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b0ttl3d-up-st4rs · 3 years

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Well I'm gonna do what I do best and self reflect to an insane amount. This is probably gonna be a long post so buckle up.

To be honest my behavior for nearly the past year now is concerning to say the least. There's this little voice in my head that just desperately wants to get more and more hurt, more and more traumatized. Why is that? At first glance the negative approach could be to say its some sort of masochistic behavior and any negative repercussions as a result of this behavior is deserved, but I don't really think thats the case.

Self sabotage is a characteristic that can be exhibited in many mentally ill people and I am no exception. I think this behavior, of seeking to be hurt by grown men on the internet is partially self sabotage.

And I remember when I first started this shit show, I just wanted attention. Sounds mean to say, but craving attention is something the human soul desperately wants. And I was starting to feel some sense of self beauty but I didn't feel as though anyone around me was appreciating it so I tried to get attention from grown men because being showered in compliments and attention felt so good when my whole life I've never gotten any of that.

I think there's more too it, though. Looking back my whole life it's almost as if I've wanted to get hurt. In books I liked to sit around with the pain the characters felt. And its almost like I wanted to get traumatized. I've heard that people with trauma that they don't acknowledge is trauma or think its bad enough to be traumatizing seek put worse forms of trauma, in order to feel that pain is valid. And I think that's part of my issue too.

I do have unaddressed and repressed childhood trauma. I was given unrestricted internet at a young age and was exposed to the horrors of the internet. Nothing like straight up porn, but a lot of suggestive content. And in general being exposed to that caused me a lot of catholic guilt as I was raised catholic. I remember feeling like knowing these things were my fault. Many days I felt so guilty that I would pray to god to let me not wake up in the morning.

As a child I also questioned my religion a lot, which i think was traumatic in itself. Religion is a big thing. And as a kid I had a big issue knowing reality from fiction. Heck I still do. I remember as a kid my friend telling me that we were all demigods and one day we were going to run away to camp half blood. That the percy jackson books were real. It sounds stupid now, but I processed that as real and it was so stressful for me.

And I remember being 12 coming out as trans and as a part of the lgbtq community to my parents. They didnt react well. They said I was confused. My mom said I was both too young and too old to know. I fought a lot with my mom. And in general have a lot of unhappy memories from then. I was outed multiple times in my life.

My relationship with my parents still isnt good. My mom has a tendency to be toxic. I hate that I have to stay in the closet around my family its so painful. Like a month ago I mentioned the lgbtq community for the first time in years, asking my mom her opinions on it and if it changed since 2017, and it turned into her yelling at me and making herself a victim. It really hurt. I forgot how much it hurt.

I don't really have much of a relationship with my dad. We barely talk. Hes very emotionally distant. When I'm at my dad's house I sort of fend for myself. Its the exact opposite at my moms house. She's overbearing and never leaves you alone. It's like going between to extremes.

And honestly I can't wait to move out. My mom and I have arguments a lot. But hey at least I have some relationship with her, I don't really have a relationship with my dad.

I remember one time this year, I was during the end of a school semester. I needed to catch up on work because after talking to my abuser for like 5 months and then unlocking him I was left in shambles and fell into a really bad depression to where my motivation for school just disapeared. Im still dealing with that tbh. Anyways I had to go to a online meeting to choose my classes and I didn't get to choose the classes I thought I would be able to, and that made me really upset. But after the meeting I had to go to do am act of kindness (I chose picking up litter at a graveyard cause i like graveyards) for my school project but I was still distraught. If I was given some time to myself I probably wouldve been able to go without issue, but my mom wanted to go immediately. We argued. And when I got there I refused to leave the car because I felt so much like shit. We argued more. It was the worst argument I ever had. She even swore at me. Which she's never done before. And she ended up playing victim again. She does that a lot I guess. And doesn't really listen to my feelings. Whenever I try to communicate about my feelings with her it turns into an argument and she makes it about herself. So yeah our relationship isn't the greatest. And I think having mommy and daddy issues is a trauma in itself. Ppl deserve to have happy healthy supportive families.

Oh right and another trauma I completely forgot (funny how that happens) is when I was 14 and admitted to a mental hospital because I tried to off myself. It was so surreal and they forced me to learn how to make eye contact with people cause apparently thats "how they know im doing ok". Which is kinda fucked considering the fact I recently realized I might be autistic. And eye contact is literally so painful for me. It especially was back then. Anyways the place itself wasnt too bad but the feeling of being trapped overall sucks and being disconnected from the rest of the world isnt fun either. Also I dissociate all the time but I especially dissociated hard thru the whole experience. And sort of made myself into the perfect patient, repeating all their bs and literally lying to myself to convince myself that I was ok so they would let me go. So that was kind of weird.

Anyways I know I have it better than others. And honestly sometimes it's hard to tell what exactly was traumatic in my childhood. I probably forgot and repressed other parts of it too and am forgetting things. But needless to say these unaddressed traumas didn't help my mental state. And i do think that's a big part of the voice in my head begging me to just get hurt more.

Overall my mental state is fucked, It's been really hard for me not to be taken advantage of by another internet pedo. Heck the only reason that isn't happening rn is because no ones dmed me yet. Also I unblocked my old abuser and we are talking again now so thats fun. It definitely doesnt help the cognitive dissonance in my brain of him being actually a nice and supportive dude. I think thats also a part of me wanting to get more traumatized. Since my abuser is a nice person that should counteract all the fucked up sexual things he said to me in the past right? I mean others have it worse, had worse abusers that were actively cruel. That's part of the bitch in my subconscious brain talking. It sucks tbh.

Anyways yeah I probably need therapy but I don't feel comfortable talking about this to my current counselor and honestly its really hard to say out loud. I can talk forever about it by writing it down but the moment I speak words from my dumbass mouth I break down in tears and can't do it. Plus idk, I'm scared if I say anything she'll have to tell my parents and that my phone might be taken away or I'll have less privacy and for a closeted queer where my only current life line is the internet and my online friends: that is a terrifying idea. Idk. I'm fucked basically.

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isa-ly · 3 years

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THE TRUTH UNTOLD

TW: mental illness, eating disorders, depression, anxiety

I know the title might be a fun little hint to a certain k-pop song (which is a reference about three people will understand) but despite that little quirky pun, this post I’m about to write and that you’re about to read, is not gonna be easy. Or witty, or funny like some of the previous posts were. It’s most definitely going to be the longest one, though.

Because, in all honesty, this is the one post I have been absolutely dreading to make. However, it’s also the post that I kind of started this blog for because, unlike my depression, anxiety, panic attacks, insomnia and quarter-life crisis, this is something only my closer circle and those who happened to ask, really know about.

And, once again in all honesty, this is the actual reason I started therapy almost a year ago. Because in every way possible, shit had hit the fan so hard that there had been nothing left but to step on the emergency breaks. But I don’t want to get ahead of myself here. So, let’s try and start from the beginning.

I’ve talked about my more or less mental breakdown and burn out during my last year of university a few times now. Didn’t spare any details either. However, there is one thing that I’ve been mindfully avoiding that actually took up a pretty big part of that time of my life. The reason I avoided it, was because in my head, I kept running in circles on how I would phrase it and explain it in a way that would a) not sound too shocking and b) not make me look like a complete stranger to people who, until now, had no idea of what I’m about to say.

Eventually, though, I realized that I was doing the exact same thing I’ve always been doing. Which was searching for excuses to not talk about the biggest struggle in my life and make myself vulnerable. And I don’t want to make these excuses anymore because, really, all they ever did was harm me. So, here goes nothing.

Hello. My name is Isa. And for over a year now, I have been suffering from an eating disorder called anorexia nervosa.

The sheer act of just having typed this sentence out on virtual paper, threw me so hard that I spent a good 15 minutes simply staring at my laptop screen just now. I told you, this wasn’t going to be easy.

Since the only place I’m really “promoting” this blog on is Instagram, I’m just going to try and somehow use that as a segue to this post. Over the last year, I’ve received quite a few messages from friends, family and sometimes also random acquaintances, whenever I posted a picture of myself on my story or feed. Some of them were jokey, some of them interested and a very select few were concerned, too. All of them were about my apparent change of appearance, however. Of course, I didn’t only receive those messages online. The people who know and see me in real life, the above mentioned inner circle, have known for a while and some of them, as much as I wish they hadn’t had to, saw all of it happen in real life.

I know I included it in the trigger warnings already, but I want to point it out one more time here because I know how incredibly triggering these things can be – especially to people who have struggled or are struggling with similar issues. So, if reading about body image, dieting, weight loss and eating disorders makes you uncomfortable or could trigger bad memories and behaviour, this post might not be the one for you. I don’t want to be patronizing, you know what’s best for you, just wanted to make sure to highlight it before I continued.

I also want to preface this by saying that I can and only will talk about my own experience here. I am in no way, shape or form an expert on mental health and eating disorders and what I’m going to say and talk about, is purely a narration of what happened in my own life. Eating disorders, just like any other mental illness, are very individual and I do not want to come off as blurting out generalizations about them. Just so that we’re clear here.

Therapy taught me that the psychological, biological and/or societal origin of eating disorders is still almost completely scientifically unknown. It is for that exact reason, that the various EDs are some of the most stereotyped and stigmatized mental illnesses there are – which is also why it took me so long to actually pluck up the courage and energy to talk about it. I imagined people reading about my anorexia and thinking: “Oh, I bet it’s because she was bullied for her weight when she was a kid”, or: “Well, just another one of those girls who wanted to be skinnier”. Possibly also: “I never would have thought that someone like her would end up with an eating disorder. She always seemed so confident!”

So, to combat the fear of coming off like a cliché or sob story, I knew simply had to tell my whole and honest story. Because even if I’m worried about being put in a box or labelled as something I’m not, it still happened. And it’s still my story. And to move on from it, or better, with it, I have to tell it. And I have to tell it right.

So, here it goes.

Ever since I can remember, I have disliked my body. Growing up as a Human Person™ in this society, I realize that’s not really something that makes me stand out (which, if you think about it, is actually incredibly fucking sad). Apart from my own self, however, no one ever really shamed for the way that I looked and I was also never bullied or teased by others because of it. So, that’s a no for the “Oh, I bet it’s because she was bullied for her weight when she was a kid”-stereotype. It makes me want to gauge the patriarchal beauty standard’s eyes out, to think that never actively having been shamed for my body or weight, is something that I can consider a “privilege” in this world. I’m aware that a lot of kids and adults don’t have that twisted privilege, which, again, just makes me want to set the world of body ideals on fire, but I don’t want to diverge too much from the point of this post.

Remember that society I was talking about? Yeah, with that around, having someone point out or shame you for how your body looks different from what’s considered the ideal, isn’t really something that’s necessary in order for you to still notice it and develop massive insecurities. So, even though I was “lucky” and “privileged” enough to have avoided being bullied for my body by real-life people, I still grew up not liking the way I looked, always noticing that my stomach, my thighs, my arms, my boobs, my butt, were different to those of the girls everyone called pretty. Which inevitably led to me harbouring a contained, yet undeniably significant amount of self-hatred for the way my body looked over time.

Now, I might have been one of many body-conscious teenagers, but, in quite stark contrast to that, I was also a seemingly self-confident one. Or at least I really, really wanted to be. It’s what everyone always told me I came across as. The loud, opinionated and self-assured girl, who didn’t care what people thought of her. Maybe that was to compensate for my own insecurities, maybe it was for protection, or maybe it was also because I just knew, or hoped, it was the right way to go. I believed and preached that how I looked, what I weighed and what I ate didn’t matter, both to myself and to all of my friends and family. I knew I was absolutely fine the way that I was, as long as I was physically and mentally healthy. I’ve always known that, and I fully believe in it too. And yet, here I am. About to tell you what both you and me are already suspecting: The story of how that knowledge didn’t end up protecting me as well as I thought it would.

Despite me always having believed in not giving a shit about beauty standards, ideal body types and the obsession with whatever the fuck “skinny”, “slim thick” and “lean” are supposed to be, it undeniably had an effect on me. Just like it has an effect on literally every other person, regardless of gender or age. It’s pretty much passed onto us the minute we’re born, like a part of our literal DNA. It makes me sick to my very core, but I always knew that this insecurity, no matter how much I knew it shouldn’t have ever been one and no matter how much I fought to stand above it, was woven into the very fabric of my being. The very minute we learn to interact with others and the world around us, the clear, limited and completely unrealistic image of how we’re supposed to look in order to meet societal expectations, is indoctrinated into our innocent brains – consciously, subconsciously and in literally every other way possible.

I don’t want to give a lecture on how society, media, and peers make us believe it’s necessary and right to chase bodies that, realistically, no one can ever outrun, but I felt like saying at least this much about it to set the base for what’s about to come. Certainly, this almost innate, underlying dislike for my body – or most parts of it – wasn’t the sole reason for developing an eating disorder in my early twenties. But it was most definitely a cruel predisposition that played a big part in how my anorexia unfolded and the leverage it had and still has on me.

I mentioned in the beginning how, despite it being one of the most common mental health disorders, there’s barely any scientific explanations as to how eating disorders really come to be. Which is why assuming that being unhappy with my body and the way it looked was the only reason I slipped into disordered eating, would simply be false. After all, I lived twenty-one years of my life being more or less fine with it. It was an insecurity, yes, but it didn’t dictate my every day life, it didn’t influence how I lived it. So, the “Well, just another one of those girls who wanted to be skinnier”-stereotype, doesn’t really prove to be fully true either.

Which leaves the last assumption: “I never would have thought that someone like her would end up with an eating disorder. She always seemed so confident!”

To which I can only say: Yeah, uh ... same? I mean, do you really think there’s anyone who found themselves developing an eating disorder only to think: “Oh, yeah, that makes sense, I always knew I’d end up like that!” Sorry, that was a bit dark. I know that this assumption is something that mostly I myself am worried about and that there’s no reason for me to actually get defensive. However, while most reactions to me talking about my eating disorder have been very comforting and caring, I’ve also had a few quite unpleasant experiences and well, those tend to have the harsher impact. So, please forgive my mildly cynical reasoning here.

Right, then. If I didn’t ever get bullied for my body or weight, didn’t just want to “be skinny” and really am that confident – how did this happen?

Well, I’ve already given part of the explanation just now, when I told you about my unfortunate predisposition of never really having fully loved or accepted my body. The other part of the explanation, lies in pretty much every other post I have written so far. Most of all the latest one: Control.

It was a real challenge to have written that last entry without ever mentioning my anorexia with even one word. Because really, for me personally, control is literally all it ever was and will be about. My therapist told me that it’s quite common in other eating disordered people too. But again, I’m not here to talk about anyone else, I’m here to talk about my own experience. And it starts just like I said in my last post: With losing control. And in many ways, the combination of always having disliked my body and suddenly having slithered into a massive life-crisis where I felt like I had lost all power and control over everything, was the very dangerous mixture that started it all.

I don’t want to make it about that too much, but it’s still worth mentioning that after my semester abroad, which had ended in January of 2018, I had gained some weight. Weight that, having changed up my diet a few years prior, I had actually lost and that all of a sudden, was now back on again. It had just been a very wonderful yet also stressful time abroad and well, heaps of uni work, very little sleep and the general student lifestyle, just caused me to pile on a few kilos. The part of me that genuinely never gave a fuck about body standards, once again did genuinely not give a fuck about that. And yeah, when I came back, there were the occasional family remarks of “Look at you, gained quite a bit of weight there, didn’t you?” (which I know are made with no malicious intent, by the way, but, forgive me if I say this: just shut up) and I had also obviously started noticing that none of my old clothes fit anymore and I did indeed look a lot larger than in any of my older pictures. Was that a blow to my self-built confidence because we live in a society that rewards weight loss and punishes weight gain? Sure. Was that when I developed anorexia? Nope.

Because, if you’ve been following the timeline of my mental health issues that I have oh so passionately been crafting in the last few posts, it wasn’t until autumn of 2018 that I first started struggling with my back then still undiscovered control issues, which lead to my anxiety, depression, insomnia and – now that I’m telling my whole story – my eating disorder. Or, to be fully correct, disordered eating, back then. Because just like the rest of my mental health issues, this too, crept up on me slowly at first.

I remember the first time I had this very simple thought. At least, it felt simple. Simple, but so deeply wrong and dangerous. And yet once I had had it, it wouldn’t leave anymore. It should have rang all the alarm bells in my head. It really should have. But I understand now, that the reason I had this very simple, deeply wrong and dangerous thought, was because I was desperate to control something, anything at all. Regain power over just one part of my life, whatever that might be.

So, that thought kept coming back. Over and over again:

What if I just stopped eating?

I would snap out of it and tell myself: “What the fuck, Isa? That’s ridiculous. Also, what does that even mean, are you crazy? You love food, you love eating it and you need it to survive.” And I’d ignore it again. But it would come back. Every now and then, usually in the moments where I felt worst about myself, it would echo stronger in my own head and ignoring it would become harder and harder. It was a thought so insane and so ridiculous, I told nobody about it. My rational mind knew that it was totally stupid to even consider something like that, and so I felt stupid for doing it. Which is why talking about it was off the table for me, back then. It was my dirty, little, silly secret and I was going to keep it that way.

I was smarter than that, I knew better than that.

It didn’t change the fact that I felt so lost in university though, and even more lost in life, and so that shitty thought just wouldn’t leave me alone. Until eventually, I budged. And that’s the part where it really stops being witty and smart-assy.

Because that’s the part where I made the decision to only eat once a day. And it was a decision that I fought for with an iron will. A decision that gave me control. Over all the wrong things.

I said I would tell my whole and honest story, but in case you were wondering: No, I’m not gonna give any numbers, not when it comes to weight and not when it comes to calories. Mainly because the only thing they do is create competition and shock value. Even to people who don’t struggle with eating disorders. And apart from that, they’re also triggering to me, even if it’s my own story. So, all I’ll say is that I limited myself to one meal a day. For an entire year. It didn’t always work, thank God for that in hindsight. But I tried to do it every day nonetheless, and even though it wasn’t a by-the-books eating disorder yet (which is a whole other rant I have but that’s not for now), it completely ruined my relationship with food, my body image and my own self-worth.

Every time I ate, I would feel guilty, it made me feel like a failure. I had never experienced this kind of shame before, the idea of feeling accomplished whenever I managed to go without eating for almost an entire day. It was this sick sense of pride and, you guessed it: Control. And yet it wasn’t enough, because my body would obviously fight back, demanding food with every bit of power and rage it had over me. I felt awful. On top of university stress, panic attacks, anxiety, depression and insomnia, I was now also hungry almost all the time. And when I had my one meal a day, I wouldn’t enjoy it. I would simply gorge on it because I was so depleted and ravenous. And then I would feel guilty and hate myself for it.

This went on for many months. I hid it as best as I could and in most social situations, I would make exceptions so that people wouldn’t notice. Exceptions I would hate myself for, but they had to be made to keep this habit my aforementioned dirty, little secret. It was like an entire new personality was starting to form inside my own. A dark and hateful one that chipped away at all that confidence and rational I had built over the years. A few close friends suspected eventually that something was off, and some of them asked about it but I would immediately play it off as just not feeling well because of all my other mental struggles, the ones they already knew about. It was an excuse that made sense, so no one really dug any deeper. And I couldn’t really have given another explanation back then anyway. Because again, I didn’t know yet why any of this was happening. I didn’t know that not eating was a twisted and horrible coping mechanism, that I had developed to gain back some sense of control in my life.

At that point, I had started weighing myself too. Something that had given me a big, bad shock when I first saw the number on the scale. In my mind, it was big and bad too. I knew how much I had weighed pre-semester-abroad. And so I knew how much I must have gained and by now also lost again. And yet that number was still way too big. It crushed me. And sadly, only spurred me on more. I would try not to eat. I would “fail”. I would hate myself. Rinse and repeat.

And no one knew what was going on. Least of all me.

It got a little bit better over the summer of 2019, just like the rest of my mental health did. That was around the time I had finally made the decision to take a gap year and figure out all my issues. And that included the very bad eating habits I had developed over the last year. In a way, that decision was also a way of me gaining back control, which was presumably why all my other bad coping strategies, including the not eating, faded away a little. No more nightly panic attacks. No more insomnia. And a lot more breakfast, lunch and dinner. I still didn’t like my body, I was still scared of the number on the scale. But I was ready to turn my life around again, get therapy and fight that nasty, dangerous habit I had let myself fall into.

Unfortunately, as I already mentioned in previous posts, the therapy I was so clearly in desperate need of, didn’t work out as quickly as I had wished (again, thanks for that, health care system). I had gone to my first ever assessment where they had diagnosed me with anxiety and depression disorder. And, actually, the psychiatrist that I had had my first ever session with, had also decided to diagnose me with anorexia nervosa because according to her, while I hadn’t ticked all of the eating disorder boxes yet, I definitely did show signs of eating disordered and anorexic behaviour. To me, that had sounded quite ridiculous and harsh at the time. Anorexia? Pft, no way, I didn’t look like the girls from the shocking posters and depressing documentaries, it was no where as serious as that. (Tip of the hat to those stigmas and stereotypes I was talking about earlier)

But of course, she was right. However, they didn’t have a free spot for one on one therapy and group sessions weren’t really what I was looking for either. So, I went on a waiting list and never heard back from them again.

The cold season crept back in and the wonderful, warm and sunny-safe bubble I had lived in all summer, burst as quickly as it had been blown into existence. Everyone went back to work, back to uni, back to life. And I ... well, I went back to being lost. To not knowing what to do. To having to write my thesis I still couldn’t write for some reason. To having panic attacks. To having insomnia.

To not eating.

Only that after a year of being so miserable whenever I ate food and still feeling so awful in my own body, I decided I would have to change the way I was going about it. In my extremely mentally fragile mind, I thought I had to step it up if I really wanted results. And, as I like to say it, that’s when shit really hit the fan. In a way, it felt like I had spent an entire year sitting on a roller coaster ride that was slowly climbing up the incline, getting closer and closer to the inevitable drop. And just like on any actual roller coaster, when that drop came, it came fast.

It was no longer about just eating one and any meal a day. In the matter of a week or two, it became about numbers, calories, measurements, grams, milliliters. All of a sudden, I found myself meticulously writing down every single thing I ate and when I had eaten it. The food groups kept shrinking and so did my portions and the amount of calories I would consume in a day. I would set a new limit on Monday and decrease it again by Wednesday, pushing myself harder, restricting more and more with every week. All I could think about was food. And all I could do was not eat it. In what felt like a matter of seconds, a worry, a fear, a habit had turned into a full-fledged obsession. An addiction. And that’s when anorexia entered my life.

I’ve re-written this part over and over again because I’m desperately trying not to make it sound like a pseudo-romantic and tastelessly dramatic young adult novel. But I realize that’s just my fear of sounding like a cliché again. So, I’ll stop scratching and writing everything anew now, and just keep going.

In the first few days and weeks of crashing into this new, horrible world, I remember yet again thinking another very simple, yet dangerous and devastating thought. The one beside “What if I just stopped eating?”. And this thought, to me personally, was even scarier than the last one.

It was the thought of: “What if I can never eat again?”

Because that’s exactly what anorexia felt like to me.

Many people describe it as a whole other person in their head. Almost like a foreign entity, taking over your life. And while I very strongly relate to these descriptions, I have learned that it’s best for me to not always manifest my eating disorder into a separate identity to my own, because in certain times, that gives it too much power and makes it seem undefeatable. Which it isn’t. So, I’m going to try and describe it in another way. The way I first described it to my therapist. With a metaphor, of course.

It felt like up until this point, I had been sitting in the car that was my own life, driving down the road of my present and future, looking in the rear view mirror at my past. I was the one with the foot on the gas and the breaks, I was the one that decided what turn or exit to take. Autumn of 2018 had felt like breaking down in that car, having to pull over and being lost in the middle of nowhere, without any signs to guide the way. My bad eating habits felt like someone stopping and pretending to help me, jump staring my car and having it tucker slowly again while following me at walking speed, with me still not really knowing where I was going. And finally, anorexia felt like that someone kicking me out of my car, buckling me into the passenger seat, taping my mouth shut and taking over the stirring wheel.

All of a sudden, it felt like I had no say in where I was heading, how fast I was driving or what road I was going down. For over a year, I had used this dangerous and awful habit of coping by not eating, to wield control and have power over something. And now, it had taken that power away again, like a pact with the god damn devil, and had started to use it over me instead. Which is exactly what eating disorders do, and what my anorexia did too. They give you a false sense of control because control is all you want, and yet all you can’t have. All you need to do is replace control with food. Because food is all you want, and yet all you can’t have. Anorexia gave me my own, fucked up metaphor for my control issues.

I knew that what I was doing was more than just dangerous. It was no longer just trying to eat once a day, not managing to and then hating myself. This was barely eating anything at all, setting the bar lower each day and starving myself. And not in the figurative way. I lost weight so rapidly, I could barely keep track. The scale became my second home, the calories my worst enemy and food, or more trying to avoid it, the entire purpose of my life. Nothing else mattered anymore.

Falling into anorexia has been the scariest and most horrible thing I have ever had to go through. It felt like I had lost myself. I was still there, in my own head, somewhere. Still strapped into the passenger seat. But I had no say in any of my actions. I just silently watched and witnessed, obeying everything my eating disorder told me to do. I know I said I usually avoid completely painting it as a separate person in my own head, but back then, back when I was still severely anorexic, that was just what it felt like. Like a literal parasite, that had latched onto me and was sucking me dry of any and every life force and fight I still had left.

All my days would consist of trying to navigate around food, doing my best to avoid it, lying to everyone, most of all myself. I would look up every single nutritional information of everything, every meal at a restaurant, every drink. I had lists where I wrote it all down, tracking my calorie intake and weight loss. Documents that contained all the calories from every single food and also non-food item imaginable. It would start with things like fruits, vegetables and condiments and end with things like tea, vitamins, chewing gum and toothpaste. I would google how many calories a panic attack burned. I would pace up and down my room at night to get my step count higher. I would walk around the city aimlessly for hours every single day to avoid eating, no matter the weather, no matter the time. I would work out at the gym like a maniac and almost pass out every single time afterwards. At family breakfast, I would hide food in my sleeves and socks to avoid eating it. It was more than just ridiculous. It was insanity. But it was an insanity I couldn’t let go of.

Anorexia was the most twisted and horrendous full-time commitment of my life. I had felt lost and without purpose for so long and in the most fucked up way, my eating disorder had given me a 9-to-5 – no, scratch that, a 24-god-damn-7 job to do. It had given me a new purpose and a painful illusion of the things I had craved for so long. Control, willpower, strength, endurance. Only that it was exactly that – just an illusion. Because at the end of the day, I would go to bed empty, both literally and figuratively, feeling nothing and hating everything. Because that’s what anorexia does. It strips you of everything you have in life. It takes away every joy, every pleasure, every interest, hobby, passion or relationship, and it isolates you. Completely. It worms its way into your life and fills out every single nook and crack until it’s the only thing that seems to be left. And therefore, the only thing you still care about.

It felt like losing my complete identity.

Mentally, I was at the worst state I had ever been in my life. This was around December of 2019. I had barely been keeping all of this up for over a month, but I was eating so little that I had lost an alarmingly large amount of weight very fast, which came at a high cost. I was always cold, I couldn’t sleep, I had awful headaches, I kept forgetting conversations and talks I had had with friends, I felt dizzy and nauseous all the time and worst of all, I was so cripplingly depressed that I didn’t even care about any of that. Because when you deprive your brain of nutrients this much, it just shuts down. And that’s what I did, too. I just went into standby mode, as I kept losing more weight and becoming more miserable with each day that passed.

Both my body and mind were running on nothing but adrenaline and thin air and I lived life in this absolutely isolated and horrible auto-pilot, where I continued on as if nothing was happening, as more of me, both physically and mentally, disappeared and was replaced with complete emptiness. I still struggle to find the right words to describe how I felt back then. The only thing that comes close is just complete nothingness. Like a fucking black hole inside of me that had swallowed everything and created a complete vacuum.

Writing about this makes me want to just close my laptop and stop. In a way, it feels like giving my eating disorder and the hardest time of my life a spot light. Like giving it attention and a stage to perform on, to flaunt its dramatic tragedy. I can feel that the anorexia loves that, relishes every word I’m typing about it, every second of attention I’m giving to it. And hate that, I fucking despise it. Because it doesn’t deserve its own stage. It never did and it never will. So, let’s try and move on to the part where things changed.

Back then, I might have become a master of lying and avoiding most people’s questions about me never seeming to be hungry or wanting to eat. But thankfully, there were a few of my close friends that had started to notice. Not gonna name any names, but you know who you are. And I cannot even begin to say how incredibly thankful and lucky I am to have had you there. Because even when I had given up on myself, you didn’t. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t all rainbows and sunshine, oh no. I was still in a very, very bad place mentally, and my eating disorder was not planning on leaving any time soon.

But, with the help and intervention of said good friends and a few select, eye-opening experiences (that I won’t talk about because they really weren’t ideal but still ended up helping somehow), I finally realized the very obvious but up until then seemingly impossible thing: I had to start eating again. And I had to start now.

And I did.

Looking back, I cannot even express how glad I am about that. Because it had started to become really critical. And I consider myself to be very lucky that it didn’t have to get even worse. That I was still able to make my own decisions and finally get help. Finding therapy was once again not easy but eventually, I did find an outpatient clinic that offered immediate consultation, as well as an appointment with a psychiatrist for medication and an internist for physical check-ups. And, to maybe bring back a slight sense of cheerfulness: It was also when I finally got to meet my therapist Kerstin.

Again, none of this was as easy and swift as it might sound like with me narrating it in those few sentences, but this post can only go on for so much longer before I get too drained and decide to just delete all of it again, so I will try and come to a close, for now. There’s still so much more to tell when it comes to my journey with my eating disorder and my mental health, because it’s nowhere near finished. And worry not, I will tell it – not so much for the sake of those of you who read it, but more so for my own. But for now, I want to finish by saying this much – mainly to myself again, but also to anyone else who might need to hear it:

I know it might feel like you don’t care.

About yourself, about what happens to you, about the future, about happiness. I know it might feel like you’re faking everything, lying to everyone and just pretending all the time. I know you might feel so horribly and painfully empty that all you want to do is sit still in the void of your own head and let the misery wash over you in dreadful peace. I know you might think that the only sense of comfort you can find, lies in the things that hurt you most. I know your pain seems like an old friend, one that will never leave you and therefore is worth staying close to. I know that continuing to fight on and struggling through life and all the hardships it throws at you, sometimes feels so impossible, that it seems easier to just give in and give up.

The thing about that is, though: It’s fucking bullshit.

It’s nothing but a very mean and disgusting way of all your inner pain, trauma and warped coping mechanisms to try to pull you down to keep you “safe” from things that you can absolutely, completely and totally battle. And, yeah, it sure as shit ain’t easy. God, if I had a dollar for every time I had to pick myself back up after I stepped on a scale, after I ate something that scared me, after I looked in the mirror, after I relapsed, after I went back on track again, after I wished I could just melt into a formless blob and slowly whither away in peace– I would be a rich woman. But neither life nor capitalism work that way, unfortunately. So, why do I still bother?

Well, because after going through hell and back, it’s the only thing I have left. It’s the only option there is.

You might not know who you are. You might not know what you’re doing, where you’re going, if you’re ever going to get better, if you’ll ever feel happy and at home in your own mind, body and life again. But what you can and should know, is that you can always try. Even if it seems pointless, even if it seems like you’re running in circles, wanting to bash your head against the wall because of how senseless it all feels.

You can still try.

And try, and try, and try again. It’s a choice and it is a hard one. Maybe the hardest one you will ever have to make.

But I chose to make it, and I still continue to. Every day. With every morning I wake up, every therapy session I go to, every panic attack I breathe through, every depressive phase I crawl back out of, every meal I eat. I choose to do it, I choose to keep pushing because when it feels like all the bad and dark thoughts are more powerful than me and threaten to swallow me alive, making the choice to fight back as much as I can, is what proves that I am and always will be more powerful than them.

Because this is my life. My body. My head. My brain. My mind. And I’d be a god damn fool to give them up to those inner demons that would never know how to treat them right, how to cherish them and keep them happy, healthy and alive. Because I think we can all agree that, at the end of the day, being happy is a hell of a lot better than being sad and empty. And so, at the end of the day, I realized that nothing and no one, not even my mental health disorders and past traumas, can take away what will always, exclusively and fully belong to me and me only:

My choice, my happiness, my control – the right one, this time.

#mental illness #mental health #therapy #eating disorder #anorexia #depression #anxiety

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keepingupwithlinmanuel · 5 years

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Lin-Manuel Miranda interview: from Hamilton to His Dark Materials

I know Hamilton remains wildly popular more than four years after it premiered on Broadway because of the intense response to my Instagram post boasting I have tickets to watch it the evening before meeting its creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda. "It's one of my absolute favourite things in the world ever!" raves one correspondent. "It's WONDERFUL and I defy you not to download the soundtrack afterwards," adds another. "I went last night! Second time. You're gonna love it."

The problem, however, is that I'm not sure I will love it. When theatre is great, it's the best thing on the planet, but when it is bad, as I have learnt from the bitter experience of watching three-hour open-air adaptations of Dickens' novels, it is the worst. Musicals are especially challenging: in my experience, you either like them or you don't, and given one of the few I have enjoyed was Avenue Q, which subverted the form, I'm in the latter camp.

Then, on top of this, there is the pressure of hype (and Hamilton has been more hyped than anything this side of the moon landings), and the challenge of taking hip-hop, which I love, out of an urban setting. It can easily go a bit Wham Rap!, or even worse, if you've seen the video, Michael Gove performing Wham Rap!.

It is, however, pretty good. The last thing the world needs is another long review of Hamilton, and I can't say I downloaded the soundtrack afterwards or that I didn't look at my watch occasionally, but using rap to retell the dry story of the founding fathers is inspired, and I'm so relieved that I blurt out my review to the 39-year-old writer and performer when I meet him in a restaurant in Fitzrovia. "I do find that with both Hamilton and In the Heights, my first show," responds the award-winning composer, lyricist and actor, "I get a lot of people who say to me, 'I don't really like musicals, but I loved this.' I attribute that to a very simple thing: my wife, who doesn't really like musicals. She didn't grow up going to see them, or doing theatre. She's a lawyer; when we met, she was a scientist. I have a higher bar to clear than most composers, because my first audience is my wife, and it can't just be a pretty tune."

You might recognise his wife, Vanessa Nadal, whom he met at high school, from the video of the couple's wedding reception in 2010, which like everything Miranda touches, went viral, and shows him performing the Fiddler on the Roof song To Life to his beloved.

Even my withered heart may have been momentarily lifted by it. She has accompanied her husband with their two young sons, aged one and four, to Britain, where he is filming a part in the BBC's slick new adaptation of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, though the reason he is in London today is that he has just been the subject of an episode of Desert Island Discs. The New Yorker takes a takes a swig of his coffee, which he tells me he chose as his luxury on his island ("I'm so basic"), adjusts his yellow baseball cap and asks me a question about the unsolicited review: "Why did you feel the need to say it?" There follows the most painful recording I've ever had to listen back to, as I make a bunch of ludicrous generalisations about musicals, speculating that perhaps they divide men from women, or the working classes from the middle classes, or straight people from gay people, or white people from brown people. It only strikes me a few minutes in that not only is Miranda living proof that the generalisations are nonsense, but I am essentially explaining musicals to a world expert in the form - a man who, before the age of 40, has a Pulitzer prize, three Tony awards, three Grammys, an Emmy, a MacArthur Fellowship, a Kennedy Center Honor, two Olivier awards, one Academy award nomination and two Golden Globe nominations to his name.

"Where do you want to start?" he responds with what is, in retrospect, startling patience. "You brought in all this cultural baggage and you're laying it at my feet and I don't know which bag to open." Another swig of coffee. "I think with musicals, it has to do with the way in which you interact with music in your own life. I grew up in a culture where dancing and singing at weddings was supercommon. So, if that's corny to you growing up, or you're taught to believe that's corny or unbelievable, then of course you're not going to like musicals."

...

He spent much of those years doing a bunch of badly paid, disparate jobs, which, given his nature, he nevertheless enjoyed. They included working as an English teacher at his former high school. ("I loved my curriculum. The class was exhilarating once I realised the less I talked, the more they learnt. I saw a future in which I taught at my old high school for 30 years and was very happy.") He wrote for a local paper as a columnist and restaurant reviewer. ("What kind of restaurant reviewer was I? Not very discriminating. If a new restaurant opened, I would go and eat some stuff and say, 'Hey, we have a Thai restaurant. I get to eat first at it. This is great!' ") And he made guest appearances on a number of TV shows including The Sopranos and House. What kind of roles was he being offered at the time? "I wasn't getting any roles! I was always the Latino friend of the white guy in the lead. And so centring ourselves in the drama, telling our own stories, is a big part of In the Heights, my first musical."

An unexpected thing about meeting Miranda is how instinctively he turns to the topic of his first musical, In the Heights, rather than Hamilton - not least when he talks about how he spent one month each year as a child with his grandparents in Vega Alta, Puerto Rico, and was inspired by the gap between his worlds. "In Puerto Rico we were doctors and lawyers. And we're cabbies in New York; we're for the most part the poorer segment of society, and on TV we were always thieves and we were always the Sharks. In the Heights was a response to that. It was, 'Are we allowed to be on stage without having a knife in our hands?' " But then he has spent part of the summer filming a movie version of that musical, which is set over the course of three days, involving characters in the largely Hispanic-American neighbourhood. It is also the project that changed his life most dramatically. The more recent success of Hamilton rather eclipses the fact that his first show, which he began writing in the late Nineties when he was still a student at Wesleyan University, Connecticut, was also wildly successful. After success off-Broadway, the musical went to Broadway, opening in March 2008 and ending up being nominated for 13 Tony awards, winning four, including best musical and best original score.

...

Miranda, described as "a fantasy of the Obama era", has since been active in politics, lobbying and fundraising for Puerto Rico and performing with Ben Platt at the March for Our Lives anti-gun-violence rally in Washington DC on March 24, 2018. Does he feel demoralised by the drift of politics to the far right? "The thing about us all being connected online is that you can read all of the worst news from all over the world and be overwhelmed. You can't let it all in; just act on what you can act on." Should Trump be ignored or fought every step of the way? "It's hard to even discuss it, right, because Trump will have outraged us on two new things in the next [few hours], as soon as he wakes up, and it won't be relevant by the time we're having this conversation. And the same with Brexit, which is just as uncertain."

What did he make of Trump's revival of the phrase "Get back to where you came from" in relation to Democrat politicians? "It's unacceptable. Just because he said it doesn't mean it's acceptable." He leans back in his seat. "Here's my fear of getting into this with you: every time I've done a UK interview, I've said incredible shit and Trump's always the headline, even if I've only said two lines about it. So I'm happy to talk about it, but I'm really scared it's going to be the headline."

I risk another question. Would Miranda ever run for office? "It's funny - I remember when I was a teenager, my dad got approached by pretty serious people about running for a state Senate seat, and he said no. I asked, 'Why?' He said, 'I don't want to have to watch my mouth.' And for me, it's similar. I also have seen in my life, first-hand, the people who get addicted to running, and it's like their moment passed, but they're still running for something, because they're chasing that thrill of winning, and it's about much more than representing the constituents. I would never want to get stuck in that cycle or that pattern. It's more fun writing songs than doing any of that."

Read the rest here behind the Times paywall.

#lin manuel miranda #times uk #hamilton #politics and advocacy #in the heights #Interviews

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chakazard · 5 years

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Where was an intermission and I want my money back

Amanda Palmer is one of those artists, like Henry Rollins and Roger Waters, that I feel oddly protective of. Like every time any one of them are criticized I feel like I have to like them more to make up for it. I mean these are people who are at times, in ways, a lot closer to who I'd like to be than I am. So if people don't like the real thing (and I am aware there are plenty who don't), how could anyone like the cheapest possible imitation of someone else's low-res copy?

I was already going to her performance at the Beacon Theatre tonight when I got word she was doing some kind of meet up beforehand and I thought I would try to make it. So I get changed and head out and pop the album on and wouldn't you know, I get on the Wantagh Parkway as she sang "everyone you love is gonna die" (as I've said before, every song on her new record is a Tear Jerker and that is exactly why I love it) and as that line hit, directly to my left was the corpse of a cat. Of course. Of corpse. Life is both too obvious and in too bad taste to make it successful as fiction. When I got to the train station I realized that, in my rush to get out, I had neglected to bring my wallet. Oops. Thankfully you can buy LIRR tickets online these days and I had my phone. And then I missed the meetup. But at least the baby didn't die? And I ran into someone I know (hi Nico!) on the line into the venue so that eased my mind a bunch. Really enjoyed that the pre show music included Oh Bondage! Up Yours by the X-Ray Spex and by the time Neil Gaiman gave the spoken introduction I was thoroughly Ready To Rock And Also Cry A Lot.

Amanda wasted no time in justifying my affinity for her, talking about how her stepfather would accuse her of banging on the piano and not making real music, and the therapeutic powers of playing loudly and angrily. (I was classically trained but I am very out of practice and low on discipline and attention spans so I mostly just bang loudly and angrily when I do get to play. Maybe explaining why the cat hates it and knocks down all the markers and knick knacks he can find before I can even get to the chorus). Her show was more of a one-woman play interspersed with songs than a rock show and it was, like the album, Extremely My Shit. Theatrical, scripted but in a way to make it sound natural, extremely personal, diving deep into extremely dark emotions and finding the light in them. I thought it was absolutely brilliant and I'm so glad I made it.

From where I was sitting, the audience seemed completely focused on the performance. I closed my eyes during a few songs to focus better on the lyrics. Machete was the highlight for me, even (or especially) when she mixed up the words, and the sound near the end of it that I thought was someone eating popcorn turned out to be a professional camera. Also, Disney songs repurposed to represent abortion and miscarriage for fun and profit?

Between her speeches and songs I kept being brought back to things that have been kicking around my head but haven't had the right moment or the guts to articulate. Excuse me if this is less of a review of her performance (I laughed, I cried, I met up with a friend I hadn't seen in about a decade and braved an Extreme Obstacle Course so I could catch up with her while she smoked during the untitular intermission (Hi Michelle!)) and more of a check in to put that stuff down here and now.

On anger. I was an extremely angry person for many years. I don't know if you become obsessed with Henry Rollins and Roger Waters if you're not. But I get told a lot by people I don't know well that I don't seem like I ever get angry. I guess from the outside being frozen by fear looks a lot like calm peacefulness. Then I'll hear it from family members and I feel like I'm not actually being seen, and maybe that's my fault. How can I deal with expectations I know I will never live up to? I thought a lot about different human connections and missed chances. How I have family members I never got a chance to get close with and if I'd be able to if I tried, and how life will develop now that my family has a new generation. When she talked about grief I thought about my friend who died (I am lucky to only have one) and how I feel like I never really processed it and feel guilty that we lost touch before she checked out. How my best friend has been sick for years and spent months out of the country with little contact and i would get scared if I didn't see her active on spacebook for a few days. How I have friends in the city I would like to have excuses to get in touch with more regularly but probably won't and hope they forgive me, friends who live elsewhere that I hope aren't insulted if i don't visit, friends on the internet I'm still scared would lose interest in me if we ever met in real life and wondering if the fear has subconsciously kept me from trying. When she talked, a few times, about radical compassion and justice and privelage, it made me frustrated that the hardest thing for me to talk about is my political philosophy, which is deeply rooted in the idea that every person deserves respect and compassion (and basic necessities of living) and how silly it seems that I'm afraid to come out and say that, much less act on it, because it might make someone mad at me, or worse, laugh. How there are so many truths that we don't get taught or lied to about or feel like we are forbidden to talk about and I need to start making a real list so I can at least try to pass them on. How impossible it is to write when you are dealing with depression because "you just want to feel pain" which explains why I didn't write for so many years.

A few days ago I said "I can be so very bright if I'm permitted to be made of darkness" and she kept repeating that her job as an artist is to bring people as far into the darkness as they will allow before catapulting them back into the light.

Again, this show probably wasn't for everyone but it was very much for me. So I left with the desire to make more art, even if I'm not sure what form it should take and still have very little self confidence. And support more artists, and try to speak up when I appreciate things more and not assume my opinion won't be well received. I left with a lot I'd like to say. I am honest about how bad I am at taking compliments but I'm afraid I'm even worse at giving them so I don't think I've ever adequately explained how important people are to me. I want to tell people I'd like to see them more often but time and geography and mental stuff get in the way and hope that it's understood. I want to reexamine how many of the bad things I think about myself are just excuses because I'm scared of failure or rejection but trying is the point of life so don't stop trying. So I'm going to keep talking and writing weird stuff and looking for the cracks and inversions where I can find beauty or recognition. My instinct is to say I'm going to be more insufferable, but this is an assumption and not an experience. I find that I get better responses when I do talk honestly about anything and nobody has actually told me that it's insufferable. I get really happy when I see someone else shed their preconcieved imitation skin and inhabit whatever shape resonates with them at the moment. And when people are happy and in their element and it shows, even if that element is not mine. So maybe I don't need to feel like I can't try to do the same for myself. And I feel like I talk about myself too much, especially in a post like this that's supposed to be about someone else's art, but there is literally no other Chaka in the world and if I want to see these ideas expressed then nobody else is going to do it and what have I always felt like I was breaking a ton of rules for trying to do that?

I took a Lyft back to Penn Station because you can use PayPal for those and am now looking forward to next week's entry in my bluntly honest confessional would-make-some-uncomfortable Rock n Roll tour with Fat Mike as Cokie the Clown, which I need to keep typing so my phone stops trying to autocorrect to Cookie.

In conclusion, thank you Amanda Palmer for your amazing performance and not only because it made me do my favorite thing and get introspective and over emotional.

#amanda palmer #chaknroll

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hollowbastionsurvivor · 4 years

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Episode 2 - "COUNT TO FOUR JOSH YOU DON’T HAVE IT" ~Ellie

Tribal Immunity: https://hollowbastionsurvivor.tumblr.com/post/629914023394148352/tribal-immunity-2

Christina is wary about pre-game relationships in her tribe. There is merit to those words, but will she be able to navigate through it?

I do not have a lot to say, nor am I sure we are in round 2.

~~~~~

Dylan becomes increasingly frustrated with Emma

https://youtu.be/GBC1n4Vxdno

~~~~~

Emma believes that someone else on her tribe has an idol when she is the one that has the idol. She believes there must be two idols on one tribe.

I hope six guesses are enough in, honestly, do not know the timeframe. As I was doing this, I also had to talk to 3 others and not appear suspicious because they are not the people who kindly take people of my quite weird assholeness. We are all people, and I am just trying to keep us all from tribal because everyone is afraid of that happening again. The fact that I can not discuss this with anyone sucks a lot!

~~~~~

Well, I think Amy also tried. Hopefully, Amy could do it in 3 tries, as it should have been done in 3. 🙏🙃 We have intelligent people with math skills! 🙌🥳. I know someone has to have the speed to do it on either tribe.

I’m kind of annoyed because I know there’s a group in heartless tribe that knows each other from previous games and obviously works together. No way you’re all online til 3AM for no reason. It makes me nuts because I feel like I’m fucked from the start and I’m just waiting to get taken out. There’s no way to infiltrate a group that’s already bonded over these games. It’s hard to strategize when adaora isn’t online, Emma is Emma, and the other four are working together. Kevin and Colin sort of act like I’m someone they want to go to the end with, but I’m 99.99% sure that’s absolutely false. It’s too early to feel this defeated.

Permitted who I believe I am allied with to vote me out, but asked to be told before they do (if need be), so that I can give one the immunity idol to them.

~~~~~

Believe this is a 3 vs 4, also potential of 5 vs 2. I could be on either side of that. I actually do hope we have tribal so this can be figured out to be 100 % honest. This is how I currently feel and this all is subject to change. I do not understand this. But I love the idol hunts and tribal group Immunity Challenges! I expected and was excited for a spreadsheet and we get a random color challenge. Pure luck really. It could have been done in 4 tries, 3 if you are that brilliant. I wish the tribe would talk more. It is annoying to me that there are so many individual private chats and also do enjoy the individual time to bond with those who are willing to do that work. To be frank, I did not mean to post the initial post into Tribal Chat, but I did. 🙋‍♀️🤷‍♀️🤦‍♀️The next one's were for a reason. I do think that the game is going well. Just wish TC more active & wondering if going to next challenge I wonder if Tribal Council will be more honest this time. Think it was BS they all did not have to respond as well. That's it. All STB and you know, I do not know what anyone is saying.

~~~~~

Results: https://hollowbastionsurvivor.tumblr.com/post/629999426614804480/mastermind-results

Dylan wins the reward. They are able to find out that the exact prerequisites for a path in the idol hunt. They did not end up using it.

So we won immunity which is cool. I feel like merge is gonna be soon, so that's cool. i'm pretty sure we would have a target for the next vote if we go to tribal, so that's exciting. stay tuned! xoxo gossip girl

Told you it should have been done in 3 tries... Glad we won!

~~~~~

People begin to grow wary of Adaora’s inactivity. Christina is worried she might have to lose a number if Adaora doesn’t get more active

https://youtu.be/oSOwH1J4ZNI

We won tribal!!! Yay Dylan for doing such an incredible job! Glad tribe is doing well.

~~~~~

This edit logic stuff I do not get. Glad we didn't go to tribal. Super excited for today!

~~~~~

This edit logic has some of the tribe talking. Some are assuming the wrong things from what I see, including myself (until I clarified how this is edgic may work, which still makes no sense). I don't know who to believe or trust anymore, so I am glad to be having a medical procedure that allows me to not be awake for 4 hours! 🙌😴😇 People are straight-up lying to one another, so this is interesting. I have tried to be quiet, make some relationships, cultivate others, and still am lost. All this is subject to change and stuff...

Well holy shit. After two days of failed attempts, I was able to get an idol! First I found the Ends of the Earth Keyblade, which gave me half of the Darkness Idol. Today, I found the Destiny’s Embrace Keyblade and completed it!! It basically gives me the power to force a vote between two people 💃🏽 Hopefully I don’t get voted out with it lmao Other than that, I’m really glad we won immunity last night. I was SO confident I had the best score with only 4 guesses, but props to Dylan for somehow doing it in 3! We destroyed Nobody Tribe and that’s all that matters.

IM SO HAPPY WE WON IMMUNITY. I have no time to deal with tribal, so I'm glad I don't have to. I have no idea whats gonna happen on the other tribe for their vote. Obv I hope Ellie survives because I love her, buttt I also wouldn't mind seeing how I can play a survivor game without her for once uwu. So im kinda indifferent about it all!! Im continuing to vibe with Christina and Kevin, theyre quickly becoming some of my faves, but i truly love everyone on our tribe. Tribe swap soon OwO????

Honestly, I haven’t been as active as I should with my tribe. I’ve just been super busy and I feel like I’m going to get voted out just because I haven’t been in contact as much. I lowkey don’t care anymore though. Or maybe I’m just too busy, idk. I really have to step my game up I feel like I’m in danger since Gizmo is gone!

Tribal Council: https://hollowbastionsurvivor.tumblr.com/post/630096410501611520/tribal-council-1-nobody-tribe

~~~~~

Tribal Immunity: https://hollowbastionsurvivor.tumblr.com/post/629914023394148352/tribal-immunity-2

So I just finished the Mastermind Immunity challenge and finished and only took me 5 guesses. Now, I'm hoping my tribe pulled through so we can get another win. And I'm hoping everyone else did worse than me so I can win the reward

Mastermind was fun! I messed up twice which is so frustrating. Ugh I really wanted to do better. Hopefully our team wins. If not it will be interesting

John finds the Blindfold

Well y’all here I am with yet another advantage in my pocket, I have a safety without power and now I also have a blindfold. I’m not gonna tell a soul about either of these until I need to. I’m planning on holding these until I can use them to make a big move in this game.

Kim wins the reward. They are able to find out that the exact prerequisites for a path in the idol hunt.

Results: https://hollowbastionsurvivor.tumblr.com/post/629999426614804480/mastermind-results

Ellie is in a really good spot. She doesn’t intend to be loyal to John and Josh. A lot of people like her, and want to work with her. For this round, she shouldn’t dictate votes if she wants to lengthen her stay in the game. Her closest ally seems to be Kim

So we lost, BUT It’s great for me!! I need to see who I can trust/work with early on and tribal is the only true way to do that. I’m in a pretty good spot rn, already have an alliance (which I don’t honestly plan on staying loyal to) lots of people that claim they want to work with me, and the person I’m working closest with won a reward in the challenge! I’ll keep y’all updated on how this goes

Josh targets Kim and Jordan in the Misfits, possibly fearing the reward. Ellie attempts to sway him away from that.

So we just lost the Immunity Challenge and now we have to vote someone out. I'm looking towards pushing for Jordan to go because he got the highest amount of guesses on our tribe and he is not in my alliance

Well we lost that challenge . I can't believe the other tribe had someone who finished with a score of 3 and most with like 4. WHAT. At least i won reward.Currently it seems like its Jordan vs Josh and John.I'm stuck now because I know Josh and John could be a pair to be feared .

~~~~~

So i have just been told that Josh is gunning for me .All i can say is you can swing but make sure you don't miss

~~~~~

Josh and John are seen as a duo

This game can really flip on a dime. Just a few hours ago i was all for getting Jordan out as the easy vote , which i should have known was too good to be true , and now I'm working with Jordan to get Josh out because he's trying to get me out . Fun .

WELL. My bad. Did not do good. Hopefully the target will not be me because I didn’t do so well. I think the misfits alliance is leaning towards Jordan. Which I agree. As long as it’s not me 😅 I’m going to talk to Jordan and see how’s he’s feeling/what he thinks.

So we lost the challenge...I thought I did great and I ended up tying for one of the worst scores. Idol hunts haven’t gone well, I believe someone has one already. I know Josh is going for me..I’m pretty sure John and Jessica are with him, and hopefully nobody else...I’m trying to get a solid with with Ellie, Kim, Daniel and myself. I don’t know if it’s going to work out but it’s my only plan this far. I’m expecting at least 3 votes at tribal

It’s honestly can’t believe we lost! Kudos to the other team for guessing correctly... 😒 Now the fun begins... I have no idea who’s getting voted out. I have a few close relationships with Jordan and with Josh, but seems like they both want each other out... I don’t know what I’m going to do.

~~~~~

Josh forms the Misfits alliance with Ellie, John, and Jessica so that he can have a majority.

Josh expresses concern about an idol being played on Jordan to Ellie and John. He tells him his grand plan to vote out Jordan.

Kim expresses to Ellie idol paranoia. Ellie rats to him about Josh going against him very quickly and willingly. She is not afraid to throw people under the bus when they are being messy.

The tribal is seemingly Jordan vs Josh

A split vote begins to be talked about between the Misfits with John and Josh spearheading the discussion. Josh volunteers to get his name thrown around to keep people’s scent off him and John’s intent to vote Jordan.

Josh causes a lot of unnecessary chaos by spreading lies and deceit. He throws out everyone’s name to everyone to get people against each other. He tells Kim to target Ellie, and tells Ellie that Jordan said that. Daniel rats out Jordan to Josh, making him suspicious

COUNT TO FOUR JOSH YOU DONT HAVE IT

Tonight was hectic. Everyone was scrambling around trying to figure out who the target is. Everyone's name was brought up. I didn't hear mine but I'm pretty certain Jordan threw it out. Ellie was very suspicious tonight as she was online for a long time but was not responding to any messages. I brought up an idea to blindside her but I quickly shot it down because it was too early to make that big of a move. We eventually settled on voting Jordan. John, Daniel, Kim, Ellie, and Jess are down. I just hope they stick to their word and that Jordan doesn't play an idol. This has been so stressful

THIS TRIBE IS SO MESSY OMFG . Now Josh is trying to get me to vote out Daniel, Daniel ratted me and Ellie out , I ratted Josh out to Daniel to gain his trust , Daniel doesn't trust Jordan because i ratted Daniel out to Jordan and Jordan ratted that information out .LORD HAVE MERCY THE MESS.

~~~~~

Ellie, Jordan, and Kim form an alliance (Idrk). It is now Ellie, Jordan, Kim vs. John, Jordan, and Jessica. The J’s do not realize that they do not have Ellie on their side as she has successfully been ratting them out.

Daniel seems to be the swing vote.

I'm probably going to eat my words again , but Daniel and I firmed a connection after I told him Josh wanted him out and I'm feeling good about it.

Hey it’s me again. Haha. Soo I heard my name go out there by Jordan, which makes sense because we both had the highest scores. Jordan hasn’t replied to my last message so I’m going to say it’s true. Guess what Jordan, I’m voting you out. And I’m fighting to get you out. Side note, there was talk that Ellie may be double crossing the misfits alliance. Therefore, The guys considering back dooring her. But I think I shut that down. Even if it’s true I don’t think she’s after me. I’m not voting out a girl. Especially since we are the only two. So I hope she at least has my back, because I have hers. I also really trust Kim and josh. I haven’t talked much to John but I trust him for now since he’s in the misfits alliance. And I don’t trust Daniel at all. But I’ll play nice. Anyways, BYEEE JORDAN. Not going to miss you. Xo

So we lost the immunity challenge today..not good. Especially because I tied at performing the worst with another tribe mate. I am very concerned with how things will potentially go tomorrow. Josh has had it out for me for days now, ever since I assumed him and josh were partners. It seems most of the tribe is on edge as far as who to vote for and who to side with. My plan right now is to group together Ellie, Kim, and Daniel, to vote out one of the other three. This has been a freakin roller coaster, I go from thinking everything is fine and dandy one minute, then the next everything is screwed. I feel like I can trust Kim and Ellie, Daniel I am praying is on my side because if he isn’t, it may be all over for me..my worst fear is that everything will to my way but then an idol could be played to screw my plans. since josh is going for me I’m assuming he will think I’m going to get him too, therefore I intend on targeting John or Jessica in case josh wants to play an idol. I hope things feel more solid tomorrow..

~~~~~

John is wary and is contemplating whether or not to utilize his Safety Without Power tonight. People are being quiet with him which feeds into his paranoia.

Ellie, Jordan, and Kim finalize that they will be voting for Josh.

So looks like Josh is officially our target. I realllly hope this tribal goes well because I feel our group of four, being Ellie, Kim, Dan, and myself will grow so strong if we all vote the way we are supposed to. I still feel like it would be a miracle for me to not get as least 3 votes tonight. I’m coming for you Josh!!!

~~~~~

Josh feels very comfortable about tribal. He doesn’t realize that the allies he thinks he has have all turned on him.

I need to leave a confession so enjoy my screaming (this is directly from my host chat so I apologize for lack of context) Ellie, 6:39 PM YES THIS IS WHAT IVE BEEN WAITING FOR Ellie, 6:40 PM Jessica and Jordan getting the highest scores works awesome in my favor as well Ellie, 6:41 PM I need to see who I can actually work with/trust so I’m glad we lost Ellie, 6:41 PM And Kim getting the reward is also great for me Ellie, 6:48 PM You guys wanna say any names? lol WHO IS THIS MAN DJXJDJDJD Ellie, 6:51 PM He wants Jordan so I’m just gonna go along with it Ellie, 6:51 PM Well not necessarily but I mean imma say that I am Ellie, 6:51 PM I have absolutely no reason to keep Jordan Ellie, 6:56 PM Ok so right now it’s definitely looking like josh or Jordan Ellie, 6:57 PM It’s so early to flip on my alliance Ellie, 6:57 PM But like whatever I do I’m definitely voting with kim Ellie, 6:57 PM And Kim wants to keep Jordan rn for numbers sake which is fair Ellie, 6:58 PM I mean I’ll find a way to get numbers no matter where I go Ellie, 6:59 PM Jordan found the spot where the idol that I have was, cute Ellie, 7:01 PM It’s way to early in the game for me to make a big move Ellie, 7:01 PM I need to find a majority and stick with it Ellie, 7:01 PM So I guess we have to convince Daniel to vote with us Ellie, 7:02 PM But I hate putting my trust in just one person that I’m not super super close with like that Ellie, 7:02 PM KIMS TALKING ABOUT THE IDOL AND WENT Unless you have it of course Ellie, 7:02 PM HES ONTO ME SJFNSJRJSJ Ellie, 7:02 PM DO I TELL HIM👀 Ellie, 7:03 PM I’m gonna say I don’t for now Ellie, 7:09 PM Kim is dead-set on josh so looks like we’re doing josh Ellie, 7:09 PM It’s to early for me to make decisions or at least to make them and be obvious about it Ellie, 7:09 PM I just need to subtly guide people to the person I need gone and keep my name out of it Ellie, 7:14 PM There’s so much idol speculation going on and I’m just 👁👄👁 Ellie, 7:24 PM They’ve 100% confirmed the idol is not there much faster than I would’ve liked Ellie, 8:06 PM The amount of J names is so confusing Ellie, 8:08 PM And we’ve full circled back to voting jessica Ellie, 8:37 PM THERES SO MUCH GOING ON MY GOD Ellie, 8:39 PM IM SO CONFUSED YOU GOTTA LET ME FOGURE THIS OUT BEFORE I TRY TO TYPE IT New day Raffy, 11:18 AM Who are you really planning on voting out? Ellie, 11:18 AM Josh Ellie, 11:18 AM Although Jordan still might want Jessica Ellie, 11:22 AM But I need josh out Raffy, 11:23 AM Why do you need him out? Ellie, 11:48 AM His plans hurt my head

~~~~~

John uses his Safety Without Power for no reason as his name was not being thrown out. This will put a big target on his back going into subsequent rounds if his tribe has to go to tribal again.

Oop I just used my SWP because I don’t trust any of these snakes. Someone is going out tonight and it’s not me. Now I’m just gonna pray for a tribe swap so I can sell these nobodies down the river.

We are about to go to tribal... I was very close with Josh and was going to vote out Jordan because that seemed to be the consensus. That was until Kim and I solidified a deal and basically figured out Josh was playing everyone. Kim told me Josh made a final deal with him and after much talking, we realized Josh was putting everyone against each other. So we figured out a plan for tonight and we are hoping no one plays an idol.

Tribal Council: https://hollowbastionsurvivor.tumblr.com/post/630096410501611520/tribal-council-1-nobody-tribe

Josh voted out

~~~~~

Edgic:

#episode #episodes

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breakingarrows · 5 years

Text

Discourse Conversations During E3 2019

Watching press conferences and livestreams of various talking heads discuss whatever video game thing they saw that day is only part of E3. Another major part is the social media discussions that unfold faster and accumulate more conversation than any ten hour IGN livestream could. However, like any form of discourse being developed on Twitter and elsewhere, it can be easily lost if you aren’t in the moment, and nearly impossible to find due to some of the best commentary coming indirectly. This is a small attempt to capture some of that discourse that unfolded during this week of E3 2019.

Before E3 even started we already had a large social media argument about “spoilers” for the press conferences. Essentially: people went back and forth on whether or not to share/publish/promote leaks of things like, “This game surprise is going to happen!” While things like Breath of the Wild direct sequel being announced is a fun secret to watch live, a headline report spreading online beforehand isn’t something to condemn. The sort of corporate love-fest E3 already is will only continue when gamers are actively antagonistic to anything other than the publisher message being put out. As many of these discourse conversations will go, this is the same old song and dance we have seen for over a decade. If you don’t want to see anything before a corporation hits “go” on a press conference, just stay offline and don’t bitch about it at whoever it is that’s publishing details earlier than the publisher dictated commercial. People trying to frame this as hurting developers feelings should redirect that energy towards unionization and fair pay advocacy, not, “Please don’t publish details early, these people worked really hard to sell me this game.”

Perhaps the biggest thread-spawner was the reappearance of Cyberpunk 2077 from CD Projekt Red at the Microsoft press conference. Developer CDPR also owns GOG, which has previously tweeted a gamergate related gif of Postal 2, a, “did you just assume their gender?” response tweet from the Cyberpunk account, and using the #WontBeErased for GOG games. Eurogamer has a rundown of it all here. Then this week, you have Keanu Reeves making a surprise appearance in the game Cyberpunk 2077 as well as on the Microsoft stage to announce the release date. The internet goes wild, fueled by post-John Wick 3 hype and long-lasting Keanu love. Then an advertisement in-game for ChroManticore appears, bearing the image of a presumably trans-female with a large erect dick and the phrases, “Mix It Up,” and, “16 flavors you’d love to mix.” CDPR’s explanation via Polygon was: “This is all to show that [much like in our modern world], hypersexualization in advertisements is just terrible,” Redesiuk continued. “It was a conscious choice on our end to show that in this world — a world where you are a cyberpunk, a person fighting against corporations. That [advertisement] is what you’re fighting against.” Responses were generally critical of the ads message, intentional or not, as well as critical due to CDPR’s past actions. “Also, as a note, and this is all i'm gonna say: in proper context, that ad could absolutely be a meaningful statement in a cyberpunk world, and we don't know the context. But also, sadly, CDPR has burned all their trust and have given us little reason to take them in good faith.” [source] That about sums up most of the opinions coming from trans critics, CDPR has failed to properly respect them in the past, why should this be treated in good faith?

Discussions about cyberpunk weren’t limited just to the one game, as it also extended a previous conversation about the origins of cyberpunk as a genre and if the genre has any inherent themes no matter its adaptation or usage. One thread making the rounds argued that cyberpunk is inherently xenophobic, playing on fears of Eastern Asian cultures spreading and taking over the world. Other pushed back against this, citing early Japanese media that heavily influenced western cyberpunk fiction, not the other way around. The opinion I most agreed with was, “Maybe I'm being naive, but everyone keeps saying ‘Cyberpunk is good’ or ‘Cyberpunk is bad’ or ‘Cyberpunk is X’ as if cyberpunk is a cohesive, monolithic thing. It's a genre that has been around for decades which countless different creators have contributed to, and all of those creators were trying to say different things within the genre.” [source] “I am beginning to feel like strongly emphasizing genre as an acting force is kind of formalist nonsense? Like, cyberpunk or whatever isn't any *thing*--it's just a set of ideas some people have used, and other people can take or not take or use or not use.” [source]

Another big topic was the continuing saga of games as non-political and the back and forth between media and developers/publishers/PR in the lead up to a game’s release. Games have messages, but their creators, whether intentionally or due to PR, won’t engage with those ideas during pre-release coverage most of the time. Those sorts of conversations don’t happen until post-release, because the previews are generally focused on the gun-feel or summarizing slideshow pitches. There is also a disconnect between what “political” even means. “They think ‘political’ means being explicitly literalist about what every single moment means instead of being in any capacity complex or open to audience interpretation, for better or worse.” [source] Chris Avellone, longtime games writer, had a statement in a VG247 article about whether stories can be apolitical. “If you’re purposely pushing an agenda or point of view in your game – especially a real-world one that’s clearly divorced from the game world – and you’re dictating that perspective as correct vs. asking a question or examining the perspective more broadly, then it’s left the gaming realm and the ‘game’ has become a pulpit.” However, in an example like Far Cry 5, a game that doesn’t “push an agenda,” actively, still promotes a specific perspective or viewpoint as valid with its endings, as I detailed before. “But, another (very reasonable group, to which I largely subscribe) would say that ‘asking questions that emerge from perspectives in the fiction’ is *exactly* what being political is--interrogating our relationships to each other and the world.” [source] This topic also seemed to collapse in on itself when Watch Dogs Legion was announced, playing on the fears of a post-Brexit London and an authoritarian surveillance state, and coopting the “welcome to the resistance” which is mostly mocked by leftists online whenever someone from the right is kicked out of their group. Definitely not political.

This is also a very tired subject. Ubisoft for years, and other publishers as well, have avoided talking about their games messages relating to the current events during events like E3. Continually the press laments and pushes back against it on social media and sometimes in previews, but the cycle continues. “You know how I've argued ‘We need to stop debating if games are art and just do the job of treating them like art?’ It's also time to move past ‘Can games be apolitical?’ and just focus on continuing critical cultural analysis. Do the work, make it unavoidable, shift the frame. To be clear, I think we needed to spend some time on that earlier debate just to have a mass-level, stakes-setting conversation. But at this point, the best way to push back on ‘No, no, we just make games just ask questions’ is to show how those games actually offer answers.” [source] This is true, but it’s also something others (mostly non-staff people) have been saying for years now.

The annual, “E3 is weird huh?” conversation also happened, like it has for at least the past five years. In May it begins with, “Man what is E3 going to be like this year?” Then E3 happens, everyone does their shit, and at the end they go, “Boy what’s next year going to be like?” The major difference this time was Sony’s complete absence from the show. Despite not having a press conference or show floor presence with demos and presentations, games media still had plenty to talk about, including E3’s relevance. It seems to be the same old song and dance, with the ending statement being, “Well I guess we’ll wait and see what next year is like.”

Another repeated conversation was that of video game streaming platforms, with Stadia having another presentation pre-E3 and Microsoft coming out with console and internet streaming plans for later this year. No real advances were made in this conversation other than confirmation that, yeah, Stadia streaming for those with data caps on internet or smartphone use are going to be fucked if they want the best presentation, which of course they would. Not a ton of talk about the details behind how developers would be paid, though going by how streaming has been slowly killing the movie and music industries, it is not going to be good. Of course the usual access and archivist arguments continue, which I am 100% behind.

New game details sparked lots of speculation, mostly in regards to a direct sequel to Breath of the Wild, one of the few good Zelda games. Being a direct sequel to a previous entry and having a trailer with a darker tone, mean Majora’s Mask became a recurring subject in regards to what this follow up could be. The inclusion of visuals and audio cues seemingly from Twilight Princess also fueled the “darker” Zelda sequel. Some also speculated about a playable Zelda, which, don’t get your hopes up people, this is Nintendo after all.

A game closer in release and in my heart is Final Fantasy VII Remake, which looks to be a big fucking hot mess. Broken up into parts, each seemingly equivalent to a mainline Final Fantasy game in content, this first one releasing next March (we’ll see about that) will only cover the Midgar section of Final Fantasy VII. You know, that section that takes about five hours to complete in the original release. Now that’s going to be extended into probably 30+ hours, which means lots of new original content coming from Square Enix, who are great at adding great new content to the already existing universe of Final Fantasy VII! Despite that I’m still very interested in getting my hands on it and playing through it all. I really like the opening hours of Final Fantasy VII, I just have little faith that they are going to do anything interesting with the new content and not make it feel like filler. It appears Jessie will have a much more expanded role, but still no word on the crossdressing or squats minigame. Combat has been very much changed, and everything is super overproduced in terms of visual flairs, which might explain why there will be TWO blu-ray discs! TWO! Red Dead Redemption 2 is the only other game to do this!

Back to Nintendo, Animal Crossing will now allow players to choose their skin tone, something that has been asked for a very, very long time now. They also confirmed they will let you use whatever hair type you want, which some people took and ran with as equivalent to them saying trans rights, which, no? “You guys please these are fucking table scraps. This is not pro-trans this is just a bare minimum feature for thee love of god.” [source] “Not only is that animal crossing thing a bare minimum there weren't hair restrictions in new leaf anyway???” [source] This was giving me flashbacks to when Soldier 76 was shown to be gay in a tertiary comic from Overwatch and people went nuts despite it not being represented in the game at all. Also, “quick reminder that nintendo fired a support team member bc of ppl making trans flag stages in smash bros” [source] [source]

There was some good news, Ikumi Nakamura came out and presented her new game Ghostwire to rapturous reception. A female creative director, a visually interesting trailer, and an excited jump at presenting her game made her the darling presenter alongside the likes of Keanu Reeves. She was previously an artist on Bayonetta, The Evil Within and its sequel, and made her own Twitter account during E3 to celebrate with her fans. Some of the reaction is probably rooted in how Asian women are treated as adorable and infantilized when compared to others, but she’s been having a good time gathering all the fan art of herself on Twitter, so for now it’s a nice break from the usual depressing nature of AAA publisher presentations.

Lastly, this wasn’t so much a part of the discourse but just an amazing moment, Dr Disrespect was banned from Twitch and thrown out of E3 after he live streamed in a bathroom without censoring other people’s faces, violating a California privacy law. As Alex so wonderfully stated, “this is our generation’s version of Capone going down for tax evasion.”

There was probably a lot of other conversations going on and this isn’t even the full depth of what I tried to find but boy does going back on timelines and searching for threads and responses and quote tweets and subtweets take way too much time. Anyway hope this proves to be a good time capsule for E3 2019 discourse and can’t wait for next year where a majority of these topics are readdressed again and again and again. Video games!

#E3 2019 #Video Games #Discourse #Criticism #writing

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guyinlovewitheremika · 7 years

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Dude serious question here : how are you still single ? Judging from your blog you seem so cute and friendly and an overrall fun person to be around. I for one would have loved to get to know you irl. But well keep up your amazing blog, I wish you the best in life

Aww anon that’s really sweet of you haha. Hope you have an amazing life too.

I used this opportunity for a little bit of self-analysis, which I’m keeping under-read since it’s not the main content of this blog. Quite frankly it failed and I don’t recommend reading.

THERE IS NO POINT TO THIS POST. I started writing with a huge plan, it didnt work out and now only half the thing is here, and by itself, it makes no bloody sense. I still wanna keep it here simply for myself, but anyone reading this rn will probs only get an incomplete and thusly inaccurate picture of what I’m trying to paint.

Okay, so here’s the thing. I started writing this huge thing with a clearly mapped out thought process in mind, it had structure and whatnot. Unfortunately an event I even described in my analysis, a change of my mental state, prohibited me from finishing my writing---this is thus very incomplete, lacking many arguments and most importantly an actual conclusion. I doubt I’ll ever reconnect to this particular text anyway, but I still felt like sharing it as I considered it to be a very accurate depiction my head up until the point where I got lost. So even though it’s totally lackluster and incomplete, I’m still sharing it here because I feel like I owe it to myself. Anyway. After this follows the introduction I had originally written. Since I posted this for myself, the chance of me answering asks, replies or messages about this is very little, partially for reasons explained below. AnYwAY

Le forum ofdeath and sucks balls what the fuck

You'reprobably just a lovely anon who wanted to say something nice and cheer me up,and believe me, it's appreciated^^ This extended response shouldn't be takenpersonal by you in any way at all, I simply saw an opportunity for me to writethings down I've been meaning to write down for a long time. Thing is, there'sabout a 0% chance of me talking to over people what's really going on in myhead unless I'm prompted to do so--unless there're huge indicators of therebeing legitimate interest in my psyche, I aint talking, and even then, the chancesremain slim. Granted, your message wasn't really a direct inquiry or whateverbut I've had this shit in my system so long that it's more than sufficient forme to let lose. Warning: basically everything below (and even above) are mypersonal observations of myself, and most likely don't make a ton of sense foranyone who isn't, well, me. "Translating" all of this into anythingcomprehensible outside of my head is gonna be tricky enough, but I still feellike doing it. The purpose of this text is ultimately for self-analysis; uponwriting things down it can clarify or explain certain thoughts, and that'sreally waht I'm after. I don't want to shove my own analysis of my mentalsituation down my followers throats, I'm writing and posting this only for myselfto be affected by the process of doing so; thusly, once more, this will potentiallybarely make any sense for anyone, but it's not supposed to for anyone exceptme, so in essence, don't read too much into this post.

Long assintroduction

Damn

Anyway, let'sget started, and back to the original question, how are you still single.

BecauseBOI, there's a plethora of reasons, mostly tied to my relationship with myselfand my surroundings, and that's what I wanna talk about here.

First ofall, yeah. Guy does seem like a fun, sweet person to have around here, doesn'the? You're not the first person to tell me that, and I'm not saying that tofeed on my ego or whatever, but because this perception of Guy isn't unique. Iget nice and lovely anons, Barely and hate towards me as a person despite arather rapidly growing follower count, I've even made a ton of onlinefriendships over the span of months, and those folks generally don't seem tohate Guy either, for similar reasons. That's all good and fun, and ofc Iappreciate people who're sympathetic towards me, but that's because here ontumblr and over on discord, I'm Guy. The dude who absolutely loooves snk, whoknows a lot about the series, who tries to help people out and is pretty wankfree (that's an over-the-top, stereotyped description simply for the sake ofgetting the general point across).

The problemis that "Guy" is a periodic, temporary and very much incompleterepresentation of my identity. Now of course, the following dialogue can quicklyfall into the "edgy-teenager-YouKnowMyNameButNotMyStory" trope whichtypically disqualifies any rationality accompanied by the claims, but for thesake of argument, I'd like to give my analytical skills more credit than a 21stcentury stereotype. The basic point I'm trying to make here is this: the"real", "complete" version of myself has more to it thanjust the blogger you know as "Guy", and that's simply because myonline presence is very filtered. Whenever I'm posting on my blog or talking tomy friends on discord, I'm being Guy. My mental state, my thought process, andmy emotional balance is that of SnK loving Guy. The thing is, whenever there'sa change in my mental state, a variation, one that differs from who we know as"Guy", Guy shuts down, and so does my activity. I'm not blogging24/7, I'm not being constantly Guy. And I'm not chatting 24/7 either, myfriends may confirm this: I often stop talking in the middle of conversations,stop responding, reduce or cease my current activity all together. Occasionallythat's caused by irl disturbances, but for the most part, the issue lies in avariation within my mental state, one that disrupts my situation of being Guy,causing a discrepancy between my activity and my thought process concerning myactivity. In simpler (and seriously overblown) terms, I temporarily stop beingthe person I just was (this being Guy), and swap to a different mental state, onethat differs from being Guy.

This allprobably sounds ludicrous and absolutely over the top, and I apologize for that.It's not as if I have "multiple personalities" in my head, orschizophrenia, or whatever. These varying mental states I'm describing aren'ttotally different people, but...different facades of myself, if that makes anysense. It probably doesn't, so let meprovide you with a possibly explanative analogy, to visualize everything. Letssay you're playing and RPG, and you have your core character. You level him up,gain experience, skills, and whatnot. That's default form of your character,lacking equipment and whatnot. However, in order to adapt to the constantlychanging environments and opponents you face, you need equipment, and the onlyoptions you have are various, predetermined armor and weapon sets. There's adifferent, unique type for every situation-one for each environment and eachenemy. The only problem is this: they come with a predetermined set of statsand skills. Parts of the sets cannot be exchanged with one another, and youcan't use multiple ones either. What's worse is that, despite the varyinglevels of skills you may have obtained on your core character, these arepartially or even entirely overwritten when donning one of the sets--you can'tverify or even use these stats and skills of your core character, as they'relocked away by whatever set you use. Only in down times, when in your hideout,all by yourself, can you take off the sets and access your stats andskills--only then does the experience you obtained when using the sets actuallyappear, only then can you observe your core character as a whole. That's moreor less what my head looks like, from my POV. Granted, this by no means is atotally accurate representation--it's flawed, it ignores certain other aspects,doesn't universally apply to me either, and ultimately, has no proof. However,I feel like this is the closest approximate description I can offer at themoment, and ultimately just am example to allow for some visualization--not auniversal truth or affirmation.

But let'stake a closer look at these equipment sets, or mental states, as I like to callthem. One of my favorite movies over the past years was the sci-fi flicArrival--Denis Villeneuve's thought provoking tale about extraterrestrialcreatures showing up on our planet and humanities attempt to interact with them.One of it's major elements was the use of language, and one theme in particularfascinated me: the theory that speaking in another language can potentiallymodify, or even rewire your brain and thought process. It's something Icouldn't agree more with. I fluently speak three languages, and, given myliving and educational situation, typically switch between all three of themmultiple times a day. I don't want to assume anyone's thoughts or feelings, butI'm certain I'm not the only one who has different relationships with thelanguages they speak, and who feel different depending on the used language.It's a pretty natural thing. Another thing we can probably all agree on is that,depending with whom we're interacting, or under which exterior circumstances(such as location), our precise way to express ourselves may sometimes vary--youmay act in a certain way with one person in a certain place, and act verydifferently with another person in a different place. Well, of course I can'tclaim that to be a universal truth for every person on the planet, but I'vecertainly heard other people describe it before, and I've felt it from otherstoo. It's there, sometimes, to a certain extent. Maybe it's totally natural, aneveryday feeling for everyone involved, and maybe I'm just too weak to be ableto counteract the consequences, but who knows. My primary issue stems from the fact that, I'm taking this varyingcircumstances and their consequences to a ridiculous level. Depending on mylanguage, my location, the time of day and the people I'm with, my expressionof myself, my (from an exterior POV observable) personality, if you want to, isborderline subject to change. "Guy" in many ways I can't mentallygrasp at the moment is fundamentally different from the person you mayencounter under specific, different circumstances.

Now ofcourse, this probably is something felt by other people alone, I'm not somehowspecial by feeling that way, probably just too weak to deal with it. But onething I can say with absolute certainty is that the consequences of thevariations has an effect on my surrounding. An example in my family: due to hisjob, my father is rarely at home, and I'm typically left with my mother, withwhom I have a rather close and positive relationship with. On the days myfather is there however, our relationship changes, my general mood is affected,and my expression of myself heavily changes. Once again, I'm sure I'm notunique in that way, I'm sure it's a normal, human concept, it just seems toaffect me really much. This isn't just limited to important, deep relationshipslike me and my parents, but its present in really every situation. Example, Imay desire to spend time with my friends at school when there, but back home,in a different mental state, that desire disappears entirely. I often don'treply to messages for weeks, and rarely ever initiate communication by myself,which can be totally different in another mental state. See, and that's one ofthe primary issues. My relationships with pretty much everyone are heavilymodified and affected by the changes in my mental state based on circumstancesand whatnot. If we follow that logic, any intimate or romantic relationshipwould be affected too. And that's one of the cruxes here: I couldn't possiblyentertain one particular mental state throughout the entirety of anoverarching, important relationship with someone. There would be instances inwhich my mental state would vary, and I would in turn be severely affected thischange, but this non-given, non-evident relationship with a significant otherwouldn't just...stop existing, wouldn't temporarily be on hold until I've returnedto a mental state appropriate of said relationship. You can't put it on hold,you can't neglect all of that while waiting for your brain to return to anadequate state. There's continuity and effort and ultimately something enduringwithin a relationship, but that's incredibly hard to entertain if the facade ofoneself is subject to constant modification. Though that in itself is somethingI would already consider rather problematic, it's far from the end. Rememberwhen I described the situation in my head? The idea of a certain core character,unaffected by the armor sets? Let's take a closer look at that.

All thesevarious mental states, these predetermined armor sets, caused by the varyingcircumstances I find myself in throughout life, have one thing in common: blockingout the "core character", the one that acquires the skills andexperience obtained through the life in armor, the one that has a sort ofoverseeing access to all of these obtained life experiences. That is what Iconsider to be the "purest" version of myself. The one thingunaffected by circumstances, the one at the center off all these various mentalstates. I can only be in this unaffected state when not in relation to anythingin my exterior: not being constrained to convey thoughts verbally through theuse of a certain language, not being actively in relation to another person,and being in a neutral place, unaffected by anything, such as my room.Basically, if I'm in an entirely neutral situation, not affected by anythingexterior whatsoever, my mind goes into a neutral state too. This neutral stateallows me one particular thing: introspection. Self-analysis, if you want to.Only in the neutral state can I fully reflect on my experiences and my life asa whole, only then can I attempt to understand my progression in life, myemotions, my mental situation. In fact, at this very moment, I find myself inthis neutral state--only now am I actually able to reflect on what's going onin my head, and the fact that I'm able to write it down cohesively is an enormousfeat in itself. However, this distinction between my neutral state, the"core character", and the various mental states, the "armorsets", comes with a plethora of issues, the first one being this verydiscrepancy. As explained earlier, the "sets" override the"core", and I mean that in a literal way. All my reflections, all mythoughts and questions, all my arguments, failures and progressions, areblocked out when I'm in one of these sets. For example, if I'm talking to mytherapist, it's downright impossible for me to communicate all these thoughtsobtained through introspection, simply because they're blocked out, they're notavailable anymore. They slip out from memory, I can barely grasp them at all,it feels like walking through horribly thicc mist; and even in the event that Istill can formulate some of my thoughts, I can't properly convey them. In fact,even if I write them down and try to read them out, it feels more like readingsomeone else's thesis: my brain doesn't connect to the material at all, itdoesn't understand, it can't back it up: in that situation, they're not my ownthoughts at all, but someone else's, and no matter how much I search my mindfor answers of clues, the only thing I can find is a bleak, empty void, leavingme feeling dumbfounded, with an empty head. Literally. When I later return tomy neutral state, everything returns to me, but quite frankly, that's notuseful, since I still lack the means to communicate it in a manner thatconvinces both me and party B.

Unfortunatelythe issues don't stop there. If we go by the assumption that this neutral, coreversion of myself is what you may call "the real me", I would kind ofbe in a pretty shit situation, because, quite frankly, being this neutralversion of myself is not fun at all. Maybe its related to ingrained pessimism,but all introspection, all reflection and thoughts, always go in a prettynegative way. Never once have I thought about myself in depth and arrived at anactual positive outcome: every answer is negative and spells out inevitabledoom one way or another. There's always a depressing note to everything, infact, there is a seriously ingrained tendency leading towards what may be aform of depression in all my thoughts, but I'll get into that later. The bigbad issue is that ultimately, this neutral state of mine, as well as everypossible variable mental state, lacks one primordial thing necessary to thehuman existence: life. I'm descending towards a melodramatic presentation oncemore, forgive me. It's a hunch towards excess. But here's the thing. Theneutral state is exclusively based around introspection, it can't do anythingbut reflect, and reflect in a pretty negative manner if I might add. There'snothing else to it. The "sets" are technically set in what we wouldcall life, they're all in relation with something, but inherently lack thecommon thing that is myself; they're mere facades, they're fakes, they'reincomplete, they're not ME. Here's thething. Perhaps it was a result of all the issues mentioned above, or perhaps itcaused the issues above and originate from a certain event in my pastirrelevant for now, but one thing is certain: I'm heavily emotionally distancedfrom my own life. I barely ever feel any real, active emotions out of anythingin life, everything is distanced, bleak, unilateral. Any real, strong emotion,be it joy, hatred, sadness or whatever else you may think of, is something Ibarely ever feel these days. Even events that have an incredibly strong effecton my life struggle to bring forth an emotional reaction. Everythingstays...bleak. Unaffected. There's often a sort of distant negativity, abackground feeling of sorts, and there are occasions of limited joy or whatnotthat last a few moments, but it takes absolutely nothing whatsoever to returnto an empty or even highkey depressed state--ultimately, the sensation of"being alive" has become incredibly elusive to me over the last 8years, now nothing more than a mere distant memory. That's just how things are,and I can't deal with it.

Granted, Imay possibly be overdoing it rn. Been writing for a long time, need to makesure I don't start getting affected just yet. Ultimately, all these thingsheavily block the way for a meaningful relationship with another person. Notonly would they have to deal with the fact that the person they know seems toundergo mental changes on a continuous basis which can't be any good, their s.o.would go through constant mood changes, would often be emotionally distant fromthem for seemingly no reason whatsoever, wouldn't be able to even entertain a relationshipon a deeper level. Whatever it would be, it couldn't even be called a proper relationshipfrom my point of view. I wouldn't be able to be myself, and that's pretty mucha death sentence for anything meaningful that's supposed to last for a bit,right?

(sidenote:I feel as if I may have just exited the neutral state and am no longer able toentertain my introspection. My thoughts are literally disappearing from my mindand my memory of everything I've said so far and what I meant to say afterwardsis getting foggier by the minute. It's absolutely ridiculous and horriblyannoying, but at the very least it proves my points to myself, that's worthsomething).

After this point, I continued writing, but quickly realized I lost all connection, I had indeed gone through a change in mental state, leaving behind my introspection. Thus, this is largely incomplete, with many threads not tied together, and many arguments lacking entirely. My analysis went much deeper than what we see here, but unfortunately I don’t seem to be able to pick it up for now. What a shame. I had thought I had finally figured out some serious progress. But in a way, it’s also fitting. This major failure is evidence that the points made are very real and not my imagination. Too bad it prevented me from going further, but that’s all I can do for now.

This is more or less the conclusion I meant to reach, but since half the arguments and reasoning are missing, it doesn’t make sense and feels like an asspull for the sake of attentionwhoring. It’s not, and I can assure you there is legitimate reasoning behind this, I just can’t access it rn: To add more finality to the actual question that I tried to properly explain here but clearly turned out incapable of doing so, I have rather convoluted but justified mental and psychological issues for being single. These aren’t by choice, these aren’t because I enjoy being lonely, in fact I’ve desired the opposite since I was a child, but for various reasons I cannot fully explain yet, it wouldn’t be good at all for neither me nor my partner, not with the way I am right now (and this current failure is proof of that). Instead, I’ll keep sitting on my ass, waiting for a miracle that will never happen, with mental and and physical issues getting worse and worse as a consequence. But in its own way, that’s desirable for me; which is based on another issue, rooted even deeper in my psychology, one that is probably the source of all my issues. But I can’t talk about that yet.

Other than that, there’s practical issues too. I’ll be leaving the continent this summer. I have very little positive memories about the last 8 years, the 2nd chapter of my life, but I don’t want to start getting attached to this life just as it is about to end. That would be the worst possible way to leave, and I need a clean cut at all costs. So yeah, no SO for me.

#dont read this #personal #reference #guy's introspection #this basically took me the entire day but like 75% is missing don't read this.#Anonymous

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trikkidetroit · 7 years

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Social media & why the fuck am I even still awake?

I’m pretty sure, out of all social media outlets, Tumblr is the only one that actually makes me semi-happy…. it’s just a bunch unique people posting cool pictures & spouting off random musings & in it’s simplicity it is inspiring. Pinterest is cool & definitely helpful & a great source of inspiration, but it doesn’t ease my mind at all. In fact, it gets overwhelming. Frankly it becomes downright depressing when you realize 90% of the shit you’re pinning are the beautiful places you’ll never go, the wondrous marks on the globe you’ll never travel to, the amazingly unattainable things you’ll never possess, and the recipes that you are probably never going make…. for that dinner party that you’re never gonna throw…. in that custom kitchen in the dream home you’ll never have Facebook is much more self-explanatory in it’s misery. The more friends you collect, the less private your life becomes. There’s a fine line between harmless networking and destructive infringement on personal privacy in Facebookland that is skirted constantly. And there are those who think it’s okay to just completely invade another person’s private life (because they’re “on social media”, fuck their privacy right?) These bottom-feeder-esque leech people that choose to disregard the Facebook line of morality, and the difference between right and wrong altogether, & might act in a manner that is destructive in terms of lynch-mob bullying, deliberately attempting to ruin a person’s reputation, or saying things & acting in a way behind a computer screen that they wouldn’t dare say to their targets face out in public. Pussies. You hear more and more these days about kids that commit suicide, or are totally fucked up from this website due to malicious cyberbullying by their peers. Facebook users report FOMO, and tend to feel inadequate about their own lives when they see friends of theirs who think it’s a popularity contest, posting pictures of amazing things that they’re doing every single day, or the “super enlightening thing” that they’re going to say or do that’s going to change everybody’s life via a post. It’s OK to post pictures from the one.. or two.. or five….. or fucking 20 vacations one may go on a year…. or if one’s life is just a vacation, posting pictures from that sweet end of the deal in life they’re living….. but be mindful & attempt to recognize the line between “I’m posting this to feed my superego” and “I’d like to share this with my friends and family”. Not to mention the countless hours of mindless scrolling, liking everybody’s pictures, checking to see if your pictures got likes, and feeling the need to interject on some political issue you have no base knowledge of or some social issue that doesn’t concern you…. and I don’t mean to give anyone a complex (though if you’re that high & mighty to actually be offended by the things that I’m saying, you probably deserve one). I’m just using these examples because even I am guilty of these waste-of-time, dumbing-down-of-society-overall activities in my Facebook history. And there’s Twitter…. I for one think it’s kind of stupid. I mainly use it mockingly, or to share mindless drivel, or to post a shock-tweet here & there to see if I can elicit some type of indirect, latently passive aggressive online response from one of the trolls, or to share semi-pertinent news stories. But I will give it this: celebrities and even our commander-in-chief tend to love this platform to share information because it keeps them relevant… really if you use Twitter and you’re not a celebrity or a politician or a musician then you’re really just there to spectate on what the fuck those people are doing day-to-day or hour-to-hour. It’s a quick way to get straight-to-the-point information across assertively and decisively, which can become a problem because when one doesn’t use the adequate follow-up information via paragraphs to express themselves after making an in-your-face tweet, there’s a lot of room for misinterpretation on what the fuck they just said in that 140-characters space. Here’s why it is depressing to me: I feel that too much is going on in my head at any given moment to appropriately express myself in one brief, haiku-like statement. If social media was poetry, and the different forms of poetry represented each media outlet….Twitter would be the haikus. Sometimes a haiku is profound, but how much can you fucking express in such a small space? And to extend that thought on to multiple tweets just gets confusing in terms of continuity & it throws the reader off so it’s best to just keep it short to begin with. Also, who or what the fuck am I tweeting too? I’m not a celebrity, I’m not rich, I’m not famous. I’m not an inspiring author or an astrophysicist or a career politician. I’m just some asshole. Sometimes I just do it because… oh I don’t know…. I’m sick in the head and think somebody might be reading it that actually thinks I’m a celebrity of sorts… although I’m not. And if I tweet enough I could trick them into believing I was someone important. But even that wouldn’t fill the empty hole inside that twitter creates. Instagram is kind of like Tumblr in the sense that you’re sharing cool photos that you either find or you take yourself but you’re limited to a box format in terms of photos dimensions which is annoying, and a bunch of generic filters, and it’s not really a blog. I guess it’s cool if you don’t have much to say or if you do a lot of video blogging, but for those of us who enjoy good old fashioned writing as a means of self-expression, it’s kind of a sad media outlet. :( *edit: I have been able to find quite a few meaningful blog-like instagrams recently with purpose, mainly by people who foster animals or do charity work. Reddit is just a massive fucking forum board, and Snapchat is for college students & 20-somethings that want to show their friends the great time they’re having getting shitfaced but don’t want any record of it to remain so it doesn’t get out to mom. It’s also good for, I’m guessing, unimpressive dick pics from guys that are probably sending the same picture to their whole female Snapchat list. Which is a depressing thought in and of itself. I guess what I’m trying to say is social media sucks, I’m kind of an extroverted-introvert, so I tolerate the idiocy that breeds in these networks, but I feel my most at home & able to express myself amongst like-minded individuals on this particular site. I have been kind of melancholy over the past couple months… probably because I tried to shut my Tumblr down because I thought my life was going to get suddenly interesting enough to where I wouldn’t really need to blog that much anymore because I’d be too busy living my exciting life. Well, suffice to say that never happened, so starting back up is helping me cope… Besides the fact that (in the far reaches of the Tumblr universe) there is some great porn.. I mean.. erotic art. So thank you Tumblr for not sucking.. and for anybody who actually reads all of this, I’m sorry in advance.

#socialnetworking #social media #musings #muchwow #tumblr

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lonelyboichronicles-blog · 7 years

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November 8, 2017

Hello and welcome. I am the Lonely Boi and these are Lonely Boi Chronicles. I got a post for you today, but I’m gonna start by explaining what this is going to be. It is venting. Online therapy. A journal/diary. This is more for me than anybody but if people find it and can relate, then I’m glad we can all support each other and have a conversation. Daily, I will be talking about my life, my day, my thoughts, and my journey as I look to get over myself and my personal issues in like while I search for happiness in like and within myself and whatnot. This first one will be a little heavy considering I’ll have to give you some background, but HERE GOES!!!

So I’ve been single for about 4 and a half years now. I guess I’ve only felt like it for about 3 though. When I fall for girls, it’s usually really hard. I can explain exactly what happens. I think they’re attractive right? Start having conversations and just pick up on small things that I really like. After that, its over with. My mind does the rest. It imagines our life together. The dope ass perfect dynamic that I think we’d have based on things I’ve seen, what I know of myself, and what I personally want. Next thing you know, I’ve fallen in love with somebody that I barely have any momentum with. I guess I’m not really falling in love with them. More so falling in love with the idea of them, or with what we could potentially be. It always happens, and I feel crazy and pathetic for it, but it is who I am and I need help.

My last relationship started the same way. A girl I thought was beautiful so I started talking to her. I heard awesome things about her, we had some cool convos, I felt like we were perfect for each other, so naturally I wrote our entire love story. Execution though. MY BIGGEST WEAKNESS. It’s essentially non existent. I tried for years to like let her know how i felt, to find out how she felt, to make something happen. Never worked. It got to a point where I found out she was messing out with (”dating”) some other dude and that I should probably give up. I started dating somebody else, hoping it would help me get over it. It did but didn’t. My feelings didn’t go away, but I stopped thinking about her as often as I did before. That relationship was toxic so we parted ways in the messiest way possible. That when i realized that I never got over the girl from before, but I told myself I was done trying. Well what do you know.... once I stopped trying, it came together and we started dating...3 and half years after the initial feelings developed.

You can paint a picture of what you think it’ll be but it rarely turns out that way. In SO many ways, we had a bunch in common, but in just as many ways, our personalities clashed. I was stubborn, she was insecure, it was a roller coaster that I was willing to ride because I loved her so much but I had to cut ties because I didn’t wanna lose her forever. We transition to friendship...it took a while. A lot of sex in between. Great sex. Anyways. Once we did move to friendship, things were probably at their smoothness. We both acknowledged some feelings, but preferred things as friends. That friendship eventually ended though as she got in a relationship with somebody who didn’t like me and naturally she chose to cut me off.

Losing that friendship was a huge blow to me tbh. Ask some goofys, and they’d attribute it to some secret agenda I had to steal her back. We were having sex up until like less than a week into the relationship soon if I wanted to steal her back....I would’ve. It hurt because I thought we were genuinely friends. Sex or not, I cared about her as a person, I cared about her future, and cared about everything she had going on. She was there for me more than anybody during one of the hardest times of my life. Maybe I’m just soft, but that means a lot to me and by the transitive property, she meant a lot to me. Being dropped despite all that, cut deep as fuck because I would’ve never done that to her, and it kind of just showed me that she didn’t really care about me, the person, the individual, but really just cared about me, the person who has something specific I could offer her at the time.

So yeah, that hurt. It bothered me for a while. 2 years after last speaking to her actually. I only got over it maybe 4 months ago. Back in July or August, I thought about her for the first time, and the happy memories came, instead of that hurt. Maybe time does heal all. Even so, things still haven’t been the same for me.

I’ve been numb ever since her. As a whole, there just been this lack of feeling. I have some women in my life, at one point she was included, that would bless me with their vaginas. A lot of uncommitted sex with these 3, but it never felt intimate. It never felt deeper. It legit felt like lust. A physical need for sex but not the emotional satisfaction of it. There is definitely a difference between sex and fucking. I was fucking a lot, but with the same women and it just felt messy to me. It felt messy and unfulfilling so I told myself that I needed to stop. And I did....for the most part. I have messed around with them but no actual intercourse, but it was a brief moment of weakness. I been back on my shit.

ANYWAYS, I wanted to grow. I WANT to grow. I realized that every girl I’ve dated, every sexual interaction I’ve had, has all been on accident. The “girl of my dreams” ignored me when I tried and got with me when I stopped. The girl I got with to get over her, I wasn't pursuing because I was so focused on the other one. I’m not gonna get into the weeds of all the other shit, but regardless, it has never been an “I want this, so I’m going to try and get it and succeed” type of thing. I’ve been blessed, but when you see your peers getting all they want and some shit they don’t you start to doubt yourself a little bit. “Am I good enough?! Can I do this?! Self worth, often comes to mind in these moments because I have nothing to validate my own efforts with. I told myself no more sex with the ones from before. I started my quest to find my confidence and my game. I am still questing.

Last year, I made waves with three women. Not big waves, but our interactions/connections may have been more than nothing. One was throwing herself at me. It came of disingenuous because my friend just started dating her best friend, so it came off like she was very much just trying to create a double date type situation. Not wavy.

The other two were interesting. One was a coworker. Super sweet girl and beautiful but kinda young. I was 23 when we met and she was 18. Everybody told me that’s fine because she’s of age, but she was still in high school and it felt just weird to me. We would talk and laugh and shit at work. I didn’t think too much of it, but then I found out that she actually liked me. I thought she was super dope, but I didn’t let my mind take it that far because of the age thing, but once I found out she liked me too, the idea floated through my head. Her ex was trying to come back into her life and she was legit torn between the two of us. So much so, that she lied about him calling her to me lol. Felt kind of good lol. AGE THOUGH!!! I let it die. Didn’t put in the effort. Told myself, if it’s meant to be, it’ll be. (That’s bullshit, I should’ve at least established some long term potential friendship communication).

The last one was also a friend of that girl, but it didn’t feel as fake as the other. This one was the one that I allowed my mind to run with. She just started dancing with me one day. And then again another day, but like the whole night. You know me, I’m in my head planning our first kiss, and wedding, and she had some decent cheeks so I’m like maaannnnn i can’t wait to get in that. I was scared though. I wanted to make moves but froze because I didn’t know if she like me forreal forreal. Added her on various social medias, didn’t send a message, but slowly falling for the persona she presented online. “Damn she like this, damn she likes that?! Yoooo me too, we could be doing this?! You tired of dude who do that?! I don’t, I got you.” Cornball shit. These 3 interactions made me feel like I’m not ENTIRELY a lost cause. Two of them were more important than that though. For this first time, since i started developing feelings for my crush...8 years ago, I felt that excitement again. I had been numb for like 3 years feeling nothing, and then almost at once I felt the purest form of it from a number of sources for the first time in even longer than that. It felt good, just to feel again.

We’re almost at present day. I swear this is the only one that’s gonna be like this.

So I stalk these two girls pages damn near daily. Well I stalk the one who danced with me daily, I creep on the other one once or twice a week. Mind you, I’ve made no moves outside the ones in my head (crazy and pathetic). Meanwhile, I constantly see them living their best lives and shit lol. Fallen off with both, and in that time, I’ve met nobody new. No new women who are randomly interested in me. No new women giving me that feeling again. The most I got was this one who likes my eyes, and snapchats me for attention while being incredibly devoted to a man who doesn’t treat her right. I guess thats a woman to talk to, but not really exciting. Just kinda meh. That empty going thru the motions like the sex from before.

It’s gotten to the point where I’m really kinda depressed about it. About how I haven't had sex in two years, and how I haven't felt deeply for somebody in 4 years. Meanwhile my friends are making huge life changes, getting approach by potential love interests, being active. LIVING!!!

WE MADE IT TO PRESENT DAAYYY!!!! HOORAAAYYYY!!! So yeah, I decide to act. It had gotten to the point where I didn’t have shit to lose. Yesterday I send the dancing girl a message. No response. I’ve been following her on snapchat for a minute now. Crazy timing, for the first time in all this time, she’s posting shit that makes it seem like she’s got boyfriend. Mind you, for the year since we met, it’s all been single girl shit all over. THE DAY I MESSAGE HER!!! Some dude rubbing her feet and her all happy emoji and shit. Today a screenshot with hearts and talking about how he can’t wait to nap with her. THAT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE MY NAPS WITH HER!!!! I waited too long.

I’m honestly shook. Kinda lost. She gave me this feeling, for the first time in a long time. It felt good. It felt like I was a live again. I associated her with the feeling and now she’s like....taken lol. I’m not even mad either. She's like beautiful. I’m surprised she was single as long as she was. If I had more confidence and self worth, I would've most definitely tried to make that happen as soon as I met her. I’m actually really happy for her because she seems like one of those girls who wants that connection and relationship. I wanted to be that, but I can’t be mad at it.

But yeah, my old coworker is still young. She’s doing hair and stuff now. That’s dope, but I can’t help but feel like I’d be a waste of her time. She’s pursuing a passion of her. She’s probably being pursued by dudes her age, if not already locked in with one. I could reach out to her, but morale is low right now.

I miss that feeling. I miss having somebody to talk to, to just hang out with intimately. I miss that connection and I’m happy for all my peers who have it, but I’m also mad jealous of all my peers who have it. I’m worried I’ll never find it. The fact that I’ve barely felt it over all this time, is a little bit alarming to me and how I feel like my success rate will be.

I don’t know. Maybe I need to get out more so I can meet some people. Either way, I’m probably gonna jerk off and cry or something before I go to sleep since I don’t have work tomorrow. Hopefully I can get a sign and somebody can guide me toward where I need to go.

Until next time,

Lonely Boi

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robbiefarlow-sidequestfitne-blog · 7 years

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New Post has been published on Side Quest Fitness

New Post has been published on http://sidequestfitness.com/9-keys-to-make-your-writing-great/

How to Fuck Up Some Commas: Or, The 9 Keys You Need to Make Your Writing Great

170.

No, that’s not the number of video games I’ve beaten in my life. And it sure as hell isn’t the number of women I slept with before my wife (that was less than 10).

It’s the number of articles I’ve written over a two year period on my site, and across the Internet on sites like:

Roman Fitness Systems

BroBible

MyProtein

AskMen

J Max Fitness

Listen, Money Matters

That doesn’t count all the ghostwriting, emails, e-books, and social media posts I’ve written either.

I’m not writing this as some form of public masturbation about what I’ve accomplished (okay, fine, maybe there’s a little jerking off going on).

What spurred these thoughts are the handful of emails and messages from random people I’ve received in the last few weeks/months asking about writing. Most of these coming from people new to the world of online fitness.

This article serves two purposes then: 1) it’s a bit of a reflective piece for myself, and 2) it’s a piece I can now use when someone asks me about writing or content creation on the Internet.

So to the young bucks who’ve asked me about writing, here’s what you need to know about getting better as an Internet scribe.

Do the Work

How do you improve at anything?

Repetition. Repetition. Repetition.

It’s how you get stronger in the gym, how you get better at guitar, and it’s how you improve as a writer. The more you write, the more opportunities you have to improve. And that’s why if you’re an aspiring scrivener, you need to write every day.

Writing every day doesn’t mean you have to publish every day. But unless you completely excommunicate yourself from social media, you’re gonna write something. And as Tim Ferriss has said before:

“How you do one thing, is how you do everything.”

It took me a little while to learn this; and by little while, I mean one soul-burning John Romaniello “goddamn it” look before I realized that everything I write — Tweets; Facebook Posts/Comments; Instagram posts; Text Messages; Emails; FB Messenger conversations — should be treated with the same care and diligence I’d give any article.

There’s another reason why you need to write every day. The online world is saturated with content. And the way you make yourself stand out is to be really fucking good. Not mediocre; not so-so; not worthy of a gentleman’s C.

No. You need have to be better.

And if you want to be better, you have to put in the work.

The simple act of writing every day, and paying attention to what you write—no matter the medium—generates awareness to how you write. And like the awareness that comes from tracking calories, you begin to deconstruct your own writing to see where you suck.

From there, you’re able to improve and get better. Because if you’re not getting better, you’re dying.

Vomit is Better Than Perfection

Some things write themselves.

You know it. You write it. Edit a bit. And, “voila!”, you’re done. But the deep shit—the words you bleed onto the page—sometimes need to come out in whatever way possible.

And if what comes out at first is incoherent babble, that’s okay—the first draft is supposed to suck. Everything sucks the first time.

Don’t try and be perfect. Let your sentences sound like the ramblings of a drunken madman teetering down Bourbon Street. That’s okay. Because you’re getting it out.

Most of the time, that’s the hardest part: getting it out. Your brain wants you to make it perfect; your soul needs to exude it; and your hands are sitting there stuck in the middle trying to placate both parties.

So nothing happens. You stare at a blank screen and tell yourself this is impossible.

Hemingway put it best:

Write drunk. Edit sober.

Let your soul bare itself however it sees fit. Then let your brain clean up its mess and make it sound better. Whatever you do, get the words down. Then go back and clean up the vomit.

The Building Blocks

Ultimately, writing is a lot like playing with LEGOs.

As a kid, I never claimed the rank of master builder. I pretty much built towers to see how high I could take them before I had my action figures demolish them.

But you can build some amazing shit out of LEGOs. And words are kind of like LEGOs. (And yes, you can choke on both.)

When you write a sentence and break it down—not only grammatically but visually (or how it flows when you read it)—you’ll begin to see how you can alter the structure, meaning, and cadence of a sentence with punctuation or changes in vocabulary.

Take the sentence below that I pulled from my first draft:

There are hard rules about grammar. And you need to know the rules—master them, actually—before you can break them.

If you look at this sentence as LEGOs, and punctuation and vocabulary as LEGO pieces, you’ll begin to see how you can add or change certain pieces that change the sentence completely.

Add a comma after the word “and,” and it adds a slight pause and emphasis for needing to know the rules:

There are hard rules about grammar. And, you need to know the rules—master them, actually—before you can break them.

You could also replace the em dash with parenthesis, which makes the words “master them, actually” more like an aside. But parentheticals only work when you’re able to remove the words within them without jacking up the sentence. In this case, it does; but to me, it loses a bit of oomph.

There are hard rules about grammar. And you need to know the rules (master them, actually) before you can break them.

There are hard rules about grammar. And you need to know the rules before you can break them.

Those small tweaks to punctuation change how you read the words in your mind or out loud. And if you wanted to change the cadence of the sentence, you could do so by adding a few more periods.

There are hard rules about grammar. And you need to know the rules. Master them, actually. Before you can break the rules.

(“them” needed to be changed to “the rules,” otherwise, that would have been a sentence fragment)

I don’t proclaim to be a grammar master. I’m still learning. But, I am experimenting with how to structure sentences, and when, what, and where the right punctuation should go to change the rhythm, emphasis, or spirit of a sentence.

Like the LEGO towers that my action figures shattered in my youth, sometimes a laconic sentence is more useful:

Master the hard rules of grammar, before you break them.

Read a Book, Read a Book, Read a Motherfucking Book

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Before 2016, I’d read a total of 25, maybe 30 books. Last year, I read 27.

And besides the fact that many of those 27 books inspired articles or emails, the biggest lesson I learned from reading more books is that it makes you a better writer. Why?

If for no other reason than it’s research. Sure, you’re learning new ways to improve yourself or your business or diving deep into an exciting world full of interesting characters, but more than that, it allows me—as a writer—to see how the best wordsmiths craft their work.

How do they create tension and mood within their writing?

Why did they choose to use an em dash and not a comma?

When, how, or why did they change cadence, and how did that change impact me?

What words do these authors use that will expand my 6th-grade lexicon?

I love reading now. It’s the first thing I do every day. And it’s the one thing I feel—next to writing every day—that’s improved my skills the most.

Write By Hand

(Confession: I wrote this entire section on my phone while on the subway in NYC.)

Listen, I’ll be the first to admit, my penmanship is grotesque. Doctors have better handwriting than I do. Still, something happens when you write by hand.

Over the last decade, a few studies have even shown that there’s a clear distinction between writing by hand or on a keyboard. For instance, one study showed that the brains of children “lit up” when asked to write a word by hand vs using a computer. And some doctors believe that as you age, it’s better to write by hand because it improves motor skills, memory, and acts as a good cognitive activity as you age.

I can read the science and I can agree with most of it. But, for me, writing by hand—even the simple act of taking notes while listening to a podcast or reading an article—spurs something more visceral and taps into a creative vein in my mind that writing in Google Docs or iNotes can’t.

That doesn’t mean I write every word of an email, an article, or social media post by hand. 65-70% of what I write is done electronically. But the stuff that burns, that scratches at my soul, and threatens to haunt me if I don’t put it down, comes out on paper.

Where a word processor has distractions like a toolbar or even the ability for you to open another tab and check Facebook/email, what you write on paper stabs you in the eyes—forcing you to examine and come to terms with what’s on the page.

You can erase it and change it, sure. But the remnants of it—the shadow of your erasures or the strike through of your pen—stare back at you and remind you that those are words you wrote; words you believe.

There’s a cathartic connection—a bleeding—that happens when your mind connects with your hand; you struggle less and write more truthfully.

The Best Form of Flattery

Imitation does not mean plagiarization.

Do. Not. Steal.

That’s wrong, and if you do it, you’re a douche-canoe.

(Douche-canoe is something my friend Aadam says all the time—yes, he has two A’s in his name, that’s not a spelling error. And though I could have made you think I invented the funny word “douche-canoe,” I did not. Aadam did. See, I’m giving him credit and not stealing it.)

When I taught myself how to play the guitar, the first songs I played weren’t my own. I played everyone else’s. And when I did decide to write my first song(s), I imitated the chord progressions from the artists I was listening to at the time. (Thanks, Howie Day.)

But that’s how everyone who picks up a guitar starts their career.

You play Bob Dylan, Deep Purple, Hootie and the Blowfish, and once you’ve nailed the basic chord progressions of your favorite songs, then you’re more likely to experiment and find your voice and create your own music.

And in a lot of ways, that’s what I’ve done as a writer. Writers that I admire and find extremely engaging have been the ones I’ve tried to imitate. Not because I want to be them. But because I needed to play their chords to find my voice.

That’s one of the first things I’ve told anyone who has asked me for writing advice:

“take something you want to write, and write it as if your favorite author wrote it.”

Examine how they use and shape words. And then try and play their song.

But please, don’t steal. There’s a difference between stealing and imitating.

How to Unblock Writer’s Block

This is the 2nd time, and it won’t be the last, that I’ve mentioned Roman in this article. And it might sound like I’m sucking his dick a little bit (I am), but without Roman, there is no Side Quest Fitness; and really there’s no Robbie Farlow as I stand now.

But when it comes to writing, Roman knows his shit. And he often posts tidbits about the (or his) writing process on Facebook or Instagram. When he does, it’s fucking gold; and I hoard it in a secret folder on my phone.

For instance, this is is a screenshot of a comment he left my friend Aadam Ali when Aadam was struggling with writer’s block.

“So Robbie, what do you do when you have writer’s block?”

My usual response to this question is that I throw on some Dashboard, cast myself on the floor, and scream the lyrics to the heavens while I beseech my muse to return. I’m like half joking when I say that. (Half.)

The other half involves one or two of the following, and these are usually what I recommend others do as well:

Masturbate

Take a walk

Listen to a podcast

Read

Write something other than fitness

Film yourself speaking about what you’re trying to write. Walk around your room with a camera on and just record yourself talking about what you want to say.

Drink whiskey

Play video games

Learn a new song on the guitar

Take a shower

Sing This Bitter Pill as loud as possible

Writer’s block, for me, is usually a sign that I’m fighting something I should be writing. Or that I’m trying to make it “perfect,” instead of vomiting my soul on the page.

Writing What You Know

Before I ever decided to become a trainer or even launch my coaching business, I read articles by the giants in the industry. And these guys are smart. Like, the best of the best. But I’m no Tony Gentilcore, Dean Somerset, Dan John, or Ben Bruno.

Those guys dive deep into the science behind how the body works while you lift. But, me?

I love reading anything written by the best of the best, and (for the most part) I understand the super-sciency terminology they use.

But my friends who first came to me and asked about getting in shape, probably don’t. And the clients I work with don’t really care about the science either. What they want are the exercises that help them feel better, move better, and look better naked.

And it’s my job to take the knowledge I have, and that I continue to seek, and add a bit of a nerdtastic flare to it—providing my readers and clients with a frame of reference they connect with, be it video games, comics, Star Wars, or sports.

Those four things above are what I know. They are who I am; and the lens through which I view the world around me.

I don’t know everything about kinesiology. But, I do know how to connect diet to Indiana Jones, motivation to Lord of the Rings, leadership to Call of Duty, and pretty much everything else to Star Wars or my love for UNC basketball.

So that’s what I’m gonna write about. Oh, and Buffy.

It’s Not the Tool, It’s How You Use It

Before I joined the Roman Fitness Systems Mastermind, I remember having a long conversation with Tanner Baze about how we hated reading sales copy. We felt dirty. Icky.

Like the words we were reading were written by He Who Shall Not Be Named himself.

God, were we stupid.

We were looking at copywriting all wrong. Or, at least, I was (I don’t know about ole dtbaze).

Because the truth is, all writing is copywriting.

Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Rothfuss, King, Shakespeare, every single author who has ever written a story or a screenplay, was, essentially, writing sales copy.

Copywriting—in the sales realm—has one primary goal: to get you to buy whatever product the ad is selling.

And if it’s good copy, each word will sell you on reading the next line in the sales ad until you buy.

Oh, shit. That’s exactly what good authors do as well.

Each line sales you on reading the next line. Why else would you read a gigantic 1,200-page book if you weren’t buying each line and spending the only currency you can’t get back: time.

And of course there’s bad, smarmy, snake-oily sales copy out there that makes a ton of money selling bullshit.

But hey, someone made a gazillion dollars writing Twilight fan fiction that then became a best-selling series and Hollywood film franchise. So sometimes evil wins. And yes, you can use the power of words in 50 different shades of evil to sell bullshit.

Or, you can learn to harness the power and use it for good. And that’s what a good writer, or copywriter, would do: use words for the betterment of humanity.

The Penis Pen is Mightier

Truth is: I’ve always been a writer.

I wrote my first story on a piece of cardboard I pulled from a trash bin. It wasn’t very good. It sounded like a five-year-old wrote it. Because a five-year-old did write it.

But I stopped writing around the time I got a Nintendo. And only picked the pen back up when I fell in love with poetry as a teen.

My years as a poet ended when a few friends accused me of being a bit too emo (whatever the fuck that means). And from that point, the only writing I engaged in were the mandatory papers I had to write in high school or college.

Secretly, though, I missed writing.

I may never be a Hemingway. Or a Strauss. And I sure as hell won’t ever be a Shakespeare. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t, or shouldn’t write.

Writing every day for two years has improved my quality of life.

I don’t wake up and despise the morning anymore. My thoughts are more clear. I’ve taken more stock into what I think and believe because I’ve been forced to write them down and confront those words face-to-face.

And, above all, I’ve found something that’s galvanized my soul and that I’m driven to improve upon every, single, day.

So if you’re an aspiring writer, whether you want to write fitness blogs, short stories, or a novel. Do one thing, and one thing only—write.

Write like a motherfucker. Then, continually look for ways to improve. Study the authors you read and imitate their style. Treat every word you write on social, in text messages, or in your journal as if it were being published in The New York Times.

And as the great Romaniello once said:

Don’t let the idea of “what your writing may become” interfere with the process of actually writing it.

#geek #habits #life #mindset #motivation #nerd #success #Articles

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