pumpk1n-h34d

[pumpk1n-h34d]

Log 4

I found some wild cherries today. There was a spot of overgrown grass, with trees that were clearly loved. They grew without human direction and I witnessed the way the residents held the fruit of their trees with a fondness. It was a small street, one hidden away in a corner you'd never think to look. Likely the last of it's kind after its neighbors got bought out to build a hospital.

It was a patch of wild in a city of bricks and rusting metal. The mosquitoes got to me quickly, and while I would have loved to stay and read, I was not particularly made for the outdoors. And the mosquitoes are more trouble to me than it's worth.

This hurts a little, considering in my little group I seem to be the only one incapable of being outdoors for long. I can't climb trees with any grace; my wrists always hurt like there's needles embedded in the bone. My knee gives way sometimes, and if I rise on it too fast, it feels like it's tearing. Doctors don't know what's wrong with it. Just the way it is.

I get hurt easily. So I try very hard to avoid getting hurt. My friends are built stronger, they climb like they've known how to all their lives. They scrape arms and knees and hold insects and sing with birds and swim with fish and look for all sorts of wild plant life. Mother Nature would probably take them in her arms, smile at them with some kind of fondness. They grew up wild.

I grew up behind closed doors. In a factory diseased suburb with bad air and a muddy red night sky. All I did was read, write, draw, read some more, and watch TV.

They said I was smart. It wasn't natural, just a forced progression of being stuck behind closed doors. I used to dream of the woods; of running wild and scraping knees, and climbing trees, and swimming in lakes. I observed this dream in books, in writing my fantasies, and it inevitably became a skill.

People tell me I'm good at making things up, inventing realities, and all that. Which is good when you're supposed to be an artist. I just wish I had developed such a silly skill some other way.

Now people only see me as knowledgeable, and they look to me for answers sometimes. But I'm not knowledgeable in much that matters. And it's not like people listen when I actually try to advise. Because I'm overly cautious, I don't take extensive risks. I can't afford that. I'll point out risk to friends, I'll try to explain why they shouldn't do a stupid thing, they laugh and roll their eyes and do it anyway.

And that's why they're better than me. They can afford injuries, and risk, and will likely smile at the end of it. The consequences not costing them a whole lot. Not the way it would me.

If I were to climb a tree, I'd break an arm getting down. And that's on being raised behind closed doors.

At least now, I can witness what I thought were only stories, as my friends recount the sort of things they did in childhood that I didn't experience. And I stay quiet about the specifics of my childhood.

One time, my mother told me something about some artist that worked for a big studio. He grew up in a religious household where he couldn't do much, so he just got really good at drawing and got successful off it. I'm sure in her strange way, she was trying to justify the upbringing she gave me. But the catch would be- actually being successful.

I hope I am. If not, every aspect of my life was a miserable waste of time. The supposed best years of my life were burnt being nothing of consequence. Always an observer watching others being better at being human than me.

[pumpk1n-h34d]

Log 3 - June 18 25

I'm trying to feel like myself again.

It's strange how much a feeling for another person can change you. I don't know if I like the effects of love. It feels more like a sickness than a lovely experience. I want to think that I'm getting better, that this is all a part of life, and that it is important to hurt in a healthy way when you fall in love.

I feel my bad experiences outweigh any good by a very large amount. But I guess most experiences with love are like that, and that's why it takes people forever to get married if you're doing it right.

To be honest, I don't want to get married. There's so much weight attached to a relationship that I don't know I'm fit for. I know in my head I want to do things with my life that involve the kind of drastic change a lover wouldn't support. I want to study, I want to move, I want to accept the job offer in some faraway part of the world- that sort of thing which would strain a relationship. Distance and passion for work which leave little space for companionship, so close such as romantic attachment.

But- the whole love thing- it sort of chooses you sometimes, doesn't it? You just fall in spite of yourself. And it's an awful feeling when it's not reciprocated. It's like violently losing your autonomy and all for nothing.

So the recovery takes a long ass time. And in that time I hate how I've spent it in agony, in turning to methods like this to process, being in love is such a low point. I want that ambitious personality that filled up my every thought with delusions and dreams of the future. One alone.

I saw my sister recently. You know what she told me? She said, "You know, I know the reason you're doing so well academically is because you're disinterested in dating. I wasn't like that at your age."

To think I was disinterested in dating. Still am in every rational aspect of my brain. But the heart, the heart, the heart, the heart, demanding as a god. I had prayed to gods in hopes that some divine force would get me out of this awful state of mind. Losing precious time, hurting when I could be studying, working on my projects, making something of myself.

The act of loving feels like losing myself. I would like to remain intact. I would like to find myself again.

With much love-

P.H.

[pumpk1n-h34d]

This, but with media, like if we're watching a movie, expect me to talk in DEPTH about how a character is written, and PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE talk back about it. I go feral for a conversation about how media is written it's a chronic illness

i can’t stand “it’s not that deep” attitudes like even if it really really isn’t that deep just PLAY WITH ME. just fucking PLAY. have a meaningless but deep analytical conversation with me. just like think about shit for fun. does anyone else like to think about stuff for fun. it’s so lonely

[pumpk1n-h34d]

Log 2 - June 15 2025

You know, I've never had much luck with friends. I used to get left behind a lot. I was often making friend with the worst of kids, the groups that liked to cause drama on any particular day by choosing a member to antagonize.

I was constantly the clueless one, the one trying to solidify some kind of connection. I remember every morning was a drag of trying to find my friends, trying to keep a conversation I cared about and they seemed interested in. There was always a lot of talk of things I didn't care about. Drugs, relationships, parties, I liked parties but I wasn't invited to these on account of my distaste for sex.

Though I didn't know it at the time so I just sort of was left out.

Once, homecoming was coming up. I wasn't gonna go since I didn't have a date, and I never had a good time at parties. But my friends asked me to come, asked me personally to hang out. I thought- yeah sounds fun. I wore a dress I never got to wear, my sister in law did my makeup. I thought I looked like an actual girl for a night.

The getting-ready part was fun. My mom looked proudest of me than she ever did in any other academic sense, although I didn't have a date, and I knew that disappointed her.

But it didn't matter. I sort of prepared to be bored; I brought cards and a switch, actually. Loser activity- I know. But call it a learned habit of enough wallflowering parties like this.

I sat down for a solid five or ten minutes when I found out that my friends weren't even gonna show up. They were at a target, figured they'd fuck around town instead. And every other friend I had was otherwise preocupied with plans of their own.

I was stuck sitting there the entire time by myself cause I had the idea that I could trust what my friends said.

I moved on from the highschool stuff quickly, I think I even developed something of an instinct for when people were going to bail, since it happened to me so often.

But all that to explain, I have a hard time knowing whether plans are real or just figure of speech. "Yeah, let's go to the beach soon!" Sounds little more than an empty, distant promise. It always hurts the worst when it's someone you honestly want to hang out with. This is my current problem: the person I want to spend a lot of time with is the flakiest friend I have. And she'll say things about going out to all kinds of cafes, book stores, festivals, the like. Sometimes it works out, most the time something comes up, or she forgets, and overall I'm left feeling a little hurt even when it's not a big deal in the slightest.

She's a good friend though, a really good friend. And there's plenty of occurrences I can say with confidence she's done simply because she's good character. Though uniquely, I find being friends with a genuinely good person is tricky, only because every good action is a matter of natural instinct to them. Not something done because you mean anything special. And I don't mean something simple like waiting for you to catch up if you got left a little behind. I'm talking showing up for you when you least expect it to support you. I won't go into detail. But it's the kind of thing I feel you only read about. Anyway not to sound ungrateful, it's only a problem when you're almost in love with the person.

But I'm getting distracted. I've gotten better friends. I assume with age, people just mature. Or maybe we get better at picking them out. I don't know, but I like to think I can trust my friends.

I got flashbacks the other day though, walking through the streets of an unfamiliar town with one of my closest friends (to me) as we just left a festival she wanted to go to. And she brings up she's going to a concert soon, she names an artist I like and know well for being the same artist my previously mentioned friend, adores. I ask who she's going with, and she tells me it's of course that previous friend. She explains of course they only made the plan suddenly and it happened on a day I was out of the state entirely. And back when the friendship was a fledge of a thing and I likely wasn't a thought that occurred when those tickets were bought.

I know there is no rational reason to be upset. But it's hard to keep years of toxic adolescent friendships at bay when this is just the most classic of things for me to experience. And now I know there will be a day that I'll be home alone while my two closest friends go off to a concert of an artist I like, without me. I'll smile and make them promise to take videos. They'll take videos. They'll take photos. It'll be a post on their story that I'll refuse to look at and a memory on instagram I'll have to like in a pathetic way. I'll tell myself I wouldn't have been able to afford it anyway if they did ask. I'll probably have work the day of or something, all sorts of things. The hurt's still there though.

I think I'll lose my mind for a day. It'll be fun, promise.

[pumpk1n-h34d]

You know, sometimes I feel like a bird in a glasshouse, and the only way I can navigate is through bashing against the walls I can't see until the damage makes it all clear. - This is what socializing feels like.

[pumpk1n-h34d]

Log 01 - June 12 25

Hello,

I'm doing a selfish thing. Except I wanna think it's not that selfish. I'm talkative you see, but I have a hard time talking about the things I feel deeply about to anyone in my personal life. Is that strange? I'm starting to think that there's a quality to me that's strange.

Really, it's all mundane, but I want to process the things I think in a way that feels real. I've tried notebooks, but the existential realization that nobody will ever read it has built up enough of a fear in me that I needed a change.

So i've decided to talk to the internet, because surely there wont be any consequence in something like that, and therapy is too expensive (I'm just a college student)

I figured if I use a corner that's inactive, no tags, no popular subject, this sort of thing will go unnoticed. Maybe this is counterintuitive, I think I must be crying for some sort of help or attention of some form. Thats typically why people do these kinds of things, right? But what sort of thing do you really hashtag a vent post like this with?

I honestly just want to write for the sake of writing, and I guess I like the idea of someone reading it one day. I'd like to think my thoughts might at least provide entertainment to somebody other than myself, and since I feel I have nobody to really share them with, I'm sharing it here.

For introductions, I guess, I'm an Entp last I checked- and my enneagram is a 5w4 but sometimes it'll swing 7 or 8 depending on how healthy my confidence is. I know that personality types are really a psudeoscience, but I find comfort in feeling known- even if it's a superficial trait at best.

I like to take online quizzes, those kinds you find on Uquiz that promise to see into your soul if you answer the kind of music you like. It's all fun and games but I'm the equivalent of a superstitious person about it. I love to send that sort of stuff to my friends, scrape off any detail of how their brain works from it, like its a meal.

I want to know how things work, I want to know how people work. But I'm unfortunately stupid with people. And the most basic of social rules slip my grasp at times. I'm figuring it out, but I know I'm ten paces behind and everything I say is a mimicry of whatever I like at the time. Honestly, for as much as I write, I'm awful in the heat of it. Real words spoken in real time, my voice doesn't seem to work all that properly, and it bothers me. My brain can come up with all sorts of idioms and metaphors, but my actual voice just seems to stammer some forced script, and I leave every interaction feeling I've failed to convey who I am as a person.

It's a sort of torture to want to express paragraphs of feeling and only be able to utter "Oh, I feel tired" in response to how I am. Or have to parrot some stupid thing I heard somewhere in response to a situation instead of a clever reference or meaningful comeback.

All this to say, I don't feel quite human enough to interact comfortably with my peers. That disconnect demands an answer, so I answer it with silly online quizzes. "Let me see what you get!" As I share mine and think of it as a part of my soul. It all means nothing really. Not to anyone but me. And it breaks my heart if I think of it too long. I try not to.

I want to be understood. I want someone to ask, to send me a quiz back, to care about the ways that I behave. I want to be known. I'm afraid I won't ever be, and that- that sort of connection is somehow not allowed for someone like me.

On the outside of the greatest inside joke. Olivia Rodrigo, you are my favorite poet.

Forgive me for being melodramatic. If I could talk to a therapist, believe me, I would.

With much love,

P.H.