Preview
I am selfish.
Though I suspect this is a universal condition, I can’t help but believe I’m more selfish than others. Every action, whether deliberate or instinctive, is *always* a result of self-interest. Even altruistic gestures are in self-regard. If a decision is ours to make, then whatever decision is made is made because it was, in some sense, wanted.
Recognizing this, though, does NOT absolve me. If anything, my belief in psychological egoism makes each of my decisions *more* inescapably mine. I get no comfort that others can, in believing my motives can be separated from what I want. If every action comes from some form of self-interest, then everything I do must also come from it too.
I’m afraid I’ll start making selfish-perceived decisions, knowing that no matter what I choose, I will be selfish anyway. I’m afraid people will see that all my perceived goodness was never selfless to begin with. I’m guilt-ridden that every choice I’ve made & every choice I make comes from self-interest. I’m guilt-ridden not because of that fact, but because I don’t care that my decisions are selfish, only that I am, & that I know it. I’m guilty because no matter what I can or will do is good. That I don’t do good because I can never be good.
Knowing that I act in my own interest doesn’t stop me from resenting others when their interest seem to be met more easily. Someone else’s existence always feels like a subtraction from my own.
I don’t know how to stop it. I’m the most jealous person I know. I’ve learned how to keep it discreet; people don’t believe me when I say “I have jealousy issues,” *because* I’ve learned to faux disinterest. But the smallest things make me feel physically ill; When someone repeats something I’ve said, when someone is born into more privilege than me, when someone I know directs their attention somewhere that isn’t me. It’s rarely dramatic, just moments that make my chest tight & myself nauseous.
Even worse, I don’t want to get better. I’m comfortable being jealous. I don’t feel guilty for it, I just feel sick when something triggers it. I don’t think someone like me could improve even if I tried anyway. I’m too curious to look away from the things that upset me. I’d rather know & feel awful than live in something resembling blissful ignorance. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but satisfaction will always brings it back.
I can’t stop checking, comparing, measuring myself against anyone or people I already know I resent.
There are people who hurt me years ago whose lives I still keep up with. Someone who practically “took” my interests now lives more comfortably than I ever have. Loved, supported, financially secure. Why did someone who has so much still feel the need to treat me so cruelly..? And still, I look. I see how much more beautiful they are, how much more unique they are, how much happier they are.
Others who once pushed me toward the worst parts of myself have gone on to reinvent themselves publicly, moral-farming & philosophy preaching. Now unwaveringly supported. They get to move on & what I do is measure my life against theirs. I’m disgusted by how much I want to know, & how unwilling I am to stop.
I must be addicted to feeling horrible about myself.
No matter how sick it makes me, I return to it. I chalk it up to “insatiable curiosity,” but that must be cope. There must be some quieter part of me that craves what follows. Comparing so meticulously, the drop in my stomach, the slow ache of coming up short.
Less like harm & more like habit. I don’t know whether to feel guilty for wanting it, or angry that I do.
I *must* be addicted to feeling horrible about myself. Every day; without fail, I think about my appearance for at least half the time I’m awake. It crowds out everything else. It’s selfish & it’s self-indulgent. But, I can’t stop. I’m grotesque & misassembled in ways I can’t correct. I’m so monstrous. I fit no beauty standard. A voice too deep, features that don’t align, none of my proportions match on my body, an unflattering personality. I feel guilty for thinking it, & guilty that I can’t think of anything else; but it is true. I am the ugliest girl I’ve ever known & ever will know.
I feel sick because I think about it so much & I feel sick because it’s true. People I know tell me it isn’t true. A countless number have. They insist I’m wrong. But I can’t stand a liar, & I hate it. It sounds like pity, or politeness. A lie I’m expected to accept in order to keep things comfortable. I get so angry at hearing it & that just makes me all the more disgusting.
I’m told there’s no evidence & that I’m inventing it. But appearance is everyone’s first impression. And, subconscious or not, will determine how you’re treated. I’ve felt it in the way I’m looked at, the way I’m spoken to, the way I’m made to feel excessive or inconvenient before I’ve said a word. Like I’m something less than human.
I’ve gone out of my way to stop complimenting people, I stopped saying “I love you,” I do everything in my power to not look in a mirror, yet I obsess over how to “fix” what I see. I try makeup, clothes, angles, lighting, nothing improves anything. Nothing alters the verdict. No amount of flattering fabric, no pigment, no reassurance will ever be strong enough to override my appearance. No amount of anything will make me look good to a populace. I look the same to myself, & I look the same to everyone else.
I tell myself it doesn’t matter to me, & that *I* truly don’t “care,” about my appearance. That if I seem preoccupied, it’s only because appearance dictates how people treat you. That I’m forced to care & look like I care, because the world cares first. But if I believe I’ll be treated like a burden regardless, then why does it still matter so much to me..? Why does it consume me if it’s already decided..?
As open as I seem now, it’s incredibly contradictory to me. For someone who claims to dislike herself this much, I spend an alarming amount of time writing about her. It feels contradictory, narcissistic, to center myself so deliberately, to keep saying “I,” “me,” “myself,” as if I’m something worth annotating. Yet, despite how exposed this may read, this blog is anything but vulnerable. I am the most open book out there.
I am still consumed by how unattractive I am. I feel guilty for the people who have to see me; my friends, my coworkers, even my family. No one should be subjected to the torture of being in the presence of my face. No one should be subjected to having to treat me like I’m normal. People who have to pretend I’m ordinary for the sake of kindness :(
I wish someone would throw acid in my face or cut me up, to sand down my features. Then I’d be all the more beautiful. I’d be so easy to look at.
I don’t deserve a single thing I have. Not anything physical, not any ability or skill, not even the conscience that allows me to recognize it. Despite this, I’m so grateful. Grateful for where I was born, for what I’ve been given, for the people who choose to stay near me. My gratitude doesn’t feel warm so much as it feels suffocating.
I’m hoarding something meant for someone better.
Every kindness is misplaced. Every good thing I have is delivered to the wrong person & I’ve just been too cowardly to return it. I carry it all with more guilt! Someone so horrible & so horrifically ugly shouldn’t be trusted with anything beautiful, least of all the things I’ve somehow managed to keep.
I am not myself anymore. Even if I deserved everything I have now, it still wouldn’t belong to *me*. I am not me. There is nothing I regret more than the change that brought me here. Not because change itself is wrong. Everything is supposed to change; with time, experience, environment. It’s a natural progression.
I didn’t change like this though. I forced myself into it. I shaped myself into someone I believe I had to become, & in doing so I am anything but myself. Deliberately sculpted by my own hands & now I can never return to who I used to be.
I used to be such a pushover. I was blunt & honest but tried so hard to remain timid. I would do almost anything anyone asked of me, rarely questioning & NEVER arguing. I was strangely outgoing. I would compliment strangers without hesitation, asked people directly if they wanted to be friends. I was never embarrassed, unapologetically myself. Albeit extremely cringe, but anyone who knew me back then knew me without restraint. Now, I’m the most embarrassed girl in the world.
As time passed, I grew more & more embarrassed. My nature began to be humiliating. People pushed me to be uncomfortable & ashamed. I became blatantly aware of how I appeared. Perceived horribly. I don’t blame others; it would be dishonest to pretend this was only their doing. The change was still my decision. It’s only a factor in why I changed. Social matters, familial matters, maybe even political & cultural matters.
I made myself normal in anyway I could. I stopped speaking to strangers so easily. I stopped complimenting people without thinking. I began to think before I spoke. I didn’t want to look like a tone-dense fool. Now I’m too cruel & too restrained.
No one likes a happy, outgoing; ugly girl. If you are going to be cheerful, open, & freely expressive, you must also be beautiful. Those traits are forgiven in beautiful people. They are charming in someone beautiful. But in someone ordinary or ugly, they are treated as delusion.
But even knowing that, I don’t care anymore. I want to be myself again.
Now I’m afraid of the smallest things. I hesitate to tell new people something as simple as my favorite food. I miss so badly who I was. Blunt & unafraid, constantly cheerful
Now it feels like the people I meet never truly know me. Worse than that, the people I’ve known for years don’t know the real version of me anymore, because I’m the one who hid it. I’ve put myself in a box & I don’t know how to get out of it. It’s made me sick for years.
I’m a faux Yaya & now anyone who knows me or meets me will only know a faux Yaya.
I’ve gotten a boyfriend recently. I know in a *lot* of my excerpts I end up confessing guilt over something. Unfortunately, this is another one of those. I feel guilty about it, not about him directly. More broadly; guilty about the situation.
He’s so objectively handsome & so conventionally attractive. He’s tall, well put together, has perfectly placed features & more. But even if you stripped away all the physical attributes, he would still be remarkable. He’s stereotypically romantic, gives constant compliments, flowers for no particular occasion, planned dates instead of vague suggestions, small gestures. He’s so genuinely kind. He’s Socially competent, warm, outgoing, & thoughtful to people. He’s a hypothetical kind of man. He is so much more than a catch.
I feel guilty because he’s my first boyfriend. I’ve known, easily, more than a hundred girls who have been in relationships. Bad ones & good ones, but always with men who could never be what my boyfriend is. Girls who dated guys who were careless, inattentive, immature; or girls with good guys, guys they’re happy with, who still would not do what my boyfriend does naturally. It feels so wrong that my first experience with a relationship is so fortunate. Like someone trying a hobby for the first time & purchasing the most expensive equipment & immediately finding success. I am so spoiled. I skipped a necessary difficulty that other women had to endure.!?
It feels like a ridiculous stroke of luck.
But sometimes I go back & forth on that idea. It’s not as if I’ve never thought about romance before, or never pined after someone. I probably just expressed less interest in it than the people I knew. It’s also not as if there were never people interested in me either. I’ve had a couple of “suitors,”.
They were just always incompetent. Whether they were handsome or not didn’t matter. They all acted the same. The people who pursued me had no social awareness, no conversational ability, or they were so painfully stupid. Others would jump from relationship to relationship with no pause, no mourning period, & suddenly claim they had feelings for me. Clearly just desperate for *any* relationship, not me specifically. If someone isn’t fit to maintain basic friendships, it’s hard to imagine them sustaining a healthy relationship either. This was 99% of everyone who pursued me.
Sometimes I wonder if my boyfriend wasn’t a ridiculous stroke of luck because of this. Maybe I’m just competent. If 99% of the people who sought me out were like this, this must be true for other women. But many women I know have had far more relationships than I have. Maybe I’m just not a blinded, hopeless romantic who attaches to the first person who shows interest.
This is unfair of me to say though. The girls I know aren’t oblivious. Maybe I am lucky.
I don’t have the best relationship with my mom. It’s really hard to forget all the things she did, but at the same time it feels like I can’t remember anything she did. All my memories are so lost, they all feel fabricated. Like I can’t remember anything correctly. It feels like it’s her fault.
My whole life, & even now, I refuse to call the things she did to me abuse. People around me do. Sometimes they tell me about their own families, things that are much smaller, & they use that same word for them. My whole life I felt like I was attempting to prove myself to her, proving I deserved to be housed, to be kept. When love becomes something you must constantly earn, it stops feeling like love at all. All I ever really wanted was for her to treat me how she treated my brother.
I’ve moved out now. I live with my father. Everything she did seems to echo louder now than it did when I was with her.
When I was little, we all lived in my grandparents’ house. I barely remember her from those years. She was always gone, working I think. I have no memory of her raising me the first seven years of my life. I only remember her hitting me, & being the reason I broke my arm. When we finally moved away, my memories of her became clearer, but not kinder. Sometimes she could be gentle, almost convincingly so, but the pattern never changed. Apartment after apartment, it followed us. Punishments for things I did, punishments for things I didn’t do, beatings that left bruises or wire marks. Once it went on until I couldn’t walk. After my dad moved out there were days she simply didn’t feed me. None of these things happened every day, but they happened often enough that they became the shape of what I remember childhood being.
As I grew older, the things she said to me became clearer than the things she did. Most of my weekends & school days were spent cleaning. Floors, counters, dishes, the same surfaces over & over again. Not just chores, it was a form of punishment. If something wasn’t clean enough, if I missed a corner or left a streak of dust somewhere, she would yell, or she would hit me. Mistakes were treated like proof of something deeper wrong with me.
Sometimes she would call me a slave. My own mother saying it, a black woman even more than I am. She would say it if the house wasn’t clean enough, if I didn’t move fast enough, if I looked tired or upset while doing it. She would say that if I couldn’t even clean her house properly then I wasn’t good enough to be one. I wasn’t allowed to have friends either, & she told me that didn’t matter because no one would ever see me as an equal anyway, being black meant the world had already decided what I was worth. And to her that was essentially nothing. Then sometimes she would sit me down & make me watch history documentaries, telling me I should be grateful for my ancestry, that I should appreciate where I come from. I remember the glow of the television more clearly than the lessons themselves.
When we finally moved into a real house, nothing really changed. This all persisted. By middle school I had started wanting the ordinary things other kids had; to go outside, to have friends, to stay after school for something that wasn’t going straight back home. But none of that was allowed. From 12 to 19, I wasn’t to be outside under any circumstance other than school. No friends, no staying out, no extracurriculars, no job, I couldn’t even get a permit.
By then she was older, so the beatings weren’t always as rough as they used to be, but something about them felt more unpredictable. She started doing weird shit. Sometimes she would threaten me holding a kitchen knife, once she strangled me & repeatedly yelled she was going to kill me, another night she woke me beating me, the worst I’d ever had it, saying she meant to beat me to death because I hadn’t finished the dishes. There were other things, times when she would behave in ways that were deeply uncomfortable, she would masturbate at the most awkward times & force me to hug her or give her any sort of physical contact.
I really wanted her to love me. I really wanted to be a daughter to my mother.
Now I’m not under her rules anymore. On paper I have no excuses now. I can get my license. I can go outside. I can build a life. But I can’t stop thinking of the years that came before this. I still think about the things I missed; friends I lost because I could never hang out, friends who stopped believing me when I tried to explain why. School dances, field trips, ordinary moments everyone else got without thinking. Things that made me the jealous girl I am today.
What frustrates me most is how everything seems to change depending on where I stand. When I lived with her, people told me to leave without remorse. Now that I have, voices tell me to forgive her, to go back, to try again. She acts kinder now too, at least from a distance, especially when other people are around to see it. It makes me feel like my memories are false.
I can’t even fit half the things she did into a single excerpt. Camera’s in the house where I tend to reside, putting on her clothes for her, publicly scratching my skin, making messes so I have to clean, letting my brother hurt me. I feel ashamed to state any of this.
The most beautiful thing I own is my Franklin Mint, House of Faberge, ‘Imperial Rose’ carousel horse.
I have a lot of carousel horses (though none true); I have carousel music boxes, carousel *horse* music boxes, carousel windchimes, a 5ft carousel horse party decoration, carousel horse statues, spinning carousel collectibles. But none compares to my Imperial Rose.
I love carousels, I love horses! My whole life I’ve liked horses, & majority of my life I’ve loved simple, spinning rides. But my real fascination with carousels began in early middle school, when I started researching them obsessively. Their history, the hand-carved horses, the cost of creating one. Somewhere in all that reading, I formed a loud dream of having my own carousel. Not necessarily a great one, a simple one would be nice.
Horses are so pretty. And when pierced with a pole, gilded, frozen mid-gallop, they are all the more beautiful! The carousel is proof that people will build entire worlds just to keep beauty turning.
Again, what do you know; I’m writing about guilt. Except this time I don’t actually feel guilty, I’m just culpable. I walk around acting like I’m this sweet thing, like I’m incapable of lying. I present myself like an open book, open for anyone who cares to read. As if everyone who meets me walks away knowing me completely.
I do tell people things!! Real, personal things. Technically, none of what I do share is lies. I push the boundaries of honesty further than most people probably would. It’s why I seem absolutely open. I’m just deceitful.
There are things I will never tell anybody, things I won’t even write here. I know I am totally manipulative for this. My vagueness will make this come across as an exaggeration, but I don’t want to incriminate myself by being anything but vague..?
I pretend like I’m incapable of lying so that I can get away with lying. Writing this feels sucky. Unpleasant, sharing a thing meant to be unshared by me. But why am I admitting to something I don’t even feel guilty about..? I don’t have a noble answer for that, I think I just wanted to write.
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It feels selfish to confess this, especially when people are so generous with their compliments about my body. I hear these compliments often enough that I should believe them; that I am well-shaped, soft in the places meant for softness, curved. By every reasonable measure I am healthy, ordinary, & maybe even fortunate. But I want an eating disorder. I feel a dissonance, a small & persistent discomfort with the weight of my own form. The body I inhabit brushes against itself, chafes, occupies space; I’m always reminded of it. I can’t be carried, I know. Sometimes I imagine a different silhouette, slimmer, quieter. Narrow & delicate, a body fragile. I would be so light. To look sickly & faint is always beautiful to me.
It’s a little irrational. Though I know I would never go through with obtaining one. I’ve been in spaces that promote this behavior for a decent amount of time now. I just lack the resolve that this destruction demands. I enjoy food too much, flavor too much, the simple sensory joy of taste. Anorexia seems absurdly impractical when I imagine the hours wasted, the indignity of it. Bulimia would be the way to go for me; I can regurgitate quite easily. But I’m too idle.
Too idle to diet, too idle to sculpt myself through discipline, too idle even to pursue unhealthy fantasies. I would like to make my body disappear. Maybe this idleness is all the more reason for me to have one.
Not long ago, I suffered from an addiction to consuming gore-”graphy”. In a way that someone might describe their dependence on pornography or adrenaline. I never enjoyed what I saw. It did not excite me or fascinate me in any way. Every viewing made me physically ill; my stomach would churn & burn, my forehead would throb, & my blood would feel like it got warmer. But the feeling itself was very singular, I’ve never encountered that particular nausea anywhere else. Only ever when I was watching someone be hurt.
The disgust is immediate & overwhelming, but I always returned to it again & again. I think the revulsion itself is why I was addicted. The forbidden has a strange gravity; "The very things which revolt us most violently can become the objects we circle obsessively, precisely because they fracture our sense of order." I suspect that is what held me there. I gained no pleasure from it, no dopamine, no thrill. Only a sickening “awareness” .
I have since stopped watching those kinds of videos. It has been years since I’ve seen true gore in motion. But I’ve not entirely left it behind. I seek it out in smaller, diluted doses. Images of people post-accident, aftermath of violence that has already passed, or even special effects. "Humanity possesses an almost pathological curiosity toward its own decay." I prove this true in some sense.
My ‘curiosity’ is cruel & wrong, but sometimes the images carry an uncomfortable beauty. Death can be beautiful. I still feel guilty for the things I watched, for the deaths & tortures I knowingly sought out & witnessed from a distance. That guilt won’t ever leave me. And what disturbs me most is that sometimes now I can feel the old craving returning. A desire to experience that terrible nausea again.
This excerpt is basically just a song analysis & to make up for my political guilt. I am who I criticize. (The song is Insanity - Oingo Boingo) Approximately 7 verses in. If compared, the influence is apparent
Political culture in the United States has been growing more & more tense. And more & more taboo. Every opinion risks becoming a liability, post-2024 election, hardened cultural policy; Immigration, education, reproductive rights. Every space I find myself in mirrors & magnifies hostility. Surveillance is in doorbell cameras, workplace monitoring, algorithm on social media.
There is more moral-performance now that I’ve seen than previously. Conservatism grows with our red office. People will call out sin & refuse to look inward. Online, I see self-proclaimed defenders of “law” who dehumanize immigrants & reduce entire groups to statistics, to “pattern recognition,”. These people use legality in a ways to justify their lack of morality. They frame suffering as deserved. So there’s no need to talk about it anymore.
Hypocritical when religions, which preach purity, continue to be exposed for decades of CSA. Even now, we have scandals involving powerful figures & child sex trafficking. We are a culture obsessed with condemning hypothetical “crimes” while real violations dissolve into nothing. We sit in our comfort & only story-tell of corruption.
To speak plainly about any of these, risks you social exile. Politics has become something people claim not to care about, unless it affects them directly. But by then, it *will* be too late! People who do care before they are directly affected are essentially rejected socially. The flock will wander from you if your mind wanders from them. But, we still are a fractured collective, we do not organize, we are split by “party,”.
The past few years have accelerated regarding falsehoods. AI-generated images, political lies, headlines made only for reaction. How will we be able to tell what is true documentation when compared to today’s fabrication..? “Reality is no longer distorted, it is replaced.” Our reality is being imitated. Our ability to think critically is being dulled.
Generative AI is trained on vast & most of the time, unconsented data. Faces, voices, & art are all absorbed, replicated, & redistributed. Paired with the normalization of constant recording; cameras at every threshold, archived interactions. To be listened to while not even speaking. This makes us sound like a surveillance nation.
The insistence that “we are all the same” has also grown louder. Especially as inequality is becoming more visible?? It is repeated as reassurance & dismissal. Avoidance to conversations that might “ruin your comfort,”. Evidence proves this extremely wrong. Federal abortion protections have left access dependent on state & income, immigration enforcement has intensified in ways that disproportionately affect specific communities, & educational restrictions reshape our history. But sure, let’s make believe that we are all the same.
Lately, politics is spoken about the way people talk hypotheticals. Like it’s entertaining, a conversation to pass the time. People sit comfortably & debate rights, bodies, borders. As if these are abstract ideas & not of lives being lived right now. “what would you do, what do you think, what’s your stance”. Things debated casually in one room is someone surviving in another. People untouched by it can afford turn it into discourse, they can afford to not care. It is easier to speak lightly about suffering when your life is not shaped by it, easier to moralize when the cost will never be yours.
There is also a subconscious hierarchy that persists in these conversations. Whiteness continues to function as the baseline for most. This is our assumed neutrality. It’s what allows for so much disengagement, for the belief that politics is optional. The system does not impact everyone equally, no matter how often it is claimed otherwise. We pride ourselves on our progression, yet we are stuck in all of these issues. One million years of evolution & we still repeat. We still have our Danny Quayle.
I want to write something meaningful & to be something meaningful. But all I am is a shallow. All I do is reflect my own image. I don’t care for anything larger than myself & I can’t feel anything larger than myself.
All I have ever experienced is here. In my own body & skull, In my own nerves & my own memory. I am confined to my own consciousness, & so is everything else to me; history, suffering, nations, revolutions. They’re all things I can only hold. Things I know & will not *truly* understand.
How could I ever truly grasp something bigger than myself, when nothing has ever overwhelmed me enough to replace me..?
But I *know* that there are things bigger. There are systems that decide who eats, who sleeps, who dies quietly & who dies loudly. There are even people larger than me; philosophers, revolutionaries, artists. People who have changed the world & have legacies larger than anyone else.
I study writers who wrote without comfort, who believed that history itself had a direction. Writers who didn’t just observe the world but really tried to change it.
Compared to my writing. I write to compensate for what I am not. I write as a form of self-correction, & even self-deception. It is *so* humiliating. To construct meaning artificially, to only simulate depth instead of live it. And still, everything I think has already been thought. Everything I want to say has already been said. And it’s been said more eloquently, louder, & more violently than I could ever potray it. My words are anything but unique, & I am still trying to make my words original.
“While revolutionaries as individuals can be murdered, you cannot kill ideas.” Proof that thoughts & ideas will outlive flesh. I’m still writing, “hoping,” my ideas, added to the already acknowledged pile, will do something. Hoping my repetition will act as a form of participation.
If I am honest, my beliefs, if defined, line up with Marxism. Because of recognition. When I look at the structure of things, they are rigged in ways that are so obviously deliberate. Inequality today is very present, & still maintained. It’s only refined. My nation is decaying more apparently than it was before. And all people do is theorize suffering.
I sit here, aware. Aware of systems, of suffering, & of inequality expanding. And I write about it. I just make it into something consumable. “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.” And look at that, I don’t change anything. “But what am I going to do as an individual..?” A typical statement said throughout histories of injustice. One that I follow along with. Using whatever sorry justification for it, same as the last guy. It’s just permission to remain still & to remain theoretical.
People, myself included, are so comfortable believing we are too small to matter. It has us believe we are absolved. But history was not moved by people who believed this. “Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.” Does my writing count as movement, or am I just as blind & bound..? I do feel chains, though I feel it in the same place where I feel everything else, internally & selfishly. Even my being upset is filtered through myself, even my empathy comes back to me. I am tender in all the places I have already begun to rot & that tenderness is only honest part of me. The awareness of decay without the strength to stop it. I can only articulate collapse & will not interrupt it.
I am almost human, but 100% myself, this is my problem & the only thing that has ever been true. To be human requires dissolving the self just enough to let something larger pass through you. To act & not only observe. One must risk being changed by the things you claim to care about. But I am still here & I’m still intact. And I am still writing. Trying to make my “self-awareness,” something meaningful.
As of April 4th, 2026, I am doing absolutely horrible.
Everything I have is slipping out from under me. I’m being replaced in almost every part me. At work, around people I know, even in the things I thought were mine. I’m being replaced by random fucking girls on the internet. New people come in & fit better than I do & move easier. More liked, more wanted. I’m being phased fucking out.
My interests, my ideas, MY THINGS. I see them reflected in other people, but done better. I’m just a rough fucking draft for everyone so they can find their better Yaya.
Whatever small amount of confidence I had feels completely undeserved now. As of today it’s so clear. I’m not interesting, or sharp, or even present.
The people around me don’t favor me. They don’t even fucking like me. I’m there only to take up space. I talk, but it’s just noise more than anything meaningful.
I’m so cruel & I’m so angry & I’m so ugly. I’m so angry at myself & how easily I can be replaced. I wish I had enough control to just pull away from everyone entirely, to stop putting myself in places where I clearly don’t belong.
I’m just so fucking angry, & I’m so so sick, I really want someone to talk to me.
I’m naturally a happy person, & I’m so ashamed of it. If you interact with me in person, it’s obvious. I get excited easily, I sound quick & careless, like I’ve never had a real problem in my life. It makes me come off as stupid or naive, as though I don’t understand the weight of things.
People who act as happy as I do are usually seen as people who don’t know anything. So I mustn’t either. I act as though I’m unaffected by bad things, as if I’m too slow to comprehend bad things. I can’t measure my own intelligence because the things that happen to me are so vastly different compared to the way I react to them.
My happiness makes me look ridiculous. I get excited too easily, in turn I get loud & expressive & so impulsive. When something serious happens, or I have to hold someone accountable, or need to make a difficult decision; I can’t follow through the way I should. My same happiness sustains & I let things slide that I know I shouldn’t. I can never follow through with critical or retributive decisions because I’m made happy so easily.
I make decisions in moments where I feel good, when I should be firm. And later, when that feeling fades, I hold so much regret. I let important things pass because I was too comfortable & quick to feel okay again. My ecstasy is a hindrance.
I am proud of my writing. I think I make it clear, eloquent, direct, articulate. Not perfect! I’m not trying to gloat >_< I think I just shape it with care.. But when you place it beside the way I speak, it’s disorienting. Like the two don’t belong to the same person.
When I speak, I rush. My words tumble over each other & act as though they are impatient to exist. I stutter, I skip things, I lose motivation mid-sentence. Sometimes I stop altogether *just* because continuing feels like too much effort for something so fleeting. Speaking itself is too much work.
But my vocabulary is still there, my thoughts are still there. They just don’t arrive well at all. I sound like my speech is scattered by nerves, it’s something I’ve never learned to control. What reaches people is only a portion of what I mean. Everything lingers in my head & I always regret never being able to say what I mean.
I think writing became a kind of refuge for me. Nothing, especially myself, can interrupt me; not time, not pressure, not needing to respond instantly. On paper, I am not rushed. I can refine a sentence until it comes off the way I intend. I can revise, annotate & polish my thoughts until it feels like it belongs to me *truly*. There’s no easier, effortless way to get my words out of me. If I can’t speak, I must write.
To sit for hours editing & rearranging. Turning my raw ideas into something legible. There is no emergence or performance. Just portraying my own thoughts at a pace that I can.
Sometimes I feel bad that I can’t speak as well as I write. That the version of me people hear is not the one I know I am capable of being. But, the only reason my writing has become what it is, is due to my inability to speak. So maybe there’s something to be grateful for in my rushing & bad cadence.
I take no pride in writing this, I’m actually kind of reluctant.
If you’ve read other parts of this blog, you might have noticed that my sense of self, in many ways, is tethered to my ‘blackness’, or actually the way it is perceived. I am only a quarter Black. I’m not even technically African American. But for some reason, that fraction has governed the majority of my lived experience. It is the first thing noticed & the first thing judged. That (other than being a woman) has shaped how I am treated, seen & refused.
This is my lack of pride; for years, I prayed to be white. There was nothing more I wanted than to be white & blonde. I wanted to be white, to have been raised that way, to be recognized that way. This was not a fleeting one-off wish. And compared to the age I am now, this persisted *late* into my life & it still lingers.
The reasons are both obvious & ambiguous. The things my mother highlighted my entire life, strangers who felt entitled to cruelty & to threats for no reason other than my perceived race. Not even only strangers. People around me, other family, people I even labeled friends would treat me so cruelly. When I say cruelty, I don’t imply calling me nigga or even “nigger,”. There’s more than just a nasty, word used for shock-factor.
Despite this, I don’t feel I’ve had any true, obvious form of self-hatred, or retaliation to my ethnic group.
But still now, sometimes I wish to be white. I used to search for ways to alter myself; bleaching creams, surgeries, anything that would make me into an image that promised safety & primarily acceptance. Light skin & straight hair. A way to make myself deemed beautiful to the general eye.
Beauty, especially in the United States, as well as internationally is ideological. The beauty standard & most views of ideal beauty are petite, white, blonde, & American. To fall outside of that is not necessarily to be different, but to be undesirable.
I have been called unattractive by people who were supposed to love me unconditionally. Family & friends have been told me, directly & indirectly, that I am not the kind of girl someone will ever want. Some people wouldn’t even let me speak to them without treating me like I was overstepping an unspoken boundary defined entirely by race & appearance.
It did not matter who it was; what race or background. The standard remains the same! In every person I’ve ever been drawn to romantically, just before me or just after knowing me, picked someone who fits that ideal. White & blonde. It is very hard not to interpret that as evidence. It especially hurt when he would look like me.
Every instance of this made me internalize that I am less desirable, less worthy, & less human. Only because of what I am, only what I’m seen as. No matter how “diluted” I am, no matter how much I align & grew up with other identities, this singular perception overrides everything social.
I do want lighter skin. I want straighter hair. I do want to be deemed desirable. I want to exist without being interpreted.
There is more to my thoughts than just this. The reason I started this excerpt in the first place; my boyfriend is white, blonde, & blue-eyed. Writing this disjointed paragraph from everything above is quite odd, but the context of what’s above is needed for this next bit; I feel a kind of guilty(..?) about it. I have no preferences romantically, no physical ideals but I can’t help but find this so ironic. I’ve succumbed to the beauty standard that tortured & taunted me. I feel like a hypocrite, I’ve stepped into the role that mistreated me.
I don’t feel guilty about being with him. He is more than extraordinary, kind, real, & entirely his own person. And *so* undeserving of being reduced to symbolism & something as shallow as my mind. But it’s hard to not think it when my appearance has always been treated as a giant negative. A giant obstruction.
I think it’s painfully, obviously telling when I’m writing with passion versus when I’m indifferently circling myself out of habit. This excerpt will be a kind of in-between. I have nothing to say particularly but I feel I need to write anyway. The absence of meaning is its own pressure for me.
Recently I’ve grown very grossed out by the way I feel. Passionately. I was under the assumption that with age my emotions would grow steadier & quieter. But that hasn’t been my experience at all so far..! What was once erratic has become louder, angrier, & less contained. My emotions are escalating & it’s very awkward.
It doesn’t stay contained to me either. It’s apparent in what I write. I’m no longer subtle, disguised, or docile. My writing is overtaken with biased passion. I can see it happening as I write & I can feel it effect my ability to judge. I’m not only *just* cruel now, I come off as it too. Not cool.
Hello, it’s me! Happy 04-20-2026
I’m afraid this is the kind of excerpt I’ll cringe from later on. But I can’t seem to help myself, It feels more dishonest *not* to say it. I am, without exaggeration, the most unsightly thing I’ve had the displeasure of knowing. I’m so tired of pretending I’m not. Everything about me is so wrong, no matter how quietly I try to carry it.
I always think this might be temporary, that one day I’ll look back & feel neutral about myself & cringe at all this relentless self-dissection. That I’ll outgrow it, but at the same time, I still feel it won’t change. That’s why I keep writing it. If it’s going to live in my head indefinitely, it has to exist somewhere else too.
But the truth is, I look horrible. I sound wrong. I’m unflattering in all kinds of ways. The way I’m assembled, my face, voice, mannerisms, all of it is so off. And still, I perform normalcy so much. I don’t bring it up out loud. I accept compliments like I believe them, nod in places I’m supposed, I even act grateful now. I play the part of someone who is normal. But I’m really tired of it, constantly agreeing to lies. Being looked at & not seen at the same time. I’m both exposed & misinterpreted.
To add insult to injury, something absurd; I’m constantly being mirrored. Replicated in different kinds of ways. People meet me & leave carrying my things. Things *I* like, things I watch, the details I thought were at least *mine*. AND I watch them wear it better. That part curdles something in me. To feel this horrifically wrong & ugly, & to still be copied. Worse, to be copied by people who don’t carry the same repulsiveness.
It makes me feel sick. Like there’s nothing I *can* claim, not even my own preferences, without seeing them reflected back in a form that is more considered better & more acceptable. As if even the internal parts of me aren’t safe from comparison.
Sometimes I think about dismantling it all. Scrapping myself. Not so I can be considered beautiful & right. But so I can be ugly & have it all fit. To be wrong in a way that people will just have to accept as wrong. Nothing to copy & nothing to find interesting. To have something that isn’t immediately improved upon the moment it leaves me.
I consume *a lot* of media, easily. But more than that, I’d say I try to consume it deeply. Movies, books, shows, fanfiction, visual novels, video games, music, documentaries, songs, music, plays; whatever form it takes, I want to indulge in it. I want to understand, not what’s being made, but why. The hands behind it, intention & symbolism, etc. I don’t only love media, I *love* loving it. I love loving media so much.
But in my devotion, I feel this just might be a bad habit. Don’t get me wrong, I feel it’s a good habit; to consume things more than surface level, to get a better & real understanding, to digest what you’re indulging in. But I don’t only love things deeply, I love them immediately & intensely. All at once! It hits me at the surface before I even have time to consume more. The feeling comes at me too quick. I’m so easily overwhelmed. I’ll get headaches & tightness in my chest when I even think about the content I love. It’s almost parasocial. Just never to people, only the work itself, to the experience of it. I’ll be listening to a song or watching a show, & I’ll have heart palpitations. Simply because I’m thinking about how much I love it. I feel it so viscerally throughout my whole body.
My description is nothing even close to an overexaggeration. If anything, I’m probably understating it.
If that’s how it feels at the surface, imagine what happens when I do my deeper search. When I start analyzing, researching, participating. I love writing reviews just for myself, I love reading biographies of authors I recently finished the books of, I love participating in forum discussion, I love learning the intricacies of a band’s sound or a creator’s process. I love to immerse myself & to hurt myself doing so!
I wonder sometimes if it’s something I should bring up to a doctor. But the “solutions” are so easy to come up with myself; care less, feel less, stop seeking so much. Like I’d ever do any of those! I don’t want to dull it. Because even when it hurts, when my chest tightens & my pulse stutters; I LOVE IT!
“We have art in order not to die of the truth.” But for for me, this feels inverted. Art is so raw, & so overwhelming. It *is* the human experience. I love art so fiercely I might die of it, & still it’s the very thing that makes me feel most alive.
I love participating! I love indulging!! I love following creation & creator & fighting myself while I do it. I love it so much it aches!!! AND I LOVE ACHING! I love what it proves >_<
There are few excerpts here that reveal true secrets of mine. There are few excerpts here that are at all passion-writing. *A lot* of what I have up right now are topics I wrote about neutrally. Revised until perfected. I’m thinking I should start blogging more rawly, akin to the way I text, so that this blog is truly meaningful in any sort of way.
I am made extremely uncomfortable by AI usage. It’s not that I feel passionately about the issue, even though I should. It’s just that I find it extremely corny. When I see an image that’s obviously been generated or processed through AI, I cringe. When I’m reading an episode or mechat & the dialogue or plot is clearly AI written, it gives me the worst secondhand embarrassment. Even people on neocities! When I go through a code to copy a unique CSS line & see blatant evidence of AI. It’s a strong discomfort that I don’t think I’ve experienced before AI became so common. I’m so lucky that 90% of the people around me seem to feel the same way, but every now & then I still run into It.
It has also come to my attention that many people don’t actually understand *why* AI usage is criticized in the first place. The conversation usually stops at creativity, how it’s replacing artists, writers, & other creative professionals, or how it risks dulling originality & weakening creative development (especially for those younger.) But, obviously, there’s more issues than that. There are concerns regarding consent, since AI systems are trained on datasets that include people’s work, images, or voices without permission. The security risks as well, from deepfakes to data exploitation (that can also be created without consent, leaving traces in it’s data!?) , that can be used in ways that are invasive & harmful. The environmental cost as well, AI systems requiring enormous amounts of energy & water to run & cool the data centers behind them. It’s contributing to quite the resource strain. Concerns like this deserve more attention.
I think it’s really just the accumulation of all these cons + the fact that people who use AI ignorantly sometimes end up doing genuinely harmful or unsettling things with it, which creates a certain connotation around them, just creates that whole mix that irks me so much.
My friend & I were talking just the other day, & he mentioned if our modern versions of revolutionaries truly burned with any of the conviction they preach, we’d be stepping over the carcasses of executives & politicians. We’d be killing these people. And, I can’t help but find myself agreeing We are imbeded in a culture where radicalism is just another aesthetic or style, it’s performative empathy. It is refined & prepared outrage posted for clout, while the agents of our suffering walk free. I see “eat the rich” making rounds *so much*, all while the rich are basking in the suffering they cause. CEOs poison entire bodies of water for profit, pharmaceutical executives price-gouge life-saving medications, tech tycoons build surveillance that track our everything, politicians carve public land into private territory, & banks engineer homelessness through debt. And what do we actually get from people who self-proclaim wokeness or radicalism..? A faux rage..? An anger solely maintained online..? Instagram infographics about dismantling capitalism get posted from phones built by exploited labor.!? It’s activism as content & conviction with no consequence. If the passion we claim to have is real, these people wouldn't just be exposed in documentaries & ideological news stories; they’d be shot dead. There are millions of us against a few hundred global oligarchs, yet we are *so* domesticated, we are wrapped in our own “comfort”. To make the message clear, that we refuse to be caged, that we will reclaim what’s ours, we have to kill these people. If we want them to take our requests seriously, we have to be serious about what we request. We have to kill these people. We cannot live in a state where pretending to care, to care for clout is the utmost extent. We have to revolutionize & we have to act in irreversible ways.
I AM SO HUMILIATED TO BE “WEIRD,” I *hate* being called that, & it upsets me that people now seem to treat it like something desirable. Not in the sense that they genuinely accept it in others, but in the way they only want to be *seen* as it themselves & to wear it like a label. And somehow, on top of all that, to still be the reason that makes me ashamed to be perceived it myself.
I don’t see why ‘weirdness’, or at least the label of it, has become something quirky & appealing, when my own experience with it has been anything but. I have been & am constantly berated & criticized for my interests. I am constantly bullied & berated for the way I speak. For the way I express myself. I’m embarrassed by the things I like, the shows, the music, & certain types of media. The way I like to dress, the vocabulary I like to use, my hobbies, what I draw, what I play. Even in the way I try to seek out relationships. None of it has ever been met with that same admiration people claim to have for “being different.” I’m so embarrassed by it because people constantly told me I should be. Now these same people think it’s a trait that should be sought out.
I feel like a joke. *Somehow* I’m “weird” in the ‘wrong way’. When it’s me, it’s too much, too awkward, too off-putting. It’s gross, or tone-deaf, or something to laugh at. But when it’s someone else, it’s cool, attractive. It’s acceptable. Maybe, I’m not even “weird” at all, & it’s always been about who is allowed to be seen that way in the first place.
Sometimes when I’m talking with someone, anyone, I get too afraid to share my thoughts or opinions. (Half-ly due to the fact I’m not good at articulating my own ideas & half-ly because I feel embarrassed by what I believe.) Instead of speaking, I catch myself saving everything in my head for later, preparing for how I’ll write it in my freaking neocities blog that no one will read. It’s gotten to the point where I’m almost tune out of real conversations, avoiding confrontation & avoiding being myself. It’s a bad habit I’ve fallen into. Gulp… #confession
Honesty for me is super fragile. I want to write about the places I no longer belong, about voices I miss, & experiences I’m grateful for. This blog is the furthest thing from a diary, every sentence I write is capable of finding eyes it was never meant for. I’m writing around things instead of through them, of them; I’m hoping the people who know me now never recognize the silhouettes I hide in my obscure formatting & indirect statements.
I’m scared not only of being percieved, but being perceived fully. All while longing for it. There are stories I cannot tell because they are not entirely mine anymore. Some names are dangerous to mention even when they’re not present. I miss certain people in ways that are difficult to justify. I’m afraid I am constantly being documented. I’m afraid I feel too much. I’m afraid I’m not making sense.
I write about finding myself ugly quite often, an embarrassing amount, actually. Every few excerpts circles back to it. Despite that, I post myself regularly. Selfies & proof of myself. It is contradictory. Contradiction that is indistinguishable from attention-seeking. Someone who truly despises herself shouldn’t be able to be perceived this badly.
I started posting because I thought disappearing entirely would make me look even worse. I am already ugly & already grotesque, & insecurity on a woman is treated like it’s worse than *only* being disgusting. There is something socially incorrect about being absent. In an age where everyone documents themselves relentlessly, the strangest thing I could do is consider myself exempt from this. So I posted to “seem normal,”. I’m only imitiating. Initially that was my excuse, & I’ve stood by it for a while.
I don’t know if it *is* an excuse anymore. I’m afraid that I am just becoming vain. I’m afraid that now, “to keep up appearances,” I am vain. My opinion of myself has not improved, if anything, the people closest to me tell me it’s now worse. Still, I continue to put myself on display. Even more contradictory than initially! I feel monstrous, & yet I keep offering this monster to be seen.
A girl messaged me recently >_< A girl who was never very kind to me, she was cruel, actually.
The message was a self-proclaimed apology & *I* think it was a good one at that. People like her usually struggle to sound genuine about anything. But I think this time, she sounded a bit sincere. She said she was sorry & she never fully understood what she had done wrong, & that she wanted to hear my side of things.
__________________
What I’m about to say is going to sound *horribly* petty & quite juvenile. My feelings should have waned the moment highschool did. But this was my first & one of my only experiences with a girl like her, on top of the fact my home life was constantly (see excerpt VII):
But, during my junior year of high school, I liked my pal, I called him John. I was enamored by how direct he was & how deliberate his words were. He speaks like he’s incapable of uncertainty, & I believed him the most out of anyone for that reason. How can someone so assured ever lie!
Another girl, Alanys, the girl who sent me the apology, liked him too. How awkwardly cliche. Two teenage girls orbiting the same boy. That’s so awkward. But that was when she started treating me the way I’d described. We only knew each other because we were both friends with John, & suddenly my just being was something she didn’t like very much.
For the first time in my life, there were rumors about me. Not misunderstandings or anything of the sort, actual maliciously-intended things.
That I was obsessive, I was a bitch, I pursued every guy I saw, that I led guys on despite having no romantic experiences previous to John, that I was fake & jealous, two-faced & weird. (This is where my biasness for the word “weird,” comes from. #influenced)
I remember seeing these things said about me from John himself & feeling sick & detached from myself. Like they couldn’t possibly be about *me??* Those words spread through a random little group she had built around herself, all because freaking John Snell would give me the time of day.
It seemed ridiculously relentless too.!? She would tell John horrible things about me, then turn around & tell me horrible things about him. The things she was saying were so absurd & throughout all this, the nigga believed her!
In her apology, she kept saying things like, “Well this happened, & then this happened, *but*” before bringing up things I supposedly did wrong that affected nobody. One of the examples she gave was that I drew John Snell “too much,”. She said it made *everybody* really uncomfortable. (Everybody being her, him, & niggas I didn’t even know & didn’t even know me)
I was called obsessive & weird for it..! Because I drew him..? The guy who agreed to be my muse, who got to keep the drawings post-process?? The guy who gave me explicit permission for every single reference photo I used..? Because I was just a teenage girl who liked somebody & went out of my way to make sure he, himself was okay with it😭
__________________
The things I name don’t even scratch the surface of the extent of her jabs & need for drama. She would do & say things to & about other people as well. But the apology this time was just to me, so there’s no need for a mentioning of those.
It feels odd to “plea my case,” to nobody. But I don’t think this is something I’ve ever gotten to talk about in full context.
__________________
During the conversation, she also repeatedly said, “Even though *I* forgave you for the things you did to me…” & I know the polite thing would have been to ask what exactly I supposedly did. But, I figure I already know whatever answer she’d given me would just be another bunch of lies she’d been telling herself & the people she could reach for years.
I never spoke badly about her, which is the extent of what I possibly could have done to her. Most of what I eventually found out about the rumors only reached me near graduation. No time to tell, even if I wanted to.
Rumors spread & people I didn’t & never will know talked about my “eagerness,” & my “weirdness,”. I almost lost friendships over it, I’m told. I was a teenage girl in highschool, my social life was everything.
And somehow after all this time, she tells me she never knew the extent of it. She says John just stood there & allowed everyone to say those things about me without ever intervening >:(
I believe that. I do blame John for some of what happened to me in high school. Not because of the romance itself, I don’t regret liking him, but because I believed him so completely. Half the time, he was lying to me with perfect eye contact. He told me himself.
Now I’m just conflicted about Alanys. Girls like her are usually doormats, sometimes narcissists. I still don’t fully understand what she gains from apologizing to me now, years later. Maybe it really is guilt. Maybe, she wants to believe she’s become softer than she used to be *or* she just wants to rewrite herself into a perceived kinder person.
As much as I don’t want to believe her, & as much as I am still affected by the things she did despite being so much better off than me. I am still the most gullible girl in the world, & still I will forgive her.
I have a lot of friends. A lot of people who confide in me & tell me things they wouldn’t tell others. They tell me things they wouldn't tell most people, I’m pretty sure. Not because I'm “likeable,” or popular, or even especially friendly. I think it's because I listen. Whether it's a personal issue, a meaningless tangent about something they love, or a rant or piece of gossip; I try to meet it with genuine attention. I try to give that comfort of being listened to whenever I can, I think.
What I've noticed, though, is how rarely I receive the same treatment. It’s the reason I have a blog to utilize! I have to speak somewhere if no where will hear me.
The things I love get made fun of, the things I feel become misunderstandings, issues or problems will get misconstrued & then never touched up on. When I try to speak honestly about myself, my words just disappear before they ever reach anyone. All while I sit through countless conversations about everyone else's. It’s an ultimately strange feeling; to spend so much time holding space for others, only to realize how little space exists for you in return.
People online call this feeling as being "a therapist friend," but that isn't how it feels for me. What I feel is less noble than that. I just feel like a joke. The people around you have become so used to being heard by you that they've forgotten you, too, have anything worth saying.
Updates
· ─I have a 2nd job, I am averaging about 46 hours a week now. It hurts my feet a lot, but otherwise, I'm physically & mentally fine. It just sucks not having as much freetime as I once did :/
· ─My band has finally written an original. After so much trial & error of creating bands & joining bands, I've finally found one competent enough to not only *desire* to create original music, but to also be capable of it. And the song sounds great! It's not in a genre I hate. I'm a bit concerned about vocals though.. Our singer isn't the most.. trained.
· ─My carousel collection is standing strong. I should leave the focus off my horses for a bit & try to grow my general antique collection.
· ─Updated the blog so instead of pink the colours speak to me more.
· ─Currently microdosing in twitter gore. Sorry :(
· ─Have A Nice Life is going to perform in 3 cities in Cali. I'm in Nevada, but the drive wouldn't be crazy. I hope I can convince my beautiful boyfriend to take me.
I LOVE PROGRESSIVE ROCK!! King Crimson, Yes, Camel, Gentle Giant, Genesis, U.K., The Mars Volta, how can any other genre even compete..? There is nothing more singular, more meticulously bold.
Progressive rock is so bizarre, intricate, & SO deliberate. Every note, measure, & time signature change is carefully calculated. Not saying it’s different for other genres; Just that in progressive music *I* feel like you can hear it so obviously. Every time I listen to something like Discipline or Close to the Edge or Birds of Fire or Rhyader, I am utterly consumed. I really can’t fathom how anyone could come up with music so elaborate & melodious, those words feel like antonyms.
And the musicians themselves are absurdly skilled, almost freakish in their precision & creativity. Bill Bruford, Jamie Muir, Danny Carey, percussionists who redefine rhythm as language. Steve Vai a real show-off in skill, Keith Emerson who plays a piano upside down. Progressive rock is such a demonstration of human possibility & complexity. I really love prog >.<
I know they are still a relatively niche hobby, but the rise in online popularity of carousels or carousel horses is ruining me!
The market for carousel memorabilia started during the 1970s - 1980s, when interest in carousel preservation led to the restoration of merry-go-rounds in the US. Original machines were dismantled, restored, relocated, or conserved. In turn, music boxes, artwork, books, & reproductions began to be manufactured to keep up with the rise in interest. Most of my collection comes from this period!! With a few pieces from both slightly earlier & later ( ˶>˶˶<˶)
I know most social media feeds are curated towards the viewer, following a particular algorithm. So, it’s no wonder I’d be shown carousel media & assume that my interest is mainstream. Yet even accounting for algorithms, there in undeniably a rise in interest. And it’s horrible! I’m never showcased anyone interested in history, craftsmanship, or preservation of these horses. The crowd that seems to have found & taken carousel imagery are self-proclaimed “coquette,” “girlblogging,” “dollcore,” “cutecore,” girls. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing inherently wrong with this. What kills me is that these girls tend to treat historical collectibles as blank canvases for their “aesthetic.” I have seen resin & porcelain carousel figures repainted with !!acrylic!!, music boxes covered in glued-on plastic charms or figures, & collectible pieces altered beyond recognition.
I know this is such a non-issue. But I can’t help but feel angry about it. Something I’ve loved essentially half my life is getting ruined over a fad. These girls will mature & realize the horrible, irreversible work they’ve done to these items & they’ll get thrown in a landfill… Essentially *all* of these pieces are limited edition & will *never* be manufactured again. And in many cases, are the work of identifiable artists.
We’re lucky that the works of artists like Tobin Fraley, Tony M. Baley, Sheldon Vaughn, William Dentzel, etc. survive at all. Their carvings, designs, & reproductions already exist in finite numbers. Every piece that is permanently altered or discarded reduces that number further. It’s not only disrespectful what these girls are doing, but detrimental.!?
At the same time, increasing demand has encouraged a flood of cheaply manufactured carousel-themed merchandise. (╥﹏╥) These horses used to be well-crafted reproductions & artist-designed pieces; today's market is crowded with horrible, mass-produced polymer & plastic. One of the bigger & most recent examples I have is the “toki-doki x hello kitty,” carousel collab.
Watching collectible pieces become disposable & temporary accessories is rotting me!
I'm so upset by my inability to speak linearly, cohesively or understandably. .‸. I am an abhorrent speaker. If you've never met me & you're reading that, whatever image you've built in your head is kinder than my reality. My thoughts don't come to me linearly. By the time I think to speak, each thought tries to surpass the other.
I don't quite stutter; the rhythm of my speech is just fractured. I hesitate, I rush, I stop my sentences before their intended finish. I speak as though I’m under timer, as quickly as I can with the simplest words I can possibly use. I cram everything into the smallest, simplest language I can find. It makes for a cruel contrast to my writing.
I wish I could be ashamed of it, but I can’t be ashamed of something so normal to me. Still, I hate it. .‸.
It causes horrible misunderstanding, I don’t finish explanations. It makes me seem nervous or scared when I'm not, or worse, uncertain when I know exactly what I mean. I talk as if I’m in a constant state of panic. I hate it!
I have found myself embedded in a community of an internet subculture. I’ve never called myself part of any subculture before. I don't like to do it. Mainly because labels, particularly online (the place subcultures only ever tend to exist anyway), are prescriptions. They're never just outlets of shared interests or expression. They always have strict rules & expectations. Dress this way, consume these things, love these films, read these authors, surround your whole life around it! Miss one rule, stray at all & suddenly you're shunned & a fraud.
Yet this subculture I’ve found myself participating in (I’ve seen called Morute,) has been the closest I've ever come to feeling understood by a community of strangers (˶˃ ᵕ ˂˶) I don’t see it to be built around a single aesthetic; I think it’s more like a fascination. I see posts that replicate & resonate of me. Posts & forums of Innocence & brutality, “beauty in decay,” romanticization of old things without glorification, abandoned buildings, antiquing, old photographs, carousels, horses, taxidermy, deer, steampunk, poetry, philosophy, political theory, micro & macro gore, war archives, chemical warfare, obscure cinema, historical tragedies, religious imagery, music, etc. Things I’ve always loved entirely & somehow grew to love more because I’ve now found community in it! I never thought there would be a place for me, given that my ideas are so polar. The point doesn’t seem to be for shock either.
It also introduced me to music I doubt I would have discovered otherwise; Katie Jane Garside & all her previous works & bands, Scarling, Life Without Buildings, Have A Nice Life, Fiona Apple, Slant 6, Sleater-Kinney, Angel Olsen, PinkPantheress, Rose Chronicles, Ethel Cain, Elita, 800 Cherries, Black Box Recorder, Hole, Fabienne DelSol, Swans, Orion Rigel Dommisse... I'm !obsessive! about music, & this online community expanded that obsession into entirely new territory to me.
Ironically, the more at home I've felt, the more insecure I've become. (๑ _ ๑) Most of the women I see within the community don't look like me, & there are several staples of the culture that simply don't resonate with me. I'm not particularly interested in dolls, (despite my usernames.) Alice in Wonderland has never caught me in interest other than its absurdity. I like the unsettling themes in David Lynch or Tim Burton’s works, but their style or their repeated format is just not my thing. Even the color pink isn’t something I’m particularly fond of.
I’m a bit ashamed & a bit afraid that because of my distaste for such staples of this culture, I’ll eventually be told I have no place in it! But, no way a subculture built on paradox would demand uniformity like others do. I’d hope! My love for history, philosophy, antiquing, difficult art, abrasive music, absurdity & whatever else itself feels far more essential than whether I adore Alice in Wonderland or a colour.
I just had to ramble.. (,,•᷄﹏•᷅,,)
Will I ever truly forget..?
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I am so absolutely overcome with guilt. But no matter who I tell, no matter who I talk with; I’m sure I don’t execute it. I speak about what I did, & I never communicate the weight of it to me. I don't think I know how.
Every day, I am consumed by it. Because of what it has done to someone else. I revisit the same moment & search for any alternate option.
But I NEVER portray this, & it made me realize how extremely little I ever speak of or portray how I feel in any circumstance. I always have been an open book, but strictly neutrally & positively. I do not act how I feel, I do not act how I experience. I don’t even think I know how.!? “The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.”
I feel horrific right now. I say my day is good & I say I am doing well. These are so often true. I do not lie. Yet I *feel* horrific & I *feel* so sick. All these things exist beside one another. I don’t know why it’s something I don’t reveal. I have no desire to keep things hidden.
I am being stabbed over & over. I feel sick. My chest has been burning with tension that hasn’t loosened once yet. My thoughts are constantly revolving the same wound. My body is extremely strained beneath fine skin. Nothing of me can be seen.
I am not writing this to ask for pity. Pity cannot undo what has been done. I am writing because I’m finally so overcome with feelings. For once, they have to exist somewhere outside of me.
I've cut the people out of my life who are affiliated with him (｡°~°) A.k.a. my closest, most irreplaceable friends. Including him. I am an open book, someone with a thousand things to say, a thousand thoughts constantly being told. Now, suddenly, I have nowhere to put them except here. Le'mao. I miss them. I miss everyone.
Though, this is for the best.
I've never truly isolated myself before. Usually, I don't have the self-control for it. I always end up going back.
But it’s so different this time. Before I walked away, I gave them warning. Even knowing the position I was in, even understanding why I had to do this, the response I received was anger. As if being cruel to me, at the request of someone I love, would have stopped me. It literally did the opposite.
Their anger made leaving possible for me, for once. I do & I will miss them. I will miss all of them forever. I'm just not sure the feeling is reciprocated.
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I talk to myself WAY too much. “Open book” is genuinely such an understatement; I’m like a projector. I talk even when there’s no one to talk to. One-sided conversations, thoughts, criticisms, ideas; I’ll say anything, I’ll act anything. Anywhere! At work, at home, whilst on a walk, at a park, even with people. I try to stop myself, but I can’t I can’t.!?!?!?!?!?
Updates
· ─I miss my friends. Very badly
Scrap a couple of my recent excerpts. I'm frustrated, & there's only one person who seems like he'd be okay with the fact that I *could* be. (Haha, thanks Reese) Still, no one knows I actually am.!?
Everything has, just about, resolved itself. But the amount of grace the people I know are willing to extend to everyone BUT ME makes me want to bring it all up again. As if I need any more drama than what I already caused.
I didn't leave by my own volition. Even with quotes, they despise me. They don't give a fuck where I come from, what was happening while I had to, or how I've been since. They just care that I left. I am sorry. I’m so sorry. I do feel guilty. I wish I hadn't disappeared. But regret & choice are not the same thing, & they keep pretending they are.
I don’t know. I prefer exponentially to be the only one punished for what’s happening; I wouldn’t want anyone else involved to be held accountable. I'm happy the blame is just on me, as opposed to spilling onto the people I love. But watching the same people excuse everyone else's behavior while treating mine as uniquely unforgivable is exhausting. I don’t even see where this hypocrisy could derive from.
I watch people *still* walk over them. The same things as I did or even !!worse!!, intentionally AND repeatedly. Somehow they get patience & understanding & another chance. Their failures are shrugged off as mistakes. Mine is now a permanent indictment of my character.
Why!! Is accountability only reserved for the people who are actually willing to hold themselves accountable..? Is it because they’re fucking stupid..? Their mistakes carry less weight than mine because they’re retarded..? Ignorance is fucking malice. By all means, I am not smart, but because I’m somehow not ignorant enough to dismiss my actions, I deserve more punishment..? It should literally be contrary.
I'm not trying to pardon myself. Fuck you, oh my god. I'm upset because of the constant hypocrisy. I deserve consequences. I just don't understand why mine are so loud when anyone but me gets sooo much *slack*. And the one person I could possibly have to talk to, I don’t think he wants to talk.
I really love King Crimson so much.
There isn't a better band. My favourite band of all time is objectively the greatest, most innovative band of all time.
Irrelevant to what I actually mean to write about, but I’ve been thinking; I’m not understood well at all. I speak too quickly & too erratically. I write too arrogantly, too cryptically. So even if you could understand me in one form of expression, you’ll misunderstand the other. This could only cause people to not understand me truly at all. Ever!!!
Anyway, being misunderstood by strangers is one thing, it’s literally expected. But people in my life know me & acknowledge how often I’m misread, & they only recreate those same circumstances around me! My pals tell me I mean more to them than they usually say. They tell me my perspective matters, that my judgment is one they trust, that the way people treat or misinterpret me genuinely affects them. Yet they continue to invite those same kinds of people into, not only their own lives, but into *mine*.
I’m reassured that my instincts are right, but their actions never portray this. They keep people around who lie, who misunderstand, who cause unnecessary harm. Again, not *just* to me, but eventually to them too. And when finally, one of these people dissipates, another is introduced.
After a certain point, it’s not an accident that can be written off >_< Especially when it’s a significant pattern. Ignorance can & will become malice.
Starting fresh, starting anew. My excerpts will now be numbered with Arabic numerals rather than Roman numerals. Excerpt #36 Happy excerpt..! Happy reading..!
I’ve come to notice, (very, very gradually,) that people seem far more drawn to those who share their interests than to those they are actually compatible with. I think I’ve witnessed this phenomenon for most of my life, but I only recently found the words for it. It explains, at least a little, why people become so enamored with people that are entirely wrong for them. Or why people would tolerate things they otherwise would never accept.
I think people are captivated by resemblance..? Same music, same clothes, same movies. It might feel meaningful. Of course it is, shared interests are wonderful!! Things to talk about & enjoy together. It’s a nice idea. But similarity is *not* the same thing as compatibility.
People place far too much value on having things in common rather than being good for one another.
I don’t see such a great safe haven in someone who simply happens to like the same things I do, as opposed to someone who can actually understand me. Someone can be just as passionate as I am for the same shows as I am & still be incapable of listening to me. Conversely, someone can have nothing in common with me & still apprehend me.
If people stopped looking for themselves in other people, maybe they would become much more willing to let interests change. If you find people because they relate to you, because they understand your temperament, communicate with you, & want good things for you, then the interests can come afterward, right..?
I think this may be part of the reason I have so many good people around me. I often remind myself how few genuinely bad experiences I’ve had with bad people, & how infrequently I even seem to encounter people who are cruel or malicious. For a long time, I thought this was simply luck. Lately, I’ve started to wonder if some of it is my judgment. *I* think I’ve become relatively good at noticing things.
I see my friends sometimes insist on keeping people around who are cruel to them, people who openly dislike them & use them. For what..? Because you like the same clothes..? What is the value of having someone who resembles you if they hate you.
I completely don’t understand it. I wish I could sometimes. I really do want to understand why similarity feels *so* compelling that people will overlook incompatibility.
I am the most gullible girl I know!!! If you know me in person, you’ve heard me say this 100 times before. If I had to be defined by a single adjective, gullible *is* the one.
In recent years, I have become noticeably less gullible. But not enough to move on from being called gullible. Lately though, the past few weeks have made me feel ashamed of this, that I thought I had gotten better at. People tell me nice things, & I have a terrible habit of believing them. I take the people around me at their word. I can’t help but be naive..?? I assume that what someone says to my face is what they truly mean.
(If I approached every situation & every person with suspicion, how would I ever truly know anyone..? How could I form a relationship with anyone if I were constantly searching for lies.)
But, again, lately I’ve been wrong about people >_< Over & over again, in the past two weeks alone, I’ve been shown that there are people close to me I should not trust. Sorry for my vagueness. The situations aren’t my focus. Though there have been multiple events, involving multiple people, all with some variation of the same thing; people lying directly to my face, then behaving entirely differently behind my back.
I have this habit of confronting people directly when I don’t like something. So what have I been doing..? Confronting.!? I get a semi-heartfelt apology & an explanation & reassurance. And lately, again, again! These have been lies to me. Lies I’ve just been believing. Lies I will keep *on* believing.
I would call it being taken advantage of if I had anything to offer??? (•᷄ᴗ•᷅ ᵕ) But there is no transaction, I’m just being played by people I love to be played. I’m so, so embarrassed.
After all these recent instances, I’ve been making promises to myself. “I’ll be less open with them.” “I’ll be more careful with these people.” “I’ll stop giving them the benefit of the doubt.” You know, etc. I want, !so desperately! to become more closed off.
I’ve tried so hard. I can’t do it. I have very little impulse control when it comes to believing people. I could never be a skeptic. I don’t know how to separate the part of my gullibility that is foolish from the part of it that is just hopeful. I can’t help it, I believe & I trust. It’s like gullibility is ingrained into me. I don’t have anything to do but complain about my inability.
I’m so scared. Over time, this blog became an actual blog. In the beginning, the excerpts were mostly my beliefs & the things I thought, the things I wondered about, & such. Ideas I could hold at a distance, I s’pose. But now, this has become a record of my life as it happens. Too silly! Too vulnerable! Collections of things I never really intended to put anywhere, let alone leave in writing. I didn’t think it would become this.
Now, I am so scared, so scared. I have people around me who will help me..? For that, I am endlessly grateful. But help & care are so different. I have people who would do something for me, but I don’t have anyone to listen to me or check up on me. No one who would even fake a care. I feel so absolutely alienated, I feel alone! I feel like I’m supposed to feel like this.
At a baseline, this is Yaya, this is what I’m supposed to feel on a regular.
I don’t have my second job anymore, & my dad has been demanding money from me (He’s unemployed); for rent, for groceries, for whatever needs paying. I would be happy to help if my money weren’t already disappearing into debt, cigarettes, & beer. Haha >_<
I think I’m about to be evicted. That is what I’m scared about. We’ve received eviction notices before, but this time we received the same one twice. My mother called me about it (bad news) And, as if that weren’t enough, my dad’s car broke down. I can’t drive. I’ve had people tell me they would teach me, & for a little while, they did. Then, after a week of consistency, they simply stopped.?!
I am no one’s obligation. I know that. Knowing I’m not entitled to help I was promised makes me feel so ridiculous. I’m being incoherent. I don’t want to lose my things. That might sound stupid compared to everything else; I’m afraid because if I lose this home, I’ll lose more than a roof. I would rather be homeless than accept a charity shelter or live with my mom.
If I lived with my mom, I’d just become a house slave again. I wouldn’t be allowed to have a job, to have friends, to be outside. She might even start hurting me again, is that stupid to be afraid of. I really don’t like physical pain. She tells me those other things herself.
And still, there are people around me who almost insist that it would somehow be different this time. Because what..? “Because you’re an adult.” That’s fucking stupid. In what world has that ever been applicable to a child & their housers. That doesn’t change any rule when the person you live with has already told you what the rules are.
I’m going to have everything of mine stripped from me!! I’m terrified. I’m too attached to myself & my living situation! This year of freedom was nice, I guess.
Updates
· ─My dad made the rent on time. But now, all my horses are packed up.
· ─My boyfriend did, in fact, take me to San Diego to see Have a Nice Life
· ─I quit working at Hot Topic, but I am soon obtaining another second job
· ─I have an iud now, & am now experiencing menstrual cramps for the first time. Not fun.
· ─I have to cut off a significant amount of people from my life for very sickening, saddening reasons. (like 3, but this is the most it’s ever had to be. It’s usually 0)
· ─I am so conflicted about all my relationships. I keep making bad decisions & saying backwards things; I don’t know what to do. I keep making mistakes.
· ─I need to hangout with my friend-group less, for all kinda of reasons. Focus on saving money, avoiding cruelness, avoiding temptation, I need to work, etc.
· ─I don’t have a shiny, new car anymore. My abuela & abuelo can’t pay the registration from the country they’re in :(
Things are so wrong. Usually, I’m comforted in knowing I am who I am. After everything, I will always be Yaya..! But things are so off & I’m *so* different. There’s no way I could be myself right now. Saying something like that is diverging accountability. I’m not doing that. I’m no one but myself; all I’m doing is Yaya. I’m a sick & backwards girl.
I’m all too confident talking about others. I used to go out of my way to avoid saying other people’s names. Now all I do is talk mindlessly & foolishly. All too rudely. I’m a fucking bitch.
More so, I don’t know what to do. I keep disobeying, thinking the consequences will not bother me. I disobey, assuming the consequences are something I *want*. Then another day, my desire will completely turn around, & to obey is nothing I want to do more. My environment doesn’t affect this at all. It is all me. I don’t know what to do.
I’m not advancing. I do have aspirations & goals that need meeting. But I can’t get anywhere, I’m so stranded. I don’t know, my writing is so simple & incohesive. I’m getting worse. I do not like to be me.
I don’t know how to make amends for the things I’ve done. I wish there was a way I could undo so many things. All I could possibly do is become someone who would not make the same choices again. I want to reform myself so badly; I want, somehow, to find my way back to the person I used to be. Ideally, be better than I was before.
I’m wondering if the only way to begin is to step away for a while. To isolate myself. Be alone long enough to hear my own thoughts & make my own decisions. Maybe the people around me have influenced me. I don’t know. I believe the people in my life are good. They aren’t to blame at all for what I am now. Whatever is wrong is still mine to confront.
I don’t even know if I have the discipline to isolate myself, or the motive to leave behind people I care about, even temporarily. I’m afraid that if I disappear for a bit, the people I want to return to the most won’t be here when I come back.
I just want to make things right. I want to make amends where I can, & accept what I cannot undo. More than anything, I want to believe I can return to myself again.
As much as I love who I am, I hate being myself. I thought I was socially normal enough..? I’m a decent conversationalist, maybe. I know how to interact with people! I don’t say particularly outlandish things, & I don’t behave in ways that are obviously strange. There is nothing I can point to & say, “That! That is why I’m treated so oddly.!?” But I am D:
People look at me strangely, I’m treated strangely. It happens whether they know me well or not at all. Even worse when they’re my friends. I have become so accustomed to noticing it that I can almost feel the moment when someone decides there is something wrong with me. I tend to know it’s because I’m so unsightly
I’m so hideously alienated from femininity itself. I am so often excluded from feminine spaces that eventually I stop wondering whether I belong there at all. I feel disgusting. Again, I’m monstrous. I exist just slightly outside the category of human everyone else understands instinctively.
It’s become harder to ignore lately, more apparent. The girls I know have started getting to know each other. I introduce friends to one another, & then I watch them become friends without me. Groups form around me & somehow don’t include me. People I thought were *my* friends find spaces with one another that I am not invited to. I have *always* been the person who connects everyone, only to be left outside the relationships I created. I don’t directly know why.
When I am alone with someone, I’m liked. I know how to be a person & I can be normal. I can make myself understood. But when in a group with these same people, I’m suddenly aware of my face, my body, my voice, the way I stand, the way I speak. I’m suddenly embarrassing to be around, embarrassing to be the friend of.
These people make me conscious of myself as an object being perceived rather than a person.
I want to be treated like a girl without having to prove that I deserve the word. More than that, I want to be treated like a person. I want to feel real in other people's eyes. I want my existence to register as ordinary enough that no one has to look past me, around me, or through me.
I’m inhuman instead. I’m inhuman & I don't even hate whatever is making me inhuman. I like being myself when I am alone. I like what I believe. I like the things I think about, the things I make, the things I can do. There is a version of me that I love. I wish I wasn’t her so persistently. Particularly, I wish I wasn't her in front of others.
About to write another excerpt on how I'm Black. Sigh… Does this bitch make everything about race.!? This one, I think, will have a different undertone from the last though. In fact, I'm grateful to be Black in the context of what I'm about to write.
The things I have experienced in my lifetime, I experienced because I'm Black. Such unique things & bad things. (Obviously, these things aren't unique or outlandishly bad to other Black people.) Without these experiences, I'd be less understanding, less passive, & less astute when it comes to the experiences of other people.
I'm struggling to articulate exactly what I mean.
________________________
I have a lot of trans friends. What an odd sentence. An even weirder opening sentence..! But without exaggeration, I'd say around 80% of the people in my life are transitioning or have transitioned in some capacity. And I have about 100 friends; a pretty significant portion of my social circle. Of those friends, roughly half began transitioning before we met, & half afterward.
I bring this up because I think my friendships have helped me grow my understanding a lot better. Trans people experience things I will never experience firsthand. There are aspects of their lives that I can listen to & try to understand, but that I will never fully grasp because I am not trans. I think I understand that well; that I could never truly put myself into the shoes of my friends’ because their experience is so unique.
Because of that, I try to approach the things my friends share with me with care. I understand that I should not belittle their experiences, I should not make jokes about the things they tell me, & most of all, I should not dismiss their experiences just because I cannot relate to it personally. I don't have to understand something completely to recognize that it matters & it’s real.
Because the things I have experienced are so unique, & so seemingly outlandish to people outside of my race. I *have* to assume that this is true for other marginalized groups of people.!? Very obvious statement, right.
I am sure I think this way because of the things I have experienced myself for being black. I've had experiences that are difficult to explain to people who aren't Black. I share these experiences with my friends; I can tell that the person listening doesn't quite understand why something affected me the way it did or when they think it’s outlandishly unrealistic. I can tell when they treat it as insignificant.
Where I can relate to my friends’ transness because of my blackness. The inverse apparently is not true. I hear jokes from them, dismissiveness, or belittlement in these same conversations.!? People that should understand me the most. I don't expect my friends to understand every aspect of my experience with racism or to have the perfect response to everything I tell them, either. But I do expect some consideration from the people I trust enough to be “vulnerable” with.
*I* try to remember that my lack of understanding is not evidence that their experience is insignificant when I’m told something. When I share something that has affected me & I'm met with a joke or a dismissal, .!?!? Why do I not receive the same courtesy..?
For a while, I didn't think too deeply about this. I chalked it up to individual personalities & awkward conversation. Of course this happens with people who are not my friends & who are not trans. More apparently in those cases. I was only trying to set an example of hypocrisy.
But, if we both understand that our own experiences can be difficult for other people to comprehend, shouldn't that make us more willing to listen & less quick to dismiss when someone else's experience is unfamiliar to us..? (Or familiar in separate ways.) I don't need them to have lived my life to respect what I've lived through. I just need them to be willing to believe that it happened in the first place???
Being black does not automatically make me more understanding than anyone else, or that “suffering” somehow makes me morally superior. Rather, I think my experiences have made me particularly aware of what it feels like to be misunderstood, & that awareness has influenced how I try to treat other people. So why is this not true for those around me..?
I have too many excerpts
I don’t know! Is someone just as culpable for an infraction if they committed it without intention, compared to someone who committed it deliberately..? I think about this a lot. It’s a normal, common question. But as of late, it’s really relevant to me.
I am the *most* gullible & *most* manipulatable girl. I recognize patterns & I notice when someone is manipulating me. I watch it happen in real time, identify what they’re doing, & sometimes even acknowledge it to them. BUT I LET IT HAPPEN. This is no one’s fault but my own. Small instances, big instances, blatant lies, actual games??? I keep finding myself on the receiving end of someone else’s willingness to take advantage of me.
I am so malleable & people recognize it so quickly. Before I can do anything about it.
A girl in my life coaxes information out of me while giving nothing of herself in return, treating me as source of entertainment. A guy in my life openly tells me how gullible & trusting I am, then exploits that very quality to lie to me, I don’t even know why. Multiple friends, across different periods of my life, have learned that all they have to do is let me talk. They let me ramble & ramble, waiting for me to reveal things they want to get out of me. My friends will tell me things to make me do what they want or to make me back off. They make promises & let me act on that belief. Then, when I have done what they wanted or removed myself from their way, the promises just disappear. And I’m still content, I just let it happen. (Not purposeful broken promises, I think (I still don’t know!)). A guy I know will say something that pressures me into being around him, then turn around & ask me if he is manipulating me. Am I..? I mean, I can’t be if he’s not trying to manipulate me, right..? Another girl in my life tells me things designed to distort how I see other people, bad things, horrible things. Tries to ruin my perception of people I know for what.?
These examples are so simple, & so vague. But I have so many more. I’m not so upset that people are doing these things to me. This is to be expected. At this point it *is* my fault. I’m upset that I notice then I get upset then I do absolutely nothing to stop it from happening again. I wrote an excerpt almost directly identical to this one, but so much more has happened since that one. I feel so weird.
These people, my friends, they don’t mean to manipulate me. What if they don’t realize what they’re doing. And surely, they do not mean to hurt me.
Are you guilty for a crime you commit without intention..?
Intention matters in a court of law. The difference between an accident & a deliberate act matters. So why shouldn’t it matter to me..? Why should I treat someone who knowingly exploits my trust the same way I treat someone who hurts me without realizing it..? There’s gotta be a difference. I keep making myself available to people who have shown me that they are willing to take advantage of that availability.
I am so passive. I confront people about their behavior, & then they do nothing to fix it. Then, I am happy. I am upset about my situation, & I write about it. Then, I am happy. I get blatantly used in these odd, horrible ways, & I then tell people (but do nothing to stop it). Then, I am happy.
I do not know how to stop being so happy all the time. I’m so conflicted. Obviously, I am not happy right now..? But soon, I’ll forget about this & I’ll brush it off & then I *will* be happy. I am the happiest girl in the world.
Maybe, I shouldn’t complain about something like this??? It seems like a blessing. I just feel stupid.
One more excerpt today :) This one will be a bit too descriptive. Not vague. Very personal.
I live in Las Vegas, & our Renaissance Fair happens every October. I used to go with my dad every year, but that tradition stopped after Covid. No hard feelings. Just saying, I just haven’t been in about 6 years.
Within the past 2-3 years, I’ve managed to form an actual friend *group*. Recently, I had a gripe with them, so I told them about it. I’m a confrontational guy, what can I say! I realized that every hangout we’d ever had was only ever something one person wanted to do; Ms. Gabi. I confronted her about it, & she promised things would change. Obviously, change isn’t immediate, & I’m still willing to give it time. I’m okay with that. (This is semi-relevant to my main point)
For the past year, I’ve been talking about the Renaissance Fair. I asked individual people in the group if they’d make time to go with me, & the answer was always !!YES!! At the *least* 4 people had promised me we’d go together as recently as the end of September. That’s like, maaaybe, about 12 days ago.!? There would’ve been even more of us if other plans hadn’t fallen through.
I’m just very sad about it. I was so excited for so long.
I feel ridiculous even bringing this up because it’s such a non-issue. Oh, I didn’t get to go to some stupid carnival. You guys are *sooo* cruel..!
But, that’s exactly why I’m writing about it. I don’t want to confront my friends over something that feels so meaningless. I’ve been trying to fix my “confront about everything” quirk. I’m jealous, I feel bad. It’s been eating at me the past week. Everyone canceled essentially the day before. One person even opted to go without any of us every single day of the fair, despite explicitly promising me, !me! that we could go together.
I lied, that was not the last excerpt of the day. I should clarify that, to whoever is reading this, I am a satisfied person! Despite the way I write, I am not a gal perpetually at war with her own mind. I make it sound like I’m tortured. Don’t mistake my reflections of pieces of my reality for the objective truth.
I actually consider myself a very lucky girl. I am surrounded by love, by people who make life better in so many ways. Despite the things I have grown up with, the things that are happening, etc. I am happy to be where I am.
I am happy to be me & grateful to be so happy.. & much more fortunate than the things I write about.
My social life is fucked right now..? I’ve been dealing with so much at home, so much at work, & then, suddenly, I find myself being accosted on top of everything else.!? I have bigger things to worry about; but, here I am, losing my friends while trying to hold my life together at home, all the while hearing blatant lies about myself.!?
I’m afraid I’m in real danger..? I don’t know what’s happening, & I keep reminding myself, ‘maybe the people in my life shouldn’t matter to me more to me than my fucking dog does.’ It’s only been doing bad for me. I’m lacking loyalty in such an exposed state. I do not know what to believe, & I know that was the goal, but damn, am I immature.
I am very scared. I can’t stop saying it. I’m afraid for an entirely different reason than I was last time. I don’t want my words to lose their meaning through repetition, but I can’t stop myself from being paranoid. There shouldn’t be dangerous people in my life, but it’s directly my fault that there is. AM I BEING TOO VAGUE! It’s weird this all happened in just a matter of days.
It’s October 12th, 2026. It’s been a bit since I actually dated an excerpt.
And this one is excerpt 50!!! A milestone
I don’t know how I’m going to distract myself from my reliance on people. Having a 2nd job will definitely help with that; 12-hour days, that’s practically all day. But I won’t be working every day. My wallet is lost, I need to find my wallet. I know it’s in my room, it’s probably in my over-cluttered bed. I have so many hobbies to distract myself with, but I don’t think that’s enough. I’m scared; I already want to talk to people I know I shouldn’t talk to. In an ideal world, all these people just decide they hate me & they leave me alone. I need to be left alone. I don’t like to be as prominent as I am in people’s lives. Especially now that I’m the topic of everyone’s interest, I wish I could chill out. It’s not like I can be prescribed anything for how I am, it’s not a mental illness to be hyper. My writing is not good. Maybe compulsive purchases will distract me from reaching out to people.
I don't know if I actually feel loved by anyone around me other than my dad. I say I am (loved) quite often; I've even been drawing a picture about it. But, I wrote about how I don't even feel cared for by the people I know. Now, I'm not so sure if I'm even particularly liked. I know I will not be missed.
I say I’m gullible so often, but there’s this other thing I always forget I am, something I am *more* entirely consumed by. I am so jealous!!! And I can’t believe I never mentioned it here before. I might be more jealous than I am gullible.
I think I forget how jealous I am because, to me, it’s so ordinary. It is happening almost constantly, in such an absurd number of circumstances, that I hardly register it as something worth mentioning anymore. It’s just there. I’m extremely jealous over the most inconsequential details of someone else’s life, things that would probably never occur to another person as something to be jealous of. My friend adopting my way or even someone else's way of speaking, someone neutrally defending a person I dislike or just don’t even know, someone telling me about their family, their home, someone talking about the school they get to attend, the places they go, the freedom of being able to drive wherever they want, someone having a friend they seem closer to than they are to me, even if I’ve never met them in person. I resent people for having things that are so mundane.
By the time I remind myself that there is no real reason to be upset, I am already upset. I spend unreasonable amounts of time feeling angry over something I could not justify if someone asked me to explain it aloud.
I think I have gotten better at hiding it, though. At least compared to a year or two ago. But, I would be lying if I said I had gotten rid of it. I only just became more aware of the ways it escapes me. I ignore certain topics with people, I get snappy over simple phrases, I read intentions into things that may have no intention behind them at all, I become very accusatory when I have no real accusation to make. I’m embarrassed that I can recognize when I’m being irrational but don’t stop it.
It’s not good, & if this is how I feel only platonically. You couldn’t imagine my romantic jealousy. If I can become this distressed over the ordinary circumstances of a friend’s life, over their closeness with other people, over the fact that they have experiences & relationships that exist entirely outside of me, I can hardly remember what happens when I have romantic feelings for someone. I get so over-consumed with anger over irrational things. I do think I do a good job hiding it, but it hurts my chest so badly & my head, etc. It’s just not a good time for me. A feeling like this consumes me entirely, opposed to just feeling stupid for feeling gullible. When I’m jealous I can feel it so heavily, so constantly, & deeply.
I don’t want to be this jealous. I am *constantly* aware of other people, of what they have, of where I stand in relation to them, of all the ways in which I might matter lesser. I can turn anything into a comparison & I use that to turn everything into a comparison. EVERYTHING is a reminder of what I lack.
I say I am gullible as if being too willing to believe people is my most defining flaw, but my jealousy has to be more persistent. Just less visible. It’s not an occasional inconvenience for me & it’s not something reserved for meaningful relationships or circumstances at all. I am jealous almost every second, over practically anything.
I'm Buggin..?
I’M SO LUCKY. I’m the luckiest girl in the world, I love living with my dad, I love that I have a pet??? It’s weird, I still consider having my dog a new experience. Steel Ball Run is being animated & getting weekly releases, same with Dragon Ball Super. While I didn’t go, King Crimson came to Las Vegas a.k.a. They’re still performing. I feel so lucky; all my friends are so comfortable to be so open with me. I feel so lucky, I feel lucky all the time. I don’t know why I don’t say it more.
I’m grateful to have experienced so much, so many different environments. Being who I am & all. I like being able-bodied & living in the United States, Vegas of all cities. I feel special. I’m grateful for my education. I wouldn’t be who I am at all without everything I’ve experienced. (Obvious.) So, I guess, I’m grateful to some extent for all the bad too. I’m just rambling. I’m just happy right now. I’m buggin..? My life is so simple & straightforward. I’m lucky, that’s it.
The best day-night of my life happened very recently. !!! October 20th, 2026 !!! I can’t stop thinking about it. Am I too obsessed.!? I don’t know if I’ve ever called something “the best day ever,” of my own volition, but I think I mean it now just because of that. It’s weird too; it was such a simple time. I’ve seen King Crimson in concert, been to Oatman, Arizona, traveled to an entirely different country. I *live* in Las Vegas. But the happiest I’ve ever been was sitting in my room with my friends..? After all I do & have done, of all the things I could experience, this small thing means so much to me..? That is so cliché. “But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads..?”
Of course, it was a little more complicated than that; certain conditions & specifics are going unnamed. But, we did just spend the entire time in my bedroom. There’s so much I’m embarrassed to admit, so forgive my vagueness. It was an odd group, too, not my usual friend-group, !but everyone got along so well! We talked & talked, & the environment was just so comforting & cute. At least, I think so. I was scared, too, but that only makes me appreciate it more. Everyone who was supposed to be there was, to some extent, technically there & nobody freaked out, & my night ended so comfortably.
I want to replicate that day so badly, but I doubt I could, & I’m really not sure I should try. Though I really do wish I could >_< I hate to be so vague!! But, well (ᵕ⸝⸝• ᴗ •) I think I’m just elated. Stupidly & overwhelmingly happy. That’s me! I really wasn’t expecting the day to be super extraordinary. I keep thinking about that night & I feel so lucky. I don’t know if it’ll always be the best day I’ve experienced, but right now it is.
I think a lot more people than I know read this, my blog..? (Well duh, because I was under the impression it was 0) But, almost once a week I’ve learned about someone new reading it semi-regularly..? Who finna comment !! (● . ●;) Let me know!
I have been dealing with so much, & so much is pent up. At the moment, this is the last thing I should be writing about. But, I’m not ready to be vulnerable about last night yet.
The baseline is that, because of last night, I am “excited” for death. I used to be so afraid of death, dying. Particularly the aspect of the afterlife, the idea of the afterlife being nothing. Just a loss of concious. But now, I am more than content knowing that’s all it is. I will just stop being. And it’s something I now want very badly. I’m craving it, to sleep forever.
Because of last night, physical pain means nothing to me. Another one of my bigger fears. But I’ve been numb since last night. I will be fine in any situation now. I’m happy about it, I’m happy to be so excited to die.
I am tragic girl, & I will forever be one. I want to kill myself. I will be happy dying at any time. I am afraid that this longing will grow & grow until I ultimately kill myself sober.
I'm not entirely sure what's happening in my life. I am very confused. I developed a reliance on magic mushrooms, & in a very short amount of time. I watched it ruin my relationships so quickly. More accurately, *I* ruined them myself. I have to take responsibility. The only thing I've gained from the drug is a better awareness of myself; how I present to others, how I am *truly* perceived, & the ways in which I affect the people around me. I understand myself a little better now, even if that understanding has come at a considerable cost.
I am so reckless because I perceive myself so incorrectly, so at odds with the way others actually see me. I understand now that I had a good reputation, & that I should have fought harder to preserve it.
I intend to stop taking mushrooms. But my purpose for stopping might just vanish. Given who I am & the state I'm in, If I lose who I love, would I have any reason to even attempt..? I don’t like admitting it. I *know* my reasons for getting better should NEVER depend entirely on whether other people stay. I used to be proud to not rely on others to make my own decisions. But, I don't know how to separate the desire to become better from the desire to preserve the things that make my life wonderful.
Today, in this moment I feel content with almost any version of my future. I don’t have a clear vision of where I'm going, & I have not made peace with everything that has happened. It's something wayyy less definite. I feel as though I will be happy anywhere, with almost anything. I'm the happiest girl in the world. I will always be the happiest girl in the world. That is who I am. I’ll be okay in any situation because I will be happy anywhere.
I feel bad about it. I feel guilty for it. Being so capable of finding happiness in every circumstance diminishes the significance of the people who have shared circumstances with me. If someone goes to great lengths to make me happy, does it hurt to know that I could have been just as happy elsewhere..? *Could* I have been just as happy elsewhere..? That would make me greatly unhappy, it would make me incredibly angry. Does my ability to be content make the people in my life feel less singular.!?
I don't want the people I love to feel interchangeable. I want them to know that they are special. I’ve been so preoccupied with myself, I’ve neglected almost everyone around me. I’m not even sure who’s noticed.
I don’t make people feel special; I am too self-indulgent. I am not who I want to be. That’s why I hope they’ll never see me again,
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An old friend reached out to me recently. I cried about it. He told me he had been afraid I’d killed myself. It shocked me, that he & other’s cared so much about that night. Very strange & overwhelming thing to discover. He is a direct man, an objective man, & I told him everything. No one I know has heard *everything*. Despite the distance between us, he now knows more about me than anyone. I’m horribly elated about it. That someone, anyone, knows me that well.
We’ve barely spoken in years, & one of the first things he told me was that he’s read my entire blog. I don’t know if anyone could understand how much that means to me. He was practically quoting it back to me, recalling things I had written. I don’t feel special for being understood by him; he has a remarkable ability to understand people generally. But I do feel incredibly lucky & grateful that I got the chance to meet someone like him.
I don’t think he’ll ever fully comprehend what that conversation did for me. It is difficult to articulate what it means to feel that someone has not only listened to you, but has taken the time to know you. Especially in your absence. That conversation did more for me than anyone will ever be able to conceptualize.
Soon to come, last updated 10-30-26
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