• r’s been really nice to me. i want to make him good noodles and be supportive of his work.
• i have been prescribed upper body pt exercises, so i gotta keep up on those, too.

thank goodness the monster i was drinking from like 3:30-7p is apparently not keeping me up

oh, also—pretty sure i forgot to take my meds today. :/ bitch please… please………..

time for <5 hrs of sleep!

hmm. sitting outside makes it easier to do stuff, but also that Feeling Of Being Watched.

r’s still on the clock for his new job and needs time/space to himself, so i’m out here. it’s not bad, kind of overcast rn.

i should…. look for volunteer opportunities and learning opportunities. i also told M that i’d help her look up some non-judgmental info + resources wrt covid, bc apparently she’s been avoiding learning about it due to fear of judgment and starting later than everyone… the usual m feels. i get it. or at least, i guessed it. so looking into that would be a good thing to do. i haven’t heard from her at all today, so she’s probably in hella avoidance mode. fuck. please get your health insurance together, dude…. i know talking is scary but being evicted is scarier. or not being evicted, but falling behind on payments. you have eric as a safety net, but b&t don’t have anything. also you and i are 2/3 of the renewed lease signatures/ppl on the hook if we don’t pay.

*messages*

that one newsletter my sib follows is a resource for things i could/should be doing.

maybe i should look into making more diy respirators, more masks.

home things: fold laundry, clean room, check what my chore is this week, use grbn before they can get grosser…. if r wants hot pot, i could make some kind of rich broth w/24 hr notice… i’m interested in more veg tho.

oh, and pt stuff. my back was tight all by itself today. back to having to intentionally engage better muscles.

home improvement…. at some point this week, r wants to get a different desk and change his work setup in his room. i figure whenever that happens, we’ll probably go to the type of store where i can take care of LED strips and uhhhhhh GOD what was the other thing I needed? jfc

i think i should pay rent and see about making some smaller donations. i sense upcoming utilities bs for this house and i don’t want to be unprepared.

also, …. just…. we’re in one of the worst timelines.

but but but. aside from that… ugh i know i keep being all over the place with this post, i’m having trouble knowing how to organize this… today has actually been pretty good to me. lots of draws, not too many issues. was sleepy so we all went on an sbux run, i got a dirty pumpkin spice chai latte which came out to almost $8. i wasn’t sure if they remembered the shots just based on how it tasted, but i started “coming up” right around the last draw and it’s still making my throat feel tight. also a reliable indicator? chai doesn’t make your pee smell Like That. lmao

i’ve been getting lunch from one place pretty reliably lately, they have an online ordering option but no tipping functionality, i finally messaged the company to be like “yo i want to give your workers more money, please let me tip them online, i have no cash” and their response was basically like… “oh don’t worry about our workers, we’re taking care of them with internal ‘rewards’ and ‘bonuses’ 🙂 anyway here’s a $25 gift card!” like. holy shit. free lunch money for asking if i can give you more money? what. so i guess i’m asking the store employees if i should just tip in cash when i go to pick up tomorrow.

last week, i started making a powerpoint for prospective therapists. it’s useful for gathering my thoughts, but i’m realizing as i make it that it’s probably too much for introductory purposes, and i should only cover a little tiny bit of it at first. maybe whoever i end up with, i can give it to them, but it needs to be even more abridged. i’m also like… worried that it’s the wrong time to start seeing a therapist. what if shit pops off a month and some change from now? what if m really needs financial help? i’ve had really bad luck with therapists so far.

had a fantastic weekend w/r. originally the whole house was supposed to go, but d/t smoke theirs got canceled. our reservation was non-refundable, so we figured what the hell, there’s ac. things cleared up basically the same night we left.

we basically slept, fucked, ate, drank and poked around town. ideal. altho i feel gross abt how much i’ve eaten. that’s the most sexual attention i’ve gotten in uhhhh a while. i’m sore. xD and yeah, i do feel less insecure for the moment. on saturday he had to call j bc she needed a particular login, and after we had a tiny exchange like:

him: “J is so friendly.”

me: “Yeah, she’s pretty great.”

him: “I like her a lot.”

me: “She really likes you, too.”

him: pauses for a sec. “It’s so weird and rare to have friends I *don’t* wanna fuck. Do you do that, too?”

which was a smooth indirect way of handling it even if direct would’ve made me feel better

–

we also saw such incredible stars. the sky was so clear, in contrast to this last week, and the moon wasn’t up at all. even from inside the car, i could see the milky way at a glance.

the drive back was beautiful. seriously, just…. so idyllic. we took backroads for a significant part and i was really glad we took the car w awd. saw parts of here that i’ve never seen. it was a very beautiful early fall day, sunny and warm with a little wind. the trees crowding the road turned the pavement into a shadow-dappled moving scene.

a really beautiful break from reality.

now we’re back here, with rbg’s death heavy… and m got laid off on friday. i hope she stays motivated and that her friends in the industry help her out. so now only 3/5 house ppl have jobs. i’m afraid that she’ll need help and i won’t be able to offer the same level of help that she offered me back in the day bc our house is so much larger.

–

after we got back tonight, i finally put my shoes through the washing machine. i really fucking hope it helps. i need to fold laundry and help clean up in here so that r has a good workspace for his new job tmrw. and then this week i need to do the paperwork for my initial pt visit.

i also managed to squeak in cleaning the downstairs bathroom before the changeover tmrw, so that felt good.

i’m not sure how i feel about having to reach back to 9th/10th grade…. well, ok, no. Maybe 2012 or so? … to look back and see growth from where i was before. i guess i am a slow bitch.

but like, my old friend (and ex before that) reached out to M out of the blue a few days ago. they sort of had a vibe back in 2012 or whenever it actually was, but nothing much happened, in part bc i was freaked and was like “yo m can you not do this, if this is a thing even, it’s not cool to me” and as far as i know she actually did that. he ended up dating someone else i went to high school with, and they fucked off to the north forever and fell out of contact pretty damn fast. lesbian codependency flavors, like i was telling m.

in the intervening 7ish years, those two got married, and idk i guess shit happened, and they’re now getting divorced. he hit up M less than a week ago, they made some flimsy pretexts of “stopping by on his way to plans he had w/other friends” and “helping move the mini-fridge” (no, really).

m communicates decently well up front. they were both gonna take reasonable precautions. it sounded like a medium-short visit. m and i joked about having sex w/masks on, and she brought up something blah blah “I made it CLEAR to him that NOTHING was gonna happen bc I would NEVER break your heart” like what the fuck are you on, what does that even mean bro? but anyway, as she intended, i informed her that i don’t feel that way anymore about our boundary issues (hers and mine) and that if they want to get freaky, have fun i guess. you know. within the bounds of a pandemic and immunocompromised housemates.

except they did get freaky, slash hung out for like 16 hours, and did so without the aforementioned bounds. they, in the phoenix room, with the penis, to the immunocompromised housemates. idk. nobody’s been murdered yet and b is probably totally safe, but dude. Dude. The principle of the thing. The house has talked to her multiple times about how to handle shit like this, individually and as a group, and she decides that just cause she wants to catch up w him, it has to be in a way that puts everyone else at risk?

at least it’s better than the fucking bus thing, fuck. did she ever even do that….? or did she just argue it On Principle like her parents’ daughter and then toss aside the hollow victory?

i thought things were maybe getting better with the house, but i see now that she primarily doesn’t want to admit she’s wrong and take responsibility for her own actions, and has actually just been trying to outwait housemates’ feewings. god, do you see yourself?

i think it would be best if the other housemates make a plan to replace her and me when the lease renews next march. this is how she does. takes what she needs, ricochets through relationships, discards them when ppl get in the way of what she wants. she deserves to deal with her shit alone, rather than being a drain on house resources and refusing to communicate or be community-minded. no one forced you to sign the lease, dude. is that short-sighted? it .. oh, right, bringing it back around.

what i told her was honest. i…. no longer feel trapped, overwhelmed, and threatened by the thought of her having any kind of relationship with my ex. besides, it figures, right? his best friend wanted to get with me, my best friend wants to get with him. good job on both of us for having healthier amounts of space and reduced codependency! like, damn. it’s not like this is a goal i had, but if I *had* thought about it, i wouldn’t have ever expected to feel like this, really.

in general i feel a little jelly bc i’ve been just…. so, so shit at keeping in touch with peeps from high school. partly bc of the whole m thing. and partly bc i struggle in general with making and keeping friends. l texted after my bday and i never responded. on the one hand, i am pretty sure they don’t care about talking to me or spending time with me very much. on the other hand, if i don’t try, it’s 100% on me. but i don’t always know how to try, in terms of the exact right words and tones and memories coming together to… whatever. maybe it’s stupid of me to think it’s about what i say. maybe people see me and realize no matter what i say, i’m empty and useless and boring.

i’ve been listening to old, old music from around 9th and 10th grade, since they started talking, and since m started talking to me about the talkening. it sorta brings up old feels, but….. they’re all mine, to me. it’s about me, not about being lost in someone else.

… bc i have a shiny new person to be lost in sgasdkhglkd it’s not like i’ve grown up THAT much but at least this relationship is so much fucking happier and healthier than either of those, good fucking god…

———

SDSALKDFGHKSASDLK they’re moving in together after literally a week of being back in contact, i’m xDDDDDDDDD did i call it with the codependency? god damn. it is funny watching b do the same kind of thing to m that i did, once, and her still being into it somehow. they’re gonna have fun though probably. and i get to watch m’s “oh i definitely still wanna marry E” evaporate like the blatant lie we knew it was.

Ah haaaaaa that’s very clicky outside. A sound that doesn’t belong.

ffffffffffffff it one hundred percent figures that AS SOON as I get my keeb working and connected to my iPad, and open.a new post in wordpress, r comes out to say hi and chat and say “I haven’t seen much of you today.” No fucking shit. Look how happy and chatty you were. I wasn’t missed. And of course you’re aware enough to poke at me as soon as I do anything outside of like…. sitting in your room on your bed or cleaning the kitchen. I’m such a fucking piece of shit.

I can’t really blame you for not wanting to stick around, for projecting your thing-doing anxieties onto me. I’m boring and useless.

And then you have the gall to come out here like “nah you did so much today and I definitely care about your new mechanical keyboard build”…. tbf I technically did things today, they were just all things I could do without leaving the bed surface. Well, mostly. Aside from cleaning the bathroom and the kitchen.

(That’s right, I’m no longer on permanent kitchen backup duty, I actually have a spot on the chore wheel. And my first week is upstairs bathroom, and I’ve been feeling sick… ahh I need nested parentheses now, don’t I ….. and today Jess was like “I wanna take a bath” and I knew if I didn’t do it before her that she’d do it, and she said as much when I announced my intentions/made sure I would be able to get in first to clean the scummy-ass tub before her so yeah I had to clean the tub literally asap after a late breakfast this morning, late bc I didn’t sleep well, didn’t sleep well bc smoke, thought I was sick bc of smoke, ok is that all for the backwards parenthetical explanation)

And there he fucking goes, on a walk. Your ideal, most self-actualized days don’t involve me at all. And your house is better at doing the dishes than mine, but they’re not any better at connecting with me than my house, which is to say not at all and I’m always aware of how empty and perfunctory my interactions w everyone are, how much of a fucking failure they are. Tl;dr I don’t belong anywhere. The knowledge I’ve managed to absorb, the shitty little experiences I’ve had…. none of it is right for connecting with anyone.

Even just today, my very first boyfriend, who was part of the friend group I introduced M to when she first moved up here, called M to talk for 6 hours about all his life changes (he got married and divorced! Damn bro)… I’m not in touch with anyone. No one cares enough to be in contact with me, I’m not interesting or worthwhile. I’m failing to try in ways that result in connection and communication and sharing.

And m told me about this, yeah, and then has like…. been in the discord a decent amount but hasn’t replied to any of my messages. Literally no one wants anything to do with me today. And I don’t know how to change that fact for tomorrow, or the next day, or week, or month, or year. I show up places and attract emotionally stunted people with underdeveloped senses of humor, and I look down on the handful of people who might actually want to connect with me.

Two days ago, when I thought that I might have COVID bc of a sore throat rather than just having lots of smoke in the air, I went and got a swab test after work. the swabbing was kind of painful, like, totally bearable, but I definitely squnched my face up and my eyes teared up. Pulling the swabs out was worse than going in for some reason. Definitely that … raw-ish feeling of flesh that isn’t used to being touched, where simple contact sets off untried pain nerves.

Oh, right. I was going somewhere else with that. After the swab test, I texted the house to give my intended plan and check if that worked for everyone, and give peeps a chance to reply. I drove to a park that I’d never been to, but had heard of multiple times, near the testing center. I couldn’t help but notice the easily accessible train tracks near there.

I can tell that my body doesn’t want to drink much more, doesn’t have much use for it and it might not feel great, but…. I don’t know what else to do. I’m lonely and I hate myself and it feels obvious that no one wants me around. the latter two items are the same, you know.

Fuck, dude. My writing sucks. It’s been so long since I bled. It feels good because it’s one of the few irrefutable, tangible things I can do reliably. I can clean the kitchen, but that’s some easily erased nebulous shit with no start or finish, and it’s Expected of me to boot. It’s seen as some bare minimum functional shit rather than something I chose to do purely bc I could.

Phone, iPad, Bluetooth speaker, and wireless keyboard. I have 4 whole-ass battery-powered items I’m running down right now.

I don’t know what to do with myself, so…… the thing that occurs to me to do is making a PowerPoint for potential therapists. That would be the constructive thing. but do I want to be constructive?

I don’t think I want to be doing this post anymore. There’s plenty I haven’t gotten around to sharing, but oh well. A failure to connect here, too; I can’t say I’m surprised.

trying to type while sinking into the middle of this old ass bed is…. ergonomic as fuck.

i rearranged r’s room yesterday… basically by myself. he helped move furniture around and then peaced to go drink bc apparently he, too, hates this kind of stuff. he and m really are similar sometimes. it was fucking frustrating and Too Much for me to do by myself and he was really snippy and short with me for no reason throughout. and then he wasn’t falling asleep easily last night so he ended up on the couch.

rrrrgghhh!! I feel so lonely and frustrated and trapped! I’m pretty sure that being here like this is still better than being at my place having to jump through five million hoops to breathe the same air as my bf, but right now… i could use some space to do things without feeling judged or performative or like i need to make myself smaller to accommodate other people’s feelings.

… so like, for some reason, I Feel You sounded like it was in a different key than i remembered, so I checked against the music video on youtube and sdgfjdlsk SO DORKY. Makes me feel like I’m in 11th grade again or some shit.

my bday was pretty cool. surprise luau (although secretly i overheard one of the housemates say something about a luau while walking past my window outside and i was like… hmmmmmmmm…) and r went to a LOT of effort to include my fam, my house, and a few friends around the city. kind of incredible. a lot of fun. kind of a lot for a work night.

i’m pretty proud of how i did for r’s bday. i made beef stock from marrow bones for the first time, and turned it into some kind of chili-heavy noodle soup…. it was rly good. i also made enough noodle dough for the house. and invited everyone to pull noodles the day of. and damn lemme tell you, making noodle dough is a good core workout. i also also made fake object cakes, like, the ones where it looks like a Thing, but then you cut into it and it’s cake on the inside! deception! hilarity! and yeah r was pretty baffled when we brought out 3 packs of spearmint gum with candles stuck down the sides to sing him happy birthday.

i did a lot and it was all very personal and special and also now i know how to make both bone broth AND some legit noodles. The secret? Time. If you can give the dough however much time it needs to relax, you can get where you want to dough, eventually.

during lockdown, i’ve been drinking less (surprisingly) but due to all the different celebrations of late, it’s been sort of swinging back around. and with it comes a certain amount of just feeling gross, and crafty-sneaky self-loathing. It blends in so well! Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that I need a therapist.

and a physical therapist fffff

i’m just… physically not active much. and it shows. and i don’t like my body and i think i could be doing more to be active but i feel like i have a mental block towards like… all the self-improvement stuff that’s really simple and straightforward that i have to Just Do. it’s easier to throw money at things.

holy shit, it’s hot out here. a full 5 degree difference between the bathroom and the living room. the kitchen must be Fucked Up rn.

long time, no see, bitches! I finally got around to tending the blog’s back-end and now i feel like I can post on here without feeling bad and unfinished about it. Order of operations.

update: the kitchen is, indeed, Fucked Up.

It’s funny looking at the most recent posts from a little over a year ago. I’ve really sucked at following up on those things, and am basically in the same place on them. My back is an issue. I don’t do pt exercises anymore bc of my back pain. and i don’t really exercise at all bc of my knee pain. it doesn’t feel great.

and wrt therapy, i basically ghosted the behavioral health person they gave me. shit was kinda helpful, but also like. very obviously short-term, and she didn’t give a shit about me, and was always late to the appt herself, and why would i spend money on that when i know i want a real therapeutic relationship?

today/this weekend has me thinking about therapy more seriously for the first time in a while. not sure if it’s just due to… personal milestones and interpersonal dynamics of late + bad brain, or what, but the last few days have been a genuinely bad episode of the ‘pression. like. crying the whole morning, can’t hardly do anything physical without it circulating sadness through my body like a bloodborne drug pumping faster with the additional exertion, withdrawn, convinced no one likes me and i’m worthless and shitty and should kms, taking anti-anxiety meds to be able to shut my brain up and sleep, the disconnect between appetite and physical fullness/emptiness of stomach… it came in waves and sometimes i thought it was getting better, but then interacting with r made it worse again. not enough space to myself, feeling directly lonely and unsatisfied w our relationship..

i talked to him about that again today. it’s like, a quarterly talk, or something like that. i handled it chiller than i sometimes do. i said i wanted to check in about our sex life, said there hasn’t been a lot of it going on lately, asked a couple of times for him to please tell me if he’s not interested in me sexually or something like that, bc i’m too young and cute to not be getting dicked down as much as i want.

his parts of the conversation were like…. he likes me, he loves me, he wants to want to bone down but doesn’t, he’s been preoccupied recently with work etc blah blah (there’s always something), he agrees that i should be getting uhh… i forget what he said exactly but getting laid as much as i want, essentially, and asked if we should talk about opening up the relationship. and also when he talked about it his phrasing was “catch some ‘b'” which i don’t know which that’s supposed to be???? bussy???????!? bone? balls? i really. don’t know. he also said he could be doing more to try to get in the sexy zone, like, thinking about it to get in the right mindset. he also… carefully phrased something about the future where like, the main uncertainty was “what to do about children” and the implication was that other than that, he felt… committed to our future? not in so many words, but just that that was the main obstacle he could see, and everything else was coo.

i also asked him about whether he felt kink was fundamental to his sexuality and like, a necessary component that should be worked w/ always, and he said not really, he considers it a separate thing bc it doesn’t jive with most of his other senses of identity and self and masculinity.

so like. that was a decently solid reassurance that no, he hasn’t just fallen out of love w/me or whatever, and he does still want to be with me, and isn’t just stringing me along because i’m “nice and easy to get along with” (my words). but like most of these convos, i’m left with feelings of reassurance and not much else. if it’s not a priority for u, nothing’s going to change.

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at least talking to him about it made me feel better and more motivated to have a regular day.

one of the other direct questions i asked was if it was me, specifically, that he was unattracted to and not excited by, and he said he couldn’t remember the last time he beat off. how is that even a thing? that’s not how sperm production works. that’s not how HE works.

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do you think i’ll ever get around to the ultimate therapy self-introduction mindmap?

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but like. difficult and repeated conversations aside, after reading how my self-improvement has been stalled or maybe even backsliding for at least a year in a lot of ways, I thought it might be nice to list how I’ve actually made some progress.

• I am better–not amazing, but more confident and self-reliant–at drawing blood.
• I am sometimes better at talking to R directly about things.
• I’ve started rediscovering some old interests this year. quarantining will do that, i guess. i think that maybe means that not living with m, not living with a bunch of anxious gays who have Dishwashing Trauma(TM) has been good for me. as much as i miss how much easier it is to talk to people (and not talk to them, heh.) but like…
• I’ve sewn some masks (fewer than I’d like but shhhh, I made 4 for my parents and that’s pretty good), I’ve taken apart some scrub pants that were too big for me and altered them to fit better (and now they’re this side of too tight lmfaooooo dammit) and am almost finished putting them back together–with pockets and an elastic/drawstring combo waistband!
• I also started thinking about Raspberry Pi projects… haven’t done much yet but am kinda excited to think about the possibilities, and spent a long time researching NAS setup options
• I’ve been slowly poking at drawing, although not as much practice as I probably need to in order to make good progress. but I’ve converted picture of drawing to line art and color art, which… however shitty it might be, it’s progress! xP
• I am getting better at makeup applications, i think. maybe not linearly, maybe not 100% consistency, but better.
• quarantining w R has forced me to get better at city driving. it’s a lot more of a time sink to avoid highways and main thoroughfares here. also…. definitely not parallel parking, but have gotten better at street parking wrt car proprioception and knowing how close i am to… well, lbr, mostly just to the curbs on this street. i don’t think that knowledge/sense of place transfers to other unfamiliar streets.
• i’ve really been working on my shrimp pad thai game lately, and it’s been paying off. really fucking delicious, serves a LOT of people. Maybe not the most authentic stuff tho. but it has tamarind and fish sauce so really it can’t be THAT bad, right?
• um. all of these are actually pretty recent. i don’t remember what i was working on before quarantimes, if anything… i guess it was a subtle slide from like february onward.
• and before february, i’d just gotten back from hawaii w/r’s family! we went for xmas and it was both just as magical as ppl said it would be and like, less magical bc it’s a real place full of real ppl and the after-effects of colonialism and y/t s/up//rem///acy (uh, does that do anything off of the tungle?) and also humidity is not my fave, but it is really good for skin apparently.

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it’s so fucking hot rn i’m losing my mind a little

i was gonna do things… like… shop a lil… wanna get rid of some phone tabs… fuck dude idr…

I need to figure out R birthday things. i want to do a trident cake and appa mask and meep mask and like. one more thing. but WHAT???? oh and also i want ppl to get together to make hand-ripped noodles and try to make spicy beef la men sauce! but i’m not sure when to text the group abt that….