september entries ---------------------------
weather: clear, 7c.
highlight: will be catching up on stuff later today.
.29
since coming to university i haven't been able to make a single friend. i've been friendly to people, but it's never extended beyond that.
i hear people say that university is the time where you make your lifelong connections. and while i know that can't be the case for everyone i just... wanted some semblance of truth to that statement?
i'm not friends with anyone from high school anymore, which is a story for another time. i met a guy that turned out to be more interested in how he could use me as an asset rather than a friend, so i stopped returning his messages. i thought i made a friend in my co-curricular program but she's started hanging out with other people over me.
i don't blame these other people for not being friends with me in the way i want. i know for something like that to happen it has to come from me more than it does them.
mostly, i blame my mental health and my frequent inability to socialize. maybe calling it an inability isn't right. unwillingness is probably a better word. there are some days where i just don't want to talk to people, there are some days where i just want to listen to music and zone out on the bus. i don't really feel that's something within my own realm of control.
it's weird. some days i feel okay enough to start working towards new connections and other days i feel so bad i wonder why i ever thought to burden myself with so much more social upkeep. for the sake of not hurting more people i've decided that i just... won't try to make friends. if it happens it happens, if it doesn't then i won't try and force it. less for me to hurt about that way.
weather: partly cloudy, 19c.
highlight: did some more assignments that needed doing.
.24
my goal for this month was to write more consistently here, and it seems i've been failing that, miserably.
the truth of the matter is quite the opposite to what i had first thought would be the case - it's not that i don't have anything to write about, it's that i don't have enough time to actually sit down and write.
school consumes most of my thoughts nowadays. when i'm not thinking about school, i'm thinking of ways to relax after a hard day of school which, in most cases, doesn't involve reflecting critically about my day.
i don't necessarily not find writing here relaxing, it's simply very mentally taxxing having to go back through my day and compile the events that happened and my thoughts on them. i would much rather turn my brain off and tune into a fun game for an hour or two before having to return to reality.
in other news. i think i'm getting sick. which tends to happen when a bunch of people from all over the place congregate in such a small area. my throat is sore and i have this dull but persistent headache. i'm also more tired than usual, and my body temperature is all over the place.
i would like to avoid getting sick now if at all possible though. i have an important assignment coming up that i need to get done, and all the discomfort is making it difficult to muster up any motivation to do anything.
weather: clear, 22c.
highlight: had a neat co-current education session.
.16
i remember as a child i would draw a lot. digitally, on paper, anywhere i could, i would doodle little images of things that made me happy. i really liked drawing. i really liked making characters and drawing them, specifically. i had a lot of ocs growing up that still exist in my head as vague concepts that i would draw over and over again.
in becoming an adult i stopped drawing. i don't know if there was one, single moment where i decided to stop, or if it was a combination of factors that eventually wore at me to the point that i didn't want to continue.
whatever the case, in large part i blame my sense of perfectionism - the idea that if i'm not great at something at first, i will never be good at it and trying in any capacity is a waste of my time.
i wonder if i could get back into drawing now. now that i know the way i think and can work around those thoughts. or if i'd still be held back by them, engrained too deep in my own mind.
i might expand on this entry later. it's on the shorter side, but for now this is all i have to say.
weather: clear, 21c.
highlight: started building a neat new base in minecraft.
.15
i've been told throughout my life that the way i talk is pretentious. the vocabulary i use, the way i format my sentences, the amount of words i used to convey the same message that could've been conveyed with a lot less.
i have to assume the people around me think i'm doing it on purpose. to seem better than them. smarter, more important. when that couldn't be further from the truth. i've been bullied over it in the past, teased into submission until i didn't even feel i had any right to speak.
this is just how i talk, especially over text. my spoken vocabulary is a bit more "normal", but the way i write on here is the same way i write when i message my friends.
being told i sound like i'm making myself seem important has always been confusing to me, because that's never my intention. i don't know any other way to speak, this is just the way i am. why are you making fun of me for it?
i'm very overtly concerned with how i word my messages nowadays. to not seem mean, to not seem blunt, to not seem like i'm trying to make myself out to be better than i am. but i always fail either way. and i don't know why.
weather: sunny, 24c.
highlight: slept well enough.
.13
i'm able to remember a lot of the distressing things that happened to me without the emotions attached to them. in that sense it's easy for me to trick myself into believing that things weren't that bad, or at least not bad enough to be impacting my behavior in the present. oftentimes i just assume these things were probably distressing, because that's what they would be objectively, but i can hardly ever confirm how distressing it was for me personally because i just don't remember how it was like to be living through those moments. on occasion, though, something triggers me back into those feelings, and suddenly i realize maybe i'm not as resilient as i thought.
if i hadn't made it apparent by now i have a lot of relationship trauma. my ex, as i've increasingly come to realize, was not a good partner to me in the latter years of our relationship. i do my best to not carry these scars into my current one, or at least nurse them to the point where they're more managable, but sometimes that's difficult when i can hardly tell what is typical or atypical behavior.
recently my girlfriend and i got into a very minor disagreement. i nearly cried. i prepared for some kind of punishment - withholding affection, perhaps even outright ignoring me entirely for the day, or longer than that. i started to withdraw into myself, to lessen the emotional burden of being abandoned once again. but that moment never came. the rest of the day played out as normal, and i was confused. i went to sleep terrified of all the ways things could go wrong, and when i woke up the next day things were just... normal.
even when i calmed down enough to approach these feelings without letting them get the better of me i had a hard time understanding them. why would i be so terrified of something that my girlfriend had never shown even a hint of doing? so much that i couldn't sleep right and i could hardly even talk to her without spiralling about saying the right thing and keeping the peace. at some point i realized that it wasn't anything my girlfriend did that's making me feel this way, it was things my ex did that i still believe is normal - the emotions of which were brought back by this incident.
i remember now, when we would disagree on things she'd withhold affection, or ghost me entirely. it felt like punishment. i had learnt then, in order to keep her around i had to be submissive, swallow my feelings and cater only to her so that she wouldn't leave. i had learnt then, that conflict meant my partner would leave as punishment, and that's something i've yet to unlearn.
strangely enough i can understand her perspective, somewhat anyway. i tend to want to cool off after disagreements too. i'm highly emotional. when i'm in that high it's hard for me to make good decisions, and i would never want to subject someone like my partner to the harms of a decision i wouldn't otherwise make with a clear head. at least that's my perspective, i don't know if her intentions were ever that virtuous. who knows, maybe she was acting just to harm me. i can't ever be sure.
that being said, there are ways to go about that without abandoning your partner. no matter how much empathizing i do with her need to have some space after tense conversations will erase the fact that she did just that.
weather: partly cloudy, 27c.
highlight: got a good chunk of my school work done.
.10
my mentorship hasn't been going too well. in fact this thing that had excitedly waited the whole summer for has quickly become something i only grow more frusterated at with every passing day.
it sounds mean to blame my mentees entirely for it, but i have a hard time not. on orientation day neither of them showed up on time, and when they finally did show up (around 20 minutes late, without apology or explaination) one of them left before i could establish a means of group communication between us.
we did, eventually, make a groupchat with the three of us. after several emails and seriously considering speaking to my program head about them not responding to me. only for that mentee to become completely unresponsive once that was done.
i tried, on monday, to set up a day for the three of us to meet up so i could discuss my availability with them. since then plans have become friday, maybe. as in one of my mentees suggested friday morning, i agreed, and the other has been completely silent the whole time. i don't actually know if that's going to happen or not. i don't even know if i want it to happen, frankly. it's been so little time but i'm already so fed up that i really don't know if i want to continue.
a lot of my feelings of frusteration comes from the fact that i feel like i'm going out of my way to cater to them only for my efforts to be met with indifference. ordinarily i wouldn't be so pushy about meeting up and discussing something like that in person, i'm only doing so because they said they would prefer face-to-face communication. why sign up to recieve a mentor if you're not going to talk to them? why state these preferences if you're unable to uphold them? i was a first year in the very same program as them last year. you aren't so busy in the first week that you can't check your messages once a day.
granted. i don't know their circumstances. maybe they are that busy, it's why i'd never air out my feelings at them like this. but god is it annoying to be assigned two people who will not respect your time.
weather: partly cloudy, 16c.
highlight: built a really nice house in minecraft.
.07
i've always experienced varied levels of attraction and emotional attachment to my girlfriend. i'm dissociative by nature, my childhood was not all that pleasant so my ability to cope with unpleasant things in adulthood is very low - when something stressful happens i disconnect from myself and my surroundings in order to protect myself. this is something i've grown up with, something my girlfriend understands, and isn't behavior that exclusively affects her (as in, this is something that happens equally towards all of my friends).
there are times where my love for her does feel like an overwhelming smolder in my chest, much like how it's described in the books or on tv. most other times i don't feel anything at all. but my care for her never wanes throughout my dissociative episodes, i understand my love for her as a fact rather than an emotion, if that makes any sense; i made a decision that she is mine to love and care for, and i will continue to do that for as long as it feels right; my inability to always feel love does not give me any right to treat her unkindly.
in moments where i'm fully grounded i've been able to feel most every feeling that someone should feel towards their romantic partner. but something that always struck me as strange was my inability to experience desire to be with her, at least not until very recently. in fact the thought of our next date often made me anxious, something i tried every time to convince myself was just excitement. i don't agree with this, but it's an easy way to soothe myself into feeling normal.
she tells me she misses me alot, especially when it's been a while since our last call, but i could never say the same towards her, not honestly. repeating those words back at her made my throat tight, because in those moments i knew i would be equally happy with her as i would be alone. i tread these thoughts carefully because i don't want to lie. lying about missing her would be hurtful, but being truthful about how i felt would also be hurtful. i understood then that i didn't need to reciprocate those feelings, but merely meet them where she expressed them.
i say 'not until very recently' because i distinctly remember a few days ago when i had caught myself thinking about wanting to play minecraft with her. minecraft with her. with her. that thought scared me half to death, and even typing that out now makes my skin crawl, like some part of my very soul wants to burst out of my chest and delete any trace of those feelings not unlike kris deltarune.
though the fact that i feel like that points to my overall feelings i wanted to document in this entry - the fact that for a long time, throughout my previous relationships, i had conditioned myself to throw away desire for my partners' affection because they weren't able to meet these feelings for me. so much so that i had forgotten desire is something i could feel in my chest and not just as a thought in my head.
and the fact that, very slowly with the unknowing aid of my girlfriend, i'm learning that feeling this way is okay, and i'm starting to be able to feel these things again.
i want to write a line that praises my girlfriend but it's very difficult to say anything without seeming like i'm thankful for her for not abusing me. which... i am grateful for, but saying something like that disregards the numerous ways she goes above and beyond to be an incredible partner, so i won't.
i'll end this by saying that we did play minecraft together. and i've built a house that we're going to build together in the near future.
weather: sunny, 26c.
highlight: first day of school (real).
.03
today was my first actual day of school. as in the first day with lectures. things went fine. some people were annoying, but they usually are. it's nothing i'm not used to by now. it was nice being able to study in the library again. it's the only place that i can really seem to consistently get stuff done.
last year my mental health took a really bad tumble right at the start of the second semester and i'm determined to not let that happen again. i want to stay on top of my assignments and things i have to do. not just scrape by but actually go with the intention of learning, even if that means engaging with the things i like a little less. i need to do some revision later today, or maybe tomorrow. when i have the time. we'll see.
i still have things i want to write about before i forget, but haven't had the ability to actually write about them. i tried a few times today but i really just could not get my thoughts to make sense.
i'm worried if i don't write them now then i'll forget them, but at the same time if i spend too long trying to force myself to write i'm worried i'll get burnt out of writing. i don't want either, but i'm not sure what i can do to fix my problem...
weather: sunny, 16c.
highlight: first day of school.
.02
i finished tweaking the site formatting just now, so things should now look okay-ish on computer screens. or at least things should not be significantly different between my home computer and my laptop, though i've yet to test if that's actually true or not. there's still a few little things that are bothering me here and there that i'll get to eventually, mostly because they're all things only i would notice anyway.
at some point i'd also like to make everything mobile friendly, i just can't currently think of how i would even begin to do something like that given the complexity of the layout. while i do love how my site looks one big problem i have with it is that i cannot find any sites that are visually similar to mine to reference code from. or maybe the fact that something like this is difficult to work with is exactly the reason why most people chose something else?
i have the benefit of feeling no pressure to make my site accessible to other people. i don't really care if someone can or cannot see my site, it's not like anyone's gonna miss out on anything by not being able to see my rambles about things most people don't even care about.
weather: sunny, 24c.
highlight: final day of summer break.
.01
i'm writing a lot later than i usually do, i'm planning on going to sleep basically right after posting this. i wasn't going to write anything today since i was having a hard time making my thoughts make sense. i have topics and thoughts i want to pick apart but no motivation to actually do so as of late, probably thanks to some mix of jetlag and being exhausted after all of what little energy i am able to get back every day by cleaning or other maintenance.
which is to say i've been busy, and also very tired. but seeing as it's the first of september, and the first new month since the site's completion, i felt weird not putting out something for the beginning of the month. something for me to look back and reflect on once september comes to a close, perhaps. i'm not sure. right now i'm writing with the intention that i will come back and read this entry, but i can't be sure.
anyway, my first day back at uni is tomorrow. i signed up to be a mentor to the younger grades and i'm, embarrassingly, a little bit nervous about winning their approval. which is a weird position to be in, cause it's usually the opposite - mentee wants to win the approval of mentor.
i wanted to talk more about my girlfriend and my love for her that i'm too shy to tell her directly, but that's definitely not a bundle of thoughts that i can wring out to be palatable right now.
i also still need to work on editing the site formatting to be a bit more flexible between devices. i know how to now, i just haven't had the time to properly sit down and implement the necessary changes.
finally, i'd like to add entires to this place a bit more frequently. not just when something cool happens, but for the more monotonous parts of life too. i fear once school really kicks off a lot of my entries will just be about how i studied for the whole day though, which wouldn't make for very fun to read entires...
anyway, happy september. please excuse any spelling or grammar errors in this one, i'm barely keeping my eyes open just writing this.