ethompson10

[ethompson10]

I Hung Out With My Ex Last Night…

[Wednesday, March 26, 2025]

I hung out with my ex last night [M]. It was nice. For a second, I didn’t think she’d show up. I find myself thinking this a lot whenever we end up making plans to hang out. I’m so worried that she’ll one day ask herself, “Why am I still hanging out with this scumbag who cheated on me?” Truthfully, I don’t know why she does it. The optimistic and naive part of my brain tells me it’s because maybe she still has feelings for me. Realistically, I’m probably just a good excuse to grab a free drink and have a non-creepy interaction with a man. Overall, I think we just still enjoy each other’s company. I certainly enjoy being around her.

We started the night at an arcade and ended it at a local pool hall and bar in Little Rock. We had a couple of drinks, smoked inside, and shot a couple of rounds of pool.

I miss being with her. I like that we can still playfully shit talk each other. She looked so beautiful. I wanted so badly to grab her and take her deeper into the little corner that the pool table we were playing at was situated and kiss her. I miss holding her face in my hands.

It’s been so confusing being around her lately. She’s so hard to read. She called me cute, and we circled each other throughout the night. I think she even rubbed her fingers on my side like, a small gesture of physical affection we would exchange when we used to date.

I’ve never had the level of chemistry I have with her with anyone else. I wanted so badly to take her home with me and feel her wrapped in my arms again.

When the night ended, I gave her some of my mom’s soup. She texted me today tell me that she liked it. That made me happy.

[ethompson10]

Realizing that you’re a bad person…

[Sunday, March 16, 2025]

I remember being in high school and having such a clear idea of who I was as a person. At that time, if you asked me about who I was and what I was about, I’d be able to answer any question you had. I was self-aware enough to know who my click was. I could tell you what my best attributes and worse flaws were. I knew what things, places, people, and ideas I fucked with and which ones I didn’t fuck with.

In short, I knew who I was. And I think that it’s for this reason that I never really struggled with depression in my adolescence the same way that many kids do when going through that phase where they’re trying to figure out who they are. There was no incongruence with the version of myself that I was and the version of myself that I wanted to be. Of course, I wasn’t perfect. I knew there were things I hadn’t yet been able to accomplish and that there were things I needed to work on. But at least I was self-aware of these things and was actively working to develop myself. Plus, I was young, so I had an excuse not to have my shit entirely figured out.

Recently in my life, I was made to confront a great deal of things that, for the last 4 years, I had been putting off, mistakes I made, things I was untruthful with people in my life about, bad behaviors that I had normalized.

It is an unfortunate reality of the world that most people will never live up to their potential, either due to the uncontrollable circumstances that they were born into or because of their own lack of the kind of work ethic, vision, and intelligence required to transform one’s own life. Another unfortunate truth is that rather than accepting the absolute despair that comes with not being the person you want to be, most people would rather live in false realities they create for themselves so that they do not have to acknowledge their own failure and discontentment with their own lives.

The only way to not live in a false reality and to grow is brutal honesty and self-accountability.

I am not a good person. I am a vile, insecure, cowardly liar who has used his gifts of intelligence, charisma, and communicate to avoid confrontation and live a life of exploiting others for my own pleasure.

This has been a hard thing to acknowledge about myself. And for the average person, I imagine that being this honest with one’s self would be mind breaking. But despite everything, I still believe in my potential to be better, to be a good person again, to be a good man. I know that I am not an average human being.

In this acknowledgment, I find an enormous weight lifted off of my back, a newfound freedom, an opportunity to transform into something greater. I now know what it means to be a bad person. I’ve faced the evil that I’m capable of.

My only option now is to be a good person. I’ve been going to therapy. I’ve been being more honest with the people in my life. I’ve rededicated myself to the development of my mind and body. I’ve been training everyday.

It’s only a start, but I’m really trying.

[ethompson10]

Why am I doing this?

[Wednesday, March 12, 2025]

Throughout human history, personal journals, diaries, and biographies have allowed us to look inside the minds of complex thinkers, writers, activists, philosophers, artists, historical figures, etc.

I do not know if I will ever be amongst these people. I have yet to accomplish anything truly great in my life, and I don’t believe that my mind is particularly complex. It is certainly not complex enough for me to believe that someone would want to study it in the future, and I’m definitely no Malcolm X, Che Guevara, or Anne Frank. But I’ve always liked the idea of writing being used as a sort of time capsule, proof that at one point in time a person existed.

I sometimes wonder if that’s why any person chooses to write about themself. Maybe they hope that someone in the future will read what they had to say. Maybe they want there to be proof for the future that at one point they existed and that they did things that were important to them.

I guess that’s why I want to start writing more. Some day, I’m going to die. And once that happens, everyday that I’m no longer on Earth, the things that I accomplished in my life will become less and less significant both to my descendants and to the world.

So let this transcript serve as proof of my existence. My name is Eli. As of now, I’m a 22 year old college student from Arkansas.

[ethompson10]

Yep…