treeese 2021-05-23 14:01:41

@Yomuchan Thank you very much!

treeese 2021-05-23 17:33:22

@OrAnm Shit dude I don't blame you, it's REALLY fucking long, and largely only pertains to me.

treeese 2021-05-23 18:01:51

Sorry, this isn't something that can be easily summarized, it goes all over the place and tackles some really complicated feelings of mine.

treeese 2021-05-23 18:53:38

Oh no, it's fine. I don't mind.

treeese 2021-05-23 22:07:00

Wow, that's...that's a lot to take in. I'm...having a hard time thinking of how to respond.

Well, to keep my compulsive essayism from keeping me up well into the stretches of early morning like it did last night as I wrote the original (though that was also partially a result of taking my ADHD meds much later than usual), I'll try to keep it brief. Thank you for the advice, a lot of these things are pretty useful tips/ways to view the scenario. I particularly like what you said about it not all coming at once and being a long, protracted process, I think part of the fear that spurred me into writing this last night (a fear which has largely dissipated, in part due to the kind words from the comments) was the idea that I'd have to make all these decisions very rapidly, and that one of them could slip through unanswered and cause havoc. It really doesn't do me any good to obsess over the negative outcomes so fervently, a behavior which, while I might not be able to abolish completely, I really want to try to dampen and try to focus on the good things that are happening currently.

I do rely on routine very heavily, without it my poor decision-making skills (which are likely at least tepidly influenced by the horrendous attention span given to me by my ADHD) tend to fuck things up and make things worse, or at least put me in a lot of stress as I sit and deliberate every single possible outcome, which, hey, is that behavior I just said I need to quit doing. I dunno, I'm likely just underestimating my ability to rework my routine.

I really envy your faith in this scenario, as I am non-religious. The ability to constantly have something to always trust in, believe in, and hold close as an ever present beacon of hope and security is a serious advantage, one I will almost certainly never have myself as I am just...incapable of holding faith and belief in something I cannot verifiably perceive, my upbringing under my similarly atheist and scientifically minded parents (especially my science teacher mother) just...didn't condition me that way. I really appreciate the sentiment, the idea that someone out there is always there to listen to you is very reassuring, but I just...don't think that way. I'm terribly sorry. (Please forgive me if I'm coming off as offensive in any way, I really truly am not trying to).

The girl's a weird scenario indeed, I've only recently developed feelings for her within the past few months after knowing her as a good friend since middle school. I have no idea what brought it on, it might've been the fact that we shared AP Calc (which can suck the dirtiest corner of my asshole, by the way) and Dramatic Writing (an immensely influential class for me, in case you couldn't tell) this semester and worked together frequently without really any other friends to get in the way. All I know is that all of a sudden she just became really attractive and began occupying my thoughts a lot more than she did previously, which was not very much. As far as I know, she isn't aware that I feel the way I do about her, or she might know and maybe even has some kind of reciprocating feelings, but I don't know for sure if that gives you an idea of how little things have actually progressed.

I wouldn't say I'm hinging my validation of my own success on her presence in my life, I'm kind of operating under the expectation that things won't really go anywhere, whether because she isn't interested or personality differences or the onset of college or whatever, so not hooking up with her, while it would make me pretty sad, I don't think it'd be some kind of doomsday scenario. I mostly just brought her up because, well, a lot of other emotions were flowing out of me, and this is the first time I've ever had a crush on a girl. Or, well, there was one in freshman/sophomore year, but she was just really cute. Personality-wise she was a total psycho/bitch that likely would've led me down a very dark path, like what she did with a pal of mine last year. He changed schools for some reason and lives with her and her batshit parents, and from what his sister told me he's positively miserable. So yeah, not a great person. I was just thirsty for the big-titty goth girl with dwarfism (I legit thought, "Oh look, we have something in common, we're perfect for each other!") who kinda hung out with us but wasn't really that good of a friend. This girl is different, she's nice, smart, and I'm already a pretty good friend of hers, so we share a ton of interests and stuff. I actually feel like things with her could go somewhere, she's a person I can see myself wanting to be with as opposed to someone who's just really hot but would be an awful partner. These feelings are totally new to me and are very powerful, so they kinda naturally leaked into what was originally supposed to be about graduation, lol. It happened again just now. Because, well, I'm really excited about it! Not just that I finally feel love for someone else after going through pretty much all of my life without it, but that there's an actual chance for her to feel the same provided she doesn't already, that she kinda sorta asked ME on a fucking DATE, something I don't think I'd ever have been able to work up the courage to do myself.

I think I wanted the parts about her to represent the kind of optimism I need to teach myself to embrace, instead of obsessing over the pessimism I have about the probability of getting with her I should look forward to this summer as a chance to chase that dream and make something actually fucking happen for once, to take that risk and look on with hope for the timeline where I flip heads instead of hiding away and crunching the numbers in fear of not having everything perfectly under control while the world's opportunities pass me by and my feelings just stay inside me and torture me from the inside out because I was too much of a pussy to do anything with them. Or maybe I'm just "down bad" as the cool kids would say, which, as Urban Dictionary puts it, means, "When someone is depressingly horny." Definitely not worthy of being struck off the list of options.

FUCK, it happened again. I started talking about that fucking girl again, 30 minutes just vanished, and I no longer remember most of the greater context of what I was writing about. Guess now I have my own stream of consciousness to counter your stream of consciousness which was in response to my initial several-hour-long stream of consciousness. So much for this being a brief response that wouldn't keep me up super late.

Well, look, I'm going to wrap this up now. Thank you very, very much for your advice, it's all very helpful and I imagine it will be quite valuable moving forward. And thank you for reading through my egregiously long post/...diary entry (I totally did not think about it in that sense, that's such a great mindset to use when thinking about it! Might do more stuff like this in the future with that insight in mind tbh) and actually responding with some things that were a little hard for me to initially swallow instead of just pure encouragement. While both are great and improve the way I feel about this a lot, the former is like constructive criticism compared to plain ol' praise, it's inherently much more useful. Extra props for not only making it through all that gushing about girls but also giving advice about that stuff too, which I honestly probably wanted more than the graduation stuff, at least on a subconscious level. I think what I need to take away from this whole thing is that I need to stop worrying so much about things so far off in the future and just enjoy where things are going right now while still respecting those worrisome things and having the ability the react to them when/should they arise. Or something to a similar effect. I dunno, I'm getting tired and my ability to think about every single point and write about it all with full professionalism is fading.

Anyways, thanks again, random stranger on the internet, for giving me some of the most comprehensive life advice I've gotten in a while. It's really appreciated. I'm out of writing juice, so I'm gonna call it.

treeese 2021-05-25 01:33:06

I went back into physical and probably had a much better time than if I hadn't. Being at home, with no way to easily hang out with the boys or just...go ANYWHERE, was miserable during the summer of 2020, a period of my life that likely had a ton of negative effects on my mental health. Being pretty much alone for that long will do that to you. This year was actually quite fine, I hung out, fucking hated calculus, went to prom (which was really boring), made some new friends with stupid dumb baby sophomores of all people, and got my first crush (which was...not boring). 2020-2021 wasn't half bad.