Tag: Loneliness

The sorrows of young anon

As I’ve already explained in another post back in January, in the summer of 2014 I met a girl on /r9k/ and we became quite close. I try not to think about “what could have been” too much, about how I probably threw away one of the few true opportunities for happiness I’ve ever had, but from time to time I can’t help but be reminded. It might not seem like that’s how I feel when you read that post, because I focused quite a lot on where things went wrong. Indeed the ultimate message of it was that I didn’t want to deal with that again, but when it comes down to it I was far happier back when we were talking regularly than I have been over the last year without her or anyone else to talk to. Having no one to talk to, or confide in, is unbearable. It’s hard to even get out of the door and go to work every day when you have literally no support or encouragement in life.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad I have this blog as an outlet, but there’s no feedback or engagement. That’s fine, if you don’t feel comfortable commenting or responding then that’s cool with me, it means a lot that you simply enjoy reading my stuff. I’m glad to have each and every one of you. The only reason I even know that there are some of you who keep coming back however is because it tells me the countries you’re from on my stats page. Now that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the same person, after all it doesn’t give me any actual information about any of you like your IP address or even more specific a location other than the country. However, I think it’s unlikely that a different guy from Serbia, Mexico, India, The Netherlands, etc. is coming back every week or two.

More likely I have a “fan”, or maybe just a morbidly curious individual who enjoys watching my slow descent into madness and despair, in each of these countries and a few others. I also get a lot of views from the US, so I can assume with some accuracy that I have a few regulars who live there but most of those views are just one time visitors. A lot of those one time visitors are from search engines, for some reason my post Volcel gang manifesto (which was obviously a somewhat tongue in cheek title, given the content of the entry) in particular seems to bring in lots of people that way. Of course I’ve also mentioned the reader thing before, but I’m pretty sure that most if not all of those of you who’ve stuck around long term are from when I’ve shilled on /lit/ or /r9k/. And of course with these posts I’m not just simply talking, I’m often trying to make it kind of entertaining to read or at least engaging. I’m trying to work on my prose, but there’s still a lot of work to do.

Anyway, last week in a moment of admitted desperation I e-mailed this girl again asking if we could talk. If I’m being honest, and I haven’t said this to her because of reasons I’ll get to in a second, I was kind of hoping that maybe there was still a chance for something between us when I sent that first message. I know how much of an awful person this makes me seem, and I can’t really argue against that. I threw that opportunity away, life doesn’t tend to give you second chances and given the stupid reasons I had for pushing her away I don’t deserve one anyway. Nevertheless, as I said I still think about her and I keep going back in forth in my mind about whether I should have somehow done things differently. I’m a lot more uncertain about my feelings than that other entry might make it seem, indeed in part what I said in there was probably a cope. Not to say it was untrue, but I was trying to convince myself that I didn’t have as much regret as I really do regarding the whole situation by focusing on the negatives.

I think she can tell as well, that I was hoping for some second chance that is, but she has a boyfriend now so that’s not going to happen. And after having a little while to think about it, maybe that’s a good thing, or not I don’t know what to think. I think she still cares about me, it’s hard to ever completely stop caring about someone (though not impossible I’ve learned), but I’m pretty certain there’s no romantic interest on her part anymore. That’s fine. This is the third time we’ve been in contact and last time there were no feelings, I don’t think, on either her part or mine. In fact she had a boyfriend last time we spoke as well, but she didn’t tell me about it until last week. I’m not exactly sure I understand why. She said that she never told me because she was scared “it would ruin things between us”, but there wasn’t anything between us at the time.

I really wasn’t thinking of her in “that way” last time we spoke, because I was maybe slightly obsessed with one of the girls I worked with, as I’ve talked about already on this blog. I won’t say it was something I never thought about, as I’ve been saying I’ve always had slight regrets about how things turned out all the way back in 2015, but I had no intention of making any effort to pursue something at the time. The boyfriend from back then is not the same one as right now. In fact I think I have an idea who the older boyfriend is, because the first time we were speaking she had a friend she told me about who asked her out apparently. It was a friend she’d mentioned quite a few times while we were talking to one another, again this is in 2015 I know it’s a bit difficult to keep track.

I remember her telling me out of the blue one night how it happened, I think it was around summer so roughly a year after we’d started talking. If I remember correctly, although I might be wrong here as it has been a while, for some reason they were not going to be able to see one another for some long period of time. Maybe they were going to different schools, or something, I’m not sure. Anyway she told me that she’d told him “no”, that she’d rejected his advances. This was around the time I think it was becoming quite obvious to her I was losing interest, so some part of me had a suspicion that she just made the story up to try and get me to do or say something, but now I think maybe that’s the same guy and the story was completely true. Maybe the story isn’t made up, but her saying no to him is, and that’s when they started going out.

I don’t fucking know, I’m really not interested in this gossip magazine tier normie shit. It doesn’t change anything either way. There was a situation or conflict or something with that boyfriend from before and the guy who is now her boyfriend as well, it may have even spread onto r9k a little, but I’m not going to go into that stuff because I’m pretty certain she would have a problem with me talking about it and anyway it’s not really anything to do with me. So again I will admit I had hoped that there might be something there when trying to get back in contact this most recent time, but after speaking to her for the last couple days knowing that isn’t going to happen, I’ve still found it really helpful. Since speaking to her again I’ve really been reminded just how much more bearable life is simply for having someone to actually talk to.

Not just to vent to her about my own problems, of course it’s really nice to finally have someone hear the problems I’m having, but that’s not what we talk about most of the time. It’s just nice to talk about completely mundane things, day to day stuff like what’s happening with her studies or at my job. Occasionally I’ll talk about those things here, but most of the time if I can’t make an interesting post from it I won’t. Just knowing there’s someone there, paying attention to me, I’m so scared to lose it so quickly after getting it back. It might seem weird to say, but I quite like listening to her troubles as well. I quite like that someone trusts me enough to talk about more personal things with, and I’m no therapist but I like to think I can be of some help. She’s certainly helped me a lot, just by being there and hearing me.

We even briefly spoke about how she could maybe help me with some art for this blog. I offered to pay to commission something but she said she’d never want that. Just maybe something she could do in an afternoon, to use as the header image. I’ve thought about how it would work, because usually I just try and find an image after I’ve written my post that I think is somehow appropriate. I would feel a little uncomfortable trying to tell someone what to do, so maybe a better idea would be to send her a copy of the draft before I upload something and ask her to just draw what she thinks is appropriate. Or we could talk on video chat and try and figure something out together, that would also be a good reason to finally do that after saying we would so many times, assuming she still wants to.

See usually when I just choose art or photographs or something from online I can’t always find the right image. I have a way of choosing what to use that I think works well, but it’s not possible to always find exactly what you’re looking for. Sometimes it’s probably easy to see the connection, other times I’m a bit more cryptic, and sometimes I’m just trying to use it to make a joke. I use the titles in a similar way as well, some are pretty straightforward obviously like any of the series’ I do, but other than that I’m just trying to make things a little more interesting. She has a very specific art style, one that wouldn’t really work all of the time, I just think it would be nice if she could be part of this thing in a small way. She seemed to really like the idea as well, although now who knows what’s going to happen. I’m slightly concerned she might not be too happy if she ends up reading this post, because she has read some of them.

She was so nice about my writing as well, maybe nicer than necessary because I’m not just playing modest when I say that I have a lot of rushed and not so well written stuff uploaded on here. I’m very proud of some of what I’ve put up of course, my recent entry in the Books series about The Little Prince might be one of the best things I’ve ever uploaded here, but then the next one after that (my most recent upload) was fucking terrible. She seemed genuinely interested to read through everything, and again even though I’m glad there are people who keep checking back here it’s not the same as actually hearing someone say they want to read everything you’ve written. It’s nice to have some affirmation, I have got a couple comments saying I should keep going before but it’s really nice when it comes from a person you know.

I don’t think she’ll actually read everything like she said, although to be fair I saw on my stats page the other night that someone from Italy had visited the home/ archives page a load of times so maybe she really did end up reading through a lot. We spoke a bit about a few of the first things I wrote on here as well, so maybe she wasn’t kidding and plans to eventually read through it all from the start. Either way I’m going to try not to mention it again if we keep talking. Of course I’ll tell her when I’m writing if it comes up in conversation and if she does decide to help out of course I’ll send her stuff then, but I don’t want to link her a specific post again. I started to feel like maybe I was being a little pushy, that I sent too much. She’s the kind of person who wouldn’t tell me to stop if it was annoying her, so I’m just going to stop myself.

She likes to send me music links quite a lot, we both share a lot of music recs to one another. We don’t have the exact same taste of course, but we do tend to like a lot of the same stuff and she’s actually given me some really good recommendations in the past. The other day she told me about this album Awake by an electronic musician called Tycho, and I’ve listened to it like maybe ten times since then. It’s really good, and I’d probably never have found it if not for her. There’s one track on there that really reminds me of the soundtrack to the game Mirror’s Edge actually, I think the chord progression (god I hope I’m using that term correctly and I don’t look like a pseud) is very similar at one point but then it goes in it’s own direction. Anyway, it’s just been so nice to have her there again.

I haven’t forgotten how that stopped being the case last time, how talking to her went from being the highlight of my day to being a chore as the months went on. The reasons for that are actually pretty easy to deal with however, in fact we’ve talked about how to prevent that. Basically, I was always too shy to just tell her I didn’t want to talk some days. I began to find it really hard to get anything else done, and so I’d make excuses not to talk. If I could have just told her that some nights I didn’t want to talk, and that didn’t mean I didn’t still enjoy her company generally, maybe both our lives could have gone quite differently. Anyway she’s a much busier person now, so she doesn’t even want to talk most days either. It’s funny in a way, that I could probably have saved things from falling apart just by having a backbone. It’s not funny, it makes me want to sink into the ground and die, but you know what I mean it’s also pretty fucking funny. XD

We did talk quite a lot about what happened before, including some stuff I didn’t know about like the aforementioned secret boyfriend. In fact she read the post linked at the start of this one that I wrote about her, I linked it in the original e-mail I sent to her. She was really understanding about it. She can be quite a reticent person unless you really push for more information sometimes, so maybe what I said hurt more than she’s willing to admit. I know from what she’s said in the past that she’s had some issues with her image and self confidence and I hate that I probably contributed to that. I hope that what I said in that post didn’t contribute even more, I mean she said to me she already could tell that I kind of lost interest when seeing her the first time all those years ago, but maybe actually seeing it written in my own words makes it more real. It’s something she said to me that made me start to think this, the last time we spoke on Wednesday night.

She said that she thinks maybe I only contacted her again because I’m desperate. It really hurt to read that, not just because it’s not true but because of what it says about how she views herself. It implies that she thinks I’m only talking to her because I have no one else. If I had a girlfriend, or even was still in regular contact with my friends, she seems to be suggesting that I wouldn’t want to speak to her. I’m not saying there’s not some truth to that, maybe I’d have felt that it was best to leave whatever happened with her in the past if I had more going on in my own life, but to imply I don’t care about her or just want to use her is completely unfair. I don’t see us talking again as me settling for her company because I have no one else to spend time with, I’ve shared more with her about myself than possibly anyone else I’ve ever known just because we used to speak so much. She’s certainly one of the few people I’ve opened up with the most.

Now the reason she said that, to provide some context, is because a few days after we started talking her boyfriend decided he was not comfortable with me talking to her again. Which I understand completely, I imagine I would feel the same if I were in that position. In fact I feel quite uncomfortable in my own position in this if I’m being completely honest. As I said it is really nice talking, but then a few times she’s mentioned this boyfriend and all I can hear in my head when that happens is a bunch of meme loving zoomers from r9k calling me a cuck. I’m not sure, am I being an “orbiter” here? I hate those fucking guys, you know who I mean. The people who swarm around certain e-girls and obsess over them, I think they’re completely contemptible. Some part of me is a little worried that maybe this girl now sees me in the same way those e-girls view their orbiters.

Now I know that it’s not quite the same, because I could have ended up with this girl once if I hadn’t been such an unbelievable coward or caught up on my own weird hang ups. Indeed, towards the end during the first time we spoke I actually felt bad because I was worried I was treating her like a female orbiter. That makes me sound like an absolute piece of shit, let me explain. I just mean that because I was too scared to tell her that I’d lost any romantic interest, but I kept talking, I kind of felt like I was stringing her along. I thought that if I just held out until we met maybe I’d somehow begin to feel different again, but more I was just scared to say something. Indeed she seems to have felt similarly because she told me she didn’t feel guilty about ghosting me the first time around because of this, and she shouldn’t that was the right response to how I was acting. As much as I wish it hadn’t ended that way, I can admit that.

Still, I can’t help but feel like I’m doing something wrong now. To be talking with someone, and rather intimately, who does now have a partner. In large part it is because of what there was before, I mean it’s not exactly unusual to have friends while you’re in a relationship. If there never had been anything between us in the past, it wouldn’t be a problem. She has other friends, presumably some of them male, and I imagine he doesn’t have any problem with that. I didn’t care at all that she had friends who were male, like the one I mentioned earlier in the post, back in 2015. It’s also maybe because I’m single, and not just that but perpetually so. If she had a male friend in real life, who had a girlfriend of his own or at least a normal dating life, I don’t think he’d care about them speaking.

I spoke with her about this, that hypothetically if I had a girlfriend in my own life (yeah, I know it’s a ridiculous premise pls be nice) maybe it would be less of a problem to keep talking. This was when she was telling me that maybe we shouldn’t talk anymore, in fact I hate to admit this but in a moment of weakness/ fear that I was going to lose her again I even said I’d sign up for online dating and try to find a girl that way if it would mean she wouldn’t abandon me. Even though I have a lot of fundamental problems with online dating in principle (that I spoke about in that post linked above actually, Volcel gang manifesto), when I got scared I kind of just lost all of those concerns. In retrospect, I realise how absolutely mad I sounded in that moment by the way.

Although I have to say, since that conversation I have begun to think about the idea of online dating again. I still agree with what I said in that post, and that the day I willingly sign up for something like that is the day what’s left of my innocence dies. Yet maybe I don’t have any other solution to this problem I have, I complain about being lonely but there is this pretty simple solution available to that. After all, outside of online dating I really don’t have any other options because I never meet new people any more and I can’t exactly rely on another girl approaching me in public like has happened before a couple times. It’s possible it’ll happen again, but just as possible if not more so that it never will. It’s not exactly normal, I mean in this country it’s pretty fucking rare for a guy to ask a woman out in public, a total stranger that is, never mind the other way around. That’s just not the culture, in fact I remember my old manager (from Romania) remarking on the fact that “no one ever flirts here” once.

The problem with Tinder or some lesser known thing like it is that it would be pretty fucking humiliating if I tried it and never got any matches as well, after all I have no photos of myself at all (well, there’s a few group photos from when I’ve been out with my coworkers but I can’t use those) so I’d have to just take a photo of myself and use that. And I imagine if you have nothing but a poor quality selfie on a site where most people have a whole set of photos of themselves doing actual interesting things you’ll be at something of a disadvantage. I’m probably not going to do it, I’m very intimidated by the entire idea and I still have all the same problems with it I talked about before. It’s something I’ve just been re-evaluating my stance on a little bit, that’s all.

I need some input from someone else, to tell me if I’m being silly about this or if my position from that post before makes sense. Another reason (or maybe another COPE) that I’m not an orbiter I think, is that I talk quite a lot about my problems, and she seems to respond quite genuinely and want to try and help me get better. That is, finding people and being less lonely, but also getting at deeper issues I may have. I think I already mentioned this but this isn’t what we talk about most of the time, however I do have a tendency to turn a normal conversation into another thing to get upset and moan about. It’s a problem, I wish I could keep it to myself more often, although sometimes it is nice to just vent.

To a real person I mean, someone who can respond in real time. It’s hard to explain what it’s like to suddenly have someone who is actually supportive, and who doesn’t seem to judge me. Someone who’s care and concern isn’t conditional, it’s like having my mother back or a sister I never had. Well, of course it’s not quite the same because of before but there’s a parallel there. The best example to show this is that I don’t feel uncomfortable with her reading this blog, but there’s no one I know in real life who I’d show what I’ve written here to. The things I’ve said about some people, jesus. They can never know, not until I’m dead anyway. Her on the other hand, I don’t worry at all about what she might think. I just don’t feel judged, it’s odd, and having someone like that in your life is incredibly reassuring.

Let’s just stick with the example of online dating, say I actually do decide to go through with it and I manage to get someone to agree to go get a drink or whatever people do after meeting on those sites. I’d feel a thousand times less scared to go, knowing that I’ll be able to talk about it if it goes wrong with her afterwards. And even before I went, just having her encouragement would probably make me far less worried. Which in this specific example probably means things are less likely to go wrong. It’s not just this example though, it’s really anything. I went to a gig the other night, the first time I’ve ever been to see a live music performance actually. The main band playing was Deafheaven (for a soy-metal band they’re actually pretty good), but there was another band called Touche Amore, and a third called Portrayal of Guilt.

Anyway, the show was a lot of fun and I had a great time, but I was terrified before going. I went with a friend, the one who doesn’t live in the same city as me, but nevertheless I was genuinely deebly goncerned the entire day before going. We had some cans of cider before going in to help chill out a bit, and two beers inside, and again once I actually got there it wasn’t bad at all. I’m not even sure what I was worried about, no one even cared to mess with me or whatever I was scared would happen, they were just enjoying the show. Yet that fear almost stopped me from going, the only reason I went was because I’m so unbelievably desperate these days for company. If I’d been asked to go do something like that even a year ago, I’d probably have said no, indeed I’ve said no to offers like that quite a few times in the past.

How much easier would it have been if she had been there to talk to me beforehand? Not even necessarily the same day, just at some point leading up to it. Yeah, I know I’m pathetic and weak and it’s embarrassing that something like that is so much of a big deal for me, but that is how I am and I can’t change that. Not in the short term anyway, and not on my own. I don’t know if any of you have seen the show Welcome to the NHK (the anime, I haven’t read the manga or the original novel), although given that I have a 4chan based audience I’m sure some of you have, but I guess I’m in a similar position to Satou. That’s the main character, and he’s worse off than me to be fair as he’s a complete hikki NEET and 24 years old at the start of the show I think, but his position is quite similar to mine.

There’s an episode where he goes back to university to consider applying for a course after dropping out years before, and how he responds in one scene in particular reminds me so much of how I was feeling before this show last week. That scene is one of the best ones in the show, honestly I don’t like a lot of the melodrama that happens towards the end of series. The early episodes are the best, they really demonstrate the mindset of someone who has ended up in that position really well. I was only ever a complete NEET for about 5 months (or a year if you include the time where I was volunteering at a charity shop for 8 hours a week) and I think I was already starting to go a bit loopy towards the end of that period. In that time, it wasn’t unusual for me to go two weeks in a row without leaving my flat once.

Anyway, the show is a show and therefore needs some kind of plot. So Misaki is introduced, a girl who for some reason decides that it is her mission to try and fix Satou and change his hikikomori ways. At first they begin a series of therapy-like sessions, and then she tries to push him to start rebuilding some kind of a life slowly. Again, the show is a show and so there are complications along the way, but that is the basic premise. At some point fairly early on Misaki seems to be developing into a love interest character, which makes sense, but interestingly enough that never goes anywhere. Instead, the feelings they are both developing seem to dissipate after the events towards the end of the series, and the ending of the show has them come up with a more formal agreement. Where they plan to continue to both help one another, and push on with life, as long as the other does the same.

You can probably see why I’m bringing the show up in the context of this particular post, the parallels are easy to see. Of course, I’m wary of making the comparison because you could misread me comparing this girl I know to Misaki as me saying I simply see her as a tool or means of helping myself. That’s obviously not true, as I’ve made clear throughout this entry I do genuinely appreciate her and want her to be happy. And we don’t spend all the time talking about my problems, the positive benefit of having someone like her to talk to is just a little similar. The effect of having her around to talk to, is somewhat comparable to the result of Misaki’s efforts to help Satou. It’s like poetry, it rhymes.

Every Friday on /r9k/ they have a thread dedicated to this character, Misaki Friday has been a tradition on there since before I started visiting the board, but most people in there seem to misunderstand the point entirely in my opinion. People will talk about how they’re “waiting for their Misaki” to come and save them, but Misaki never really saved Satou. Also I’ll say it again, the show is a show and so some spur was needed to get the plot moving. In real life no one is going to come and find you and fix all your problems, I had to find this girl the thread is about myself all those years ago. At the same time if you have no support network or people to rely on in place you are going to have a far harder time sorting yourself out than most people ever will. That alone won’t fix anyone, but it sure does help.

 

Feels

Last night I saw my friends (as usual, probably more like two or three nights ago by the time I finish writing this post), and I’ll talk about that more in the next thing I write which will be part of the “Altered states” series of posts I’ve been writing, but I just need to mention it here because I might talk about some of what happened in this post. See I’ve been feeling pretty miserable today and thinking a lot as well and I think it will be better to wait a few days so my mood doesn’t colour my account of the experience, but I do want to write something just to get my feelings out or something idk.

It’s not too different from how I normally feel, that is to say for the most part my concerns today are the same concerns I always have or at least similar, they’re just particularly upsetting right now for some reason. Not really because of the experience yesterday, that was actually pretty nice and I’m back to normal now in regards to my state of sobriety, I think it’s more to do with the fact that I’ve got two weeks with nothing to do whatsoever ahead. I can’t fucking believe I’m saying it, but I kind of wish I had to go in to work tomorrow. I can’t stand the thought that I’m going to be stuck in my room alone for the next two weeks, this isn’t hyperbole I could very possibly not leave my flat or see anyone other than my dad for two straight weeks. I might go and see a film one afternoon with a friend, that’s it and even that could end up not happening.

It’s literally like being put in solitary confinement, it’s not fair and it’s so fucking horrible and I can’t take it anymore I don’t want to live like this anymore. I just don’t understand why I’ve ended up this way, I’ve done nothing wrong and I’ve done everything right. The only thing I can think of is my shyness, but it’s not that bad. There are people who are more shy than me who have “ok” lives with friends and relationships and something to fucking do on their time off. There are people who are less interesting, less intelligent, less attractive, less considerate, less reliable, and all those things at the same time (significantly so in a lot of cases) who are still afforded some basic fucking humanity.

I mean that really is how it feels, like I’m not even considered deserving of any warmth or humanity whatsoever. People are always lovely and sweet on those rare occasions that I’m in the company of others but yet it’s so incredibly rare for someone to make any effort at all to try and be a part of my life in some way. I’m not saying I deserve it or that I’m entitled, just that everyone else receives this treatment even people who are objectively far more unlikeable and unpleasant and I don’t, and I don’t know why. I’ve spent a decade trying to figure out what I could be doing wrong and all that has happened is the few lifelines I’ve had have dwindled away.

Ok there have been a few instances where people have made an effort, I’ve talked before on this blog about the few occasions at work where customers have asked for my phone number or to meet up, but the point is that it’s never actually led anywhere. Right now I’m looking at two weeks alone, I can’t fucking take this anymore I can’t take it I can’t

I just don’t want to live like this anymore, but I don’t know what to do I have no fucking option I have nothing I can do about it. There’s absolutely nothing I can do, there’s no one I can call or anything. I have two friends, one is going away and at best I won’t see him until four months from now but more likely it’ll be another year until we meet again or perhaps never. The other isn’t interested, he said he might go to see a film with me that’s it. I can’t just use this one friend all the time for human contact anyway that wouldn’t be fair, and he’s not in my situation he’s busy doing things with friends he made from work or hanging out with his family so it’s not possible anyway.

It really is like solitary confinement, ok I can go out anytime but for what. I can walk around and see people and everyone just stares at me walking around on my own like a fucking loser. Seeing groups of people just makes me feel even more miserable as well, seeing people at all frankly. I see them and I know that they have something to do, some reason to be out there walking around. Often on phones talking to someone, I have no one to talk to. I don’t understand why, I don’t know why I’m being punished. And I really can’t help but feel like that’s what’s happening, some kind of punishment. It literally is a punishment given to prisoners. I don’t know what to do.

It’s so fucking infuriating hearing people talk about things like a friend, a gf, an ex, a wife, a guy I hang out with sometimes, whatever like these things just happen organically. They use these terms like they’re just totally normal, totally whatever. I’m really struggling to articulate my point, but here’s an analogy (yes you may have heard it before). It’s like if you talked about going to get a burger from a fast food place or a sandwich from the shop, if you’re a westerner that’s completely innocuous. You wouldn’t even give it any thought at all, “oh yeah I went to get a sandwich earlier”. If you said that in front of a starving third worlder they would be completely shocked however, they’re thinking it’s a very real possibility they’re not eating at all tonight.

See I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with this way of speaking, if I try to detach myself and be “objective”. It’s an amazing thing that people can be so insanely nonchalant about food, when for roughly two hundred thousand years until recent history their ancestors had to struggle every day to get it. Yet in some parts of the world they still do struggle, and you can understand how if you kept this nonchalant attitude about food up around them it would seem offensive or at least difficult to comprehend. It’s not a perfect analogy, but I think it kind of works. All around me people are so completely blasé about friendship and dating, and it does get to me.

Frankly I sometimes start to feel like it’s a deliberate gaslight, people talk about these things like they happen entirely of their own accord. Men specifically in this case, because sure when women do it I can kind of understand as boyfriends and friendships will just materialise in their lives without any effort whatsoever, but when other guys talk this way you can’t help but think they’re playing some kind of mind game. Because when another guy is relaxed, or lets his guard down, he’ll tacitly admit to some difficulty usually. Only with vagueries like “It’s tough out there”, never daring to be explicit, but the point is made.

However, these people still manage to find their way in. They have friends, they have and have had girlfriends, they are a part of society. There’s that stupid meme “we live in a society”, but do we? You might, but I don’t feel like I do. I feel like I somehow fell through the cracks, and I would probably say some time in the summer of 2013 was when it happened, but maybe that’s for another post. As I said for so long I tried to figure out why my life is the way it is, why life and friendships/ relationships didn’t just happen, like they did for everyone else.

I thought my shyness was the reason for so many years, and I tried to change but it’s impossible. You can’t just brute force a personality change, you can’t just change how you intuitively respond to social situations. Then around 2015 the whole blackpill idea took off on places like r9k which I frequented and I was quite confused because I was pretty sure that my looks weren’t the reason for my situation, frankly my looks are the only thing I have going for me and probably the one reason I get the little help I do from other people (being asked out or flirted with by strange women, almost always treated nicely by people, etc), and I did start to doubt for a little while if I wasn’t just deluding myself but I realised that was silly of me after a while. So now I’m not sure what to think.

I have a general idea. I think that because I failed to form, or integrate myself into, a group of friends/ social circle at the usual (and crucial) time in life that most people do that I kind of fell through the cracks as I said earlier. The thing is, why did I fail in this? It’s nice to have this one sole thing I can point to, and I really do think that’s the sole cause for most of my struggle to find this feeling of community or comfort, but there’s still the question of why I failed in this. I can go further back in my search. Even if I were able to figure that out though, it wouldn’t actually change anything. It’s too late, it just feels like there’s nothing I can do.

I did have some chances I’ll admit, see one of the friends I met last night used to be just like me. We were so close for about two or three years because we were going through similar problems, and in fact he was the one who came to me and really started the friendship. Frankly, the residual appreciation for that one gesture (and the fact that I have no one else) is probably one of the main reasons I still make so much effort to stay in contact with him. Whenever we meet they always talk about how much of a great friend I am, how glad they are to have me but yet I’m always the one who has to call and arrange anything now. If I were to never call either of them again, maybe I’d never see them again.

Anyway, my point is that after we finished secondary school he managed to transform very suddenly. There’s this television show that was popular here in the UK, Skins, and while we were still losers he was kind of obsessed with it. He watched it multiple times over, and basically that was the life he dreamed of living. It’s about a group of 16/ 17/ 18 year olds who basically just do lots of drugs and party and hook up, there’s not much of a plot I don’t think but to be honest I never watched the show. So we were similar but I always felt a little disgusted by that life, I never wanted it. I wanted more close friends, but I was actually content with who I was whereas he quite clearly wanted to be another person entirely. I wanted a girlfriend, but I was never really interested in casual sex even immediately after puberty when my “drive” was at it’s strongest.

In fact I weirdly have always had this issue with sex and intimacy, where I kind of see the two as separate but yet not at the same time. For example, any time I develop feelings for a girl (call it a crush, oneitis, whatever you want) I don’t want to think of her in a sexual light, the thought makes me feel like I’m doing something wrong actually. Of course I want to be near them, I want their warmth. I want them to touch me, to hold me, but the idea of having sex with them is almost detached from that. The more intense my feelings are for them, the weirder it becomes for me to see them as a sexual being. Yet clearly romantic interest is related to the sexual drive in humans, I mean I wouldn’t have even developed feelings in the first place if I didn’t think a girl was attractive. I desire them, but because I also have this protective instinct I almost feel like I should protect them from myself and my desire, if that makes any sense.

It’s like some wires in my brain were twisted up, I have a slight focus on ideas of innocence and purity. I’ve always tried to project a kind of sweet and even perhaps naïve image while out and about in the world, and I’ll probably go into this some more in the next Books post actually or whenever I get around to talking about The Little Prince. On top of that I also look for it in others, which I guess is why I both create this weird dual image of a girl I’m into and why I was actually very content being a loser with my loser buddy back in secondary school. It felt oddly comforting to be the loser kids for me, I wasn’t out partying or getting in trouble I was still a child. I wasn’t growing up too fast, I had been warned that growing up was the worse thing that ever happened to a person and I really internalised that.

Going back a little maybe in part my desire for a companion who also still holds onto this youthful gentleness relates to what Michel Houellebecq said in his novel Whatever about being orphaned by the teenage loves you never had, and also what I was getting at in this post from quite a few months ago, in that I’m still looking for the more formative experiences with romance that I should have had half a decade or even a decade ago now. The problem is, I wasn’t able to achieve that then, and it’s only going to keep getting more and more difficult for as I said above why would any pretty girl stay “innocent” when she is both encouraged by the wider culture not to do so and given innumerable opportunities for that. I don’t just mean virginal when I talk about a girl being innocent or pure either, but all that that entails. There’s definitely a certain cynicism you can pick up on in women who have had many partners, and they might spin it more positively using a term like “worldliness” but it’s not a prerequisite. There are some girls who were just always kind of bitter, grown up before they ever grew up, and there are girls who’ve had a few partners who are still very sweet.

I got very off track though, I was talking about how I was given some opportunity. This friend as I said was desperate to grow up but while still at school with me found himself unable. I thought he was like me, and in conversations since we’ve talked about how our time together those couple years as very close friends were very wholesome, but I realise now and I should have then that he was aching to be out getting fucked up with the cool kids. So he did that, we went to different sixth form colleges (the school you go to around the ages of 16 to 18 here in the UK) and he managed to reinvent himself very quickly. He integrated himself into a group of friends and he got a girlfriend and started staying out until 2am drinking and I became a recluse. He did invite me to hang out with his friends a couple times though, he wanted to bring me in to the fold it seems but I just didn’t go.

There are quite a few reasons, I did go once to meet a few of his friends and that experience was very awkward and uncomfortable. My dad was always incredibly controlling and wouldn’t let me stay out late too. I remember I was at home playing vidya alone one evening and this friend called me saying he was nearby and I should come and hang out, but I was too scared to even ask my dad if I could go. I could already imagine what his response would be “You want to go out now? This is the time you should be getting ready to return home if you’ve been out!”. I hate him for that honestly, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive him for the psychological damage he did by enforcing this attitude.

This same friend again on another occasion tried to get me talking with this girl he knew who he said he thought I would “get along really well with”. He really made a lot of effort for me, and I didn’t take it and I regret it so much but I’m not sure if I would do anything different going back in time either. He’s the only one anyway, the only one who made this kind of effort for me. The only person who actually tried to integrate me into society, who saw me falling between the cracks and tried to reach out to pull me back up. It feels like almost everyone else is given infinite opportunities to try again, life really does just smoothly continue around them without any kind of input. Friends, relationships, careers, hobbies, they all simply fall into place of their own accord.

That’s why people tell you to just bee urself, because that’s all they ever had to do. They just had to be, to simply exist. Anyway as I was saying at the start I’m just so tired of this, it really is beginning to wear me down. I mean it will literally kill me eventually, chronic loneliness leads to all sorts of mental and physical health issues long term. I just don’t know what to do, I just don’t know. This is a bad post, I just had to write my feelings down because it’s been inescapable today. I guess I was wrong at the beginning as well, I did finish the entire post in one evening.

Blackpill nights

Something happened to me recently that is really bothering me, I think because it has forced me to see that I haven’t been being honest with myself for quite some time. It’s funny as well because I was talking about a very similar thing happening very recently here, where life will sort of throw me a “free retry” I guess you could call it, every once in a while. And even though it always falls apart, and doesn’t lead to any change in my circumstances, it further encourages my naturally passive and lazy tendencies. Anyway what happened was, while I was working, a girl approached me and asked for my number on behalf of her friend. So in the post linked above I talked about the last time this happened, just over a year ago (among other things, that wasn’t the main subject of the post), and I said it was probably a one in a million event that wouldn’t happen again. Yet it did, although as I’ll explain it went even worse this time around and has led nowhere.

So I was cleaning down the display area in front of the shop I work at and I turned around for a brief second and saw a girl walking up to me, she had darkish blonde hair and green eyes, and a big smile. She waved to get my attention, and then she spoke, “Hi there, I was just wondering how old you were?”. Naturally I was kind of taken aback, I’m used to people coming up to me to ask questions about the public transport routes and timetable because there’s a station nearby and a bus stop, but this immediately felt different. I probably had a somewhat confused expression on my face when I responded, “I’m 21” I said with some hesitation.

Now at this point because of her body language and demeanour, which was similar to that of the Spanish girl I talked about in the other post and other girls in my teens who looking back I was definitely right to think were into me, part of me realised what was happening. Yet I was also concerned that maybe I was misjudging the situation because this girl was really pretty, it’s wasn’t just hard to believe that a girl who was that attractive would ask me out, but that she’d need to ask anyone out at all. Of course she wasn’t, she was trying to get my number for her friend, but her friend was also very good looking. Not quite as stunning as the blonde girl, but if I had to rank them on some kind of objective scale (which I don’t like to do) I’d put them very close to one another. If the blonde girl was a “7”, it feels so gross to number people like this, then the friend was a somewhere between that and a “6”. She looked a little bit like that e-girl that used to get posted a lot on r9k, with the really big eyes and the bob haircut. Certainly all that I said about the blonde girl not needing to go out of her way to try to find a bf or hook up or whatever also applies to this friend anyway. Here’s a frequently posted (and kind of cruel, I feel a bit bad even posting it but I don’t know how else to illustrate my point) chart from 4chan to give an idea of what I mean by those numbers.

aOem4ne.jpg

So I turned back around to put the cleaning things down on the counter, and as I did so she kept talking. “Oh, that’s great! The thing is me and my friend saw you from over there (pointing to where they had been sitting probably) and we were wondering if she could get your Instagram, or a phone number?”. I turned around and saw that her friend had also arrived, she had a straight bob of black hair, dark brown eyes and tan/ olive skin. “I d-don’t have any social media” I said “but yeah.. I can give you my phone number”. The girl who was supposedly attracted to me muttered to her friend “Are you for real?” she was visibly nervous/ embarrassed. The friend didn’t seem to pay her any attention, “Yes, a number would be great!”. I turned to look at the dark haired girl, and smiled. She gave a nervous smile, and then looked down at the ground before looking back up at me again.

I reached over the counter to grab my phone, “I’m going to have to check what my number is, I don’t actually know it off by heart” I said to them. Now the thing is, whenever I get into a social situation that I haven’t had time to prepare for I can freak out a little and so my hands were shaking slightly. Because of this I was messing up the stupid lock screen thing and then I had to wait 30 seconds after failing it five times, and as we were awkwardly just standing there waiting their bus arrived. “That’s our bus” said the shy girl. Without even really thinking about it, I just reflexively put my phone away saying “oh, well if that’s your bus..”. The blonde girl looked up at me, “..oh, ok then” she said with a clearly disappointed tone and expression on her face. Before I even knew it they were leaving to catch the bus and I just turned back around to clean the shop, as the realisation that I’d just accidentally rejected this girl sunk in. “Take care” I heard one of them shout to me, I didn’t turn around to say goodbye back.

There was clearly enough time because the bus didn’t leave for another minute though. I could have easily gone through with it, it’s so frustrating. I remember going back around and inside after finishing cleaning and the bus was only just taking off. In fact the entire thing took a few minutes at most. I was still processing it after they had left, like I said I need time to prepare for most kinds of social situations. Luckily I was closing up, so I didn’t have to deal with any more customers and I remember sitting there inside locked away from everyone and having this feeling of disappointment hit me. I can picture the moment more vividly than I can the actual interaction itself with these two girls. I sat there, with my head in my hands, and all that came to mind was this feeling that I had completely fucked up.

The thing is, I shouldn’t have felt that way. Or at least, if what I’ve been telling myself for the last few years was true I wouldn’t. See I wrote another post about half a year ago where I told the story of this girl I had met online back in 2014 and one of the points of that post was to talk about a realisation I thought I had come to after having spent a lot of time talking with her. Of course another point of the entry was just to tell that story, just like how in part the reason for this one is so I can tell the story I just did. I don’t want this blog to just be me writing about things that happened to me, and when I do I want to mostly write about how those things influenced me or changed how I see the world, but I also do kind of just want to tell the stories. I want someone else to know, even if it’s completely anonymous. It feels good to know that someone else has read or heard about the things that have happened to me, it makes them feel more real. It’s also good to have a record for my own sake, because being so isolated the chronology of things can get a little blurry.

So as I was saying, in that post the realisation I was talking about was that I thought I didn’t want a gf. I think what I said was after talking with her (I was 18 when we stopped talking the first time) I no longer fantasised about or believed I wanted a gf. Now of course I’ve talked about having oneitis on this blog multiple times so that might not have made sense, but I mean in the abstract. There might be a particular girl I know who I find attractive and/ or enjoyable to be around who I’d like to be my gf, but when there isn’t I’m not wishing for a gf. The best way to put it in meme r9k speak would be to say, in response to someone posting >tfw no gf, that I don’t know that feel. I think I also said that it felt wrong in some way, like to even want “a gf” is like searching for a person to fit a pre-made box whereas oneitis (what normalfags might call a crush, although that feels more juvenile) is more like you already have a person in mind and build a box around them. Of course, instead of wasting your time with boxes you should be spending time trying to get to know people, but it is what it is.

Were this true though, I would feel better after what happened not worse surely? See, just like in every other area of my life I’m incredibly self doubting about how attractive I am. So surely being approached by a total stranger, the most overt expression of interest there is, should make me feel good. It’s still not enough though, because even though this has happened twice since I came out of the NEETcave and got my first job, I’m still entirely alone. I’m going to be 22 in a few months, and not only have I never had a girlfriend or lost my virginity, I’ve never had even a moment of true intimacy with someone. There was an east african girl who would sit next to me in classes when we were 12 who would always put her arms around me and grope around my crotch as a “joke”. She kissed me on the cheek when no one was around and once followed me half way home, asking me to “be her boyfriend”. I would laugh and say no, thinking she was just messing with me, but eventually she grew distant. That’s the closest I think I ever was, but there are quite a few similar stories.

There was this pale redheaded girl who would skateboard around the street near where I live with her friend when I was 14 years old. I remember the first time I saw them she just stood there staring at me, and then I started to see them there every Friday evening coming home from school and whenever I went out to see my friends on the weekend. At first they just kept staring at me, waiting for me to say something perhaps. Later, one weekend when me and a friend were hanging out on the same street they both came and sat on the stairs above us and having a really loud conversation. Then, one Friday evening I was leaving to go and stay the night with a friend and they started waving at me, so I waved back. The next morning I was coming home, and they were there again. The ginger girl came right up to me, and asked me how the sleepover went. I was completely taken off guard, and just said “What!” and then ran inside. I never saw either of them again.

A year or so after that, I was at a big birthday party for a family friend and there were lots of people who I hadn’t seen in years. One of these people was an Iranian girl I went to primary school with, who I hardly remembered. She definitely seemed to remember me though, and even though I was giving one word answers and clearly visibly uncomfortable she spent a good portion of the evening just sitting with me in a corner trying to get me to talk. I remember her telling me stories about the time when we were kids that I couldn’t recall, like she’d been thinking about me all this time. Maybe I’m just totally misinterpreting the situation, and she just felt like she was catching up with an old friend, but as I was saying earlier these two instances of being asked out since starting this job have helped me understand past events better. Because I can see a similarity in the body language and general demeanour that both of them had. She would also laugh at unfunny things I said, and kept asking me to dance, but eventually she too got bored of trying.

Now there are a fair few more stories like this, although between the ages of 16 – 20 when I was a total hikki and at some points staying indoors for weeks at a time it became far less frequent. There was a period of time where I was going on omegle most nights of the week when I was around the age of 18/ 19, to be honest in part because I enjoyed getting complimented on how I looked which did happen a lot, but also kind of just to have people to talk to. A lot of the girls on there were pretty shitty people though, and I tried speaking to some of them on skype because they’d sometimes ask to add me there, but they were even more difficult to talk to than people irl are and I’d always end up removing them or being ghosted/ removed myself.

I can only think of one example from that time which I really regret, which was this conversation I had with this short haired Australian girl. I actually think at first I was talking to her with the camera off, but we spoke for a good two hours in total. We talked about her job working as a clown at a funfair/ amusement park and what I was(n’t) doing with my life at the time, I was able to talk to her quite easily and usually I was awkward even with people on omegle but not in this case. When I had to go to, she said she wanted to speak to me again.

Now I actually got the timeline wrong in that post linked above talking about the girl from Italy, I was actually talking to people on omegle before I even first met her. Because I remember I created a skype account to talk to her, and I remember this Australian girl asking for my skype and I didn’t have one at the time. When I said that I didn’t have one she started explaining to me how to create an account in some detail, gave me her username, and then told me to add her when I got the chance. For some reason, I’m really not sure why, I never did. I just have this fear that things will always go terribly wrong, so I never make any effort.

I think I’ve figuratively jacked myself off enough though, no one is interested in hearing me go through every single story like this. What I’m getting at is that I think I can safely say that I’m attractive to women, at the very least a certain subset of them, when I objectively look at all of these events together, but on a different day I’ll feel entirely different. And on top of these more memorable events like those talked about above there have been innumerable minor interactions or occurrences, like compliments I get from certain people, flirty female customers, people staring at me then looking away when I notice them and then staring at me again multiple times. It just doesn’t make sense because according to /r9k/ this kind of thing only happens to women or “Chads”, and I’m neither of those.

I’m not sure if I’ve bought into an entirely distorted view of the world, that being the whole blackpill/ lookism thing, or not. See until I started visiting /r9k/ I didn’t think about looks at all, I was completely naïve, I mean I wasn’t even aware that height was something women cared about. Though I’m 6’0 so I don’t even have that to blame for my situation either. Yet the worldview there nowadays is generally that the way you look is the most defining thing in life. Not just in dating/ relationships, although that area is where it’s most important, but in all areas of life. How people treat you, what opportunities are afforded to you, etc. And it’s not just basement dwelling incels who are saying this as is unfairly implied, it’s been studied and documented. There were mainstream news segments even in the 90s talking about it.

The halo effect is something that is pretty hard to deny, and there have been plenty of studies from official institutions/ universities as well. Which I won’t link, because I’m not going to link something I haven’t read and I’ll be honest I’ve only ever read responses to a lot of the studies on this subject not the actual papers themselves. That is either news sites publishing articles on the subject, or just random dorks on youtube. I’m not an academic and I never claimed to be. Of course most dating sites/ apps have revealed statistics that confirm what a lot of “blackpillers” seem to be saying. I’d check that link out quickly if you are interested, because the original article was removed shortly after it was posted and the archives of it get shut down frequently, for some strange reason.

You can go down that rabbit hole yourself though, if you want, that’s not what this blog is about. I’m influenced by that stuff, among other things, but I’ve always had some doubt. Which is because of my uncertainty about my own looks. Because on the one hand if you fully buy into this blackpill meme you’d say that what I’ve experienced is something only the top 20% of chads do, yet I couldn’t be further from a “chad”. I’m skinny, I’m concerningly pale from staying inside for days at a time, there are bags under my eyes. I’ve been told I have sharp features I suppose. In fact during my omegle days someone on there said I looked like a character that the artist Kaneoya Sachiko likes to draw (the artist behind the image in the header), her stuff gets posted on /r9k/ and other boards from time to time, and I’m not entirely sure whether that was a compliment or an insult. Looking back, I actually look much more like that now than I did at the time with my long hair. Anyway, maybe that look or aesthetic is appealing to a certain set of women, I’m not sure.

After all, I have very little real life experience, and I spent a lot of my later development surrounded by this kind of worldview online. I don’t know how normal my experiences are, the ones I was talking about above I mean, for years I’ve been spending hours of time a day with people who tell me that how you look is the only thing that matters. That women think the vast majority of men are not good enough, that if you’re attractive you literally can’t fail at life, that women have unlimited options and will only settle for 6’4 muscular billionaires who have cult leader tier charisma. Ok I was being hyperbolic on that last point, but supposedly the “top 20%”, that’s the figure that is very often given. To be fair, that OkCupid study does support it, and I’m pretty sure there was a very similar result found out by the stats people at Tinder.

There was a thread someone made talking about this subject recently actually, looks and attractiveness that is, and as it was something I had been thinking about a lot I replied. You can figure out my post pretty easily as it mirrors what I said in this blog entry, but it’s post number 52921078 if you just have to be certain, and someone replied to me with the same kind of thing I’m used to hearing when other anons talk about experiences similar to mine. That I am living in an entirely different world than ugly or average looking people, again assuming that I don’t fit into that category myself. I really just don’t know, as it doesn’t feel like I am experiencing a life too different from theirs.

If that were true why am I still a khv at almost 22 years old. I know this blog entry in particular without the context of my usual posts makes me seem really narcissistic and self absorbed, but I’m really not like that. I feel uncomfortable sharing this stuff, I feel uncomfortable even calling myself attractive (in my own head) on the days I feel like I am. The days where I’ll look in the mirror and think “looking good”. Of course, just as often I’ll look in the mirror and think I was an idiot for letting myself be deluded into thinking that. In that thread I just linked the guy right below me talked about how there are plenty of narcissists who think they’re more attractive than they are, and I’m a bit scared of being “that guy”.

I start to feel that maybe the whole blackpill mindset is not just toxic, but actually distorts your view on the world. This isn’t new of course, I’ve gone back and forth on this while having this blog. In some posts I’ve said I don’t buy it and in others I’ve said I do, this is just the first time I’ve really talked about it in any detail. Because you can’t reconcile the idea that I have been getting the attention I’ve got throughout my life because I’m secretly incredibly handsome (according to r9k) and also that being incredibly handsome means you’ll never have trouble finding a gf, as I’ve had a lot of difficulty with that. Ok, so you can say I’ve never tried, like people say about Elliot or sometimes just about incels in general. Sure I’ve never asked a girl out, or tried online dating, but if I still fuck up when I’m the one being asked out I’d only be even more nervous and spergy were it the other way around. I’m not interesting in seeking out humiliation.

So then I think that perhaps my experiences are actually a lot more normal than I was led to believe, which is hard to admit because it’s not like I don’t want to be secretly incredibly handsome, I just don’t think it’s actually true. Not only that, but it’s not like I’ve got anything else going for me. It’s a very easy cope to fall into because when you’ve got to my age and you haven’t ever been able to form a relationship with a woman, you have this voice in your head constantly telling you how useless and worthless you are. You’re nothing. It’s true as well, you’ve been metaphorically told you don’t deserve to exist by women, as a collective. Because of course there’s contraception so sex nowadays doesn’t necessarily mean birth, but it still represents it. You’ve been told that your genes, which are you in the most fundamental sense, shouldn’t continue.

Then I go back again because the exact opposite has happened, I’ve been so close so many times, and on top of that without making any effort myself. Not necessarily close to sex, some of these stories are from before I even hit puberty, but to intimacy or young love which are representative of it you could say. Most of these stories are from after puberty though, and the two most recent ones couldn’t have been any clearer. If a girl was asking to go out with me, it means that she was willing to sleep with me, in fact it means she wanted to. It means that I am desired, so why do I still not feel like that? Why do I feel like the most undesirable person on the planet? Why am I still alone? I’ve just thought about this now, but those two girls the other night were probably talking about me for some time before coming over. Maybe that’s not even the first time they’ve seen me, or at the very least the dark haired girl might have been past before. I wonder what they said, maybe if I knew it would help me.

I’ve tried to figure out what kind of girl it is who I seem to attract, by thinking about what it is that is shared by all the ones who’ve expressed interest in me in the past, but they’re all so completely different. Some were very shy while others were really extraverted and outgoing, some were complete turbonormie/ stacy tier and others were weird e-girls. Every single one of them was from a different ethnic background, from a pale redhead to an Ethiopian, how diverse! So, I don’t really know what I can do. I’m at a loss, to be quite honest with you fam. All I can say is that it’s kind of freeing to just be honest with myself, I am upset about being lonely and unwanted. I do wish I had a girlfriend, I don’t know why I feel like a bad person for admitting that. Maybe I’ve internalised this idea that because I don’t have one, I therefore don’t deserve one, and so I feel bad for wanting something I also unconsciously feel I don’t deserve. I’m not sure.

I don’t really know where else to go with this post, I’m tired and I think there was more I wanted to say, but I’m sure I’ll find a way to talk about it in another post if it really matters that much.

It’s lonely at the bottom

I’ve talked before about how I, and I believe a lot of people like me, fall into a trap of sorts. People who tend to spend a lot of time, perhaps too much, dwelling on things. I suppose being this way is what led me to eventually start this blog. Anyway I used the word “thoughtful”, and spoke about how these more thoughtful people can often convince themselves that they’re more intelligent than all the “sheeple” or “NPCs” or whatever new term might exist. Of course this is a fiction, at least that’s what I was trying to get across before. I don’t really want this post to be a rehash of that one, so I’m not going to spend too much time covering things I already spoke about in the past, but I just have a problem with those kinds of terms and the mindset behind them. The post I’m talking about was called “Thinking about thinking about things”, and it was posted October last year, if you are interested.

I’ve talked before about the probably not actually real roman tradition of the slave standing behind a general during a military triumph and whispering “memento mori” in his ear. This idea that it takes relatively little to convince people that they’re above everyone else, that they’re divine and “better”, is clearly something that has been understood since antiquity and I really do believe that the whole “sheeple” idea is another expression of that, the degree of seriousness is just different. Nowadays instead of great statesmen and military leaders getting that feeling from the roaring crowds cheering their name, you have normal people who commute or whatever who have a sense of superiority over the other people in the train carriage like in that pic I used in that other post. I say nowadays, but actually to be honest the normal day to day citizens of the roman empire or any other ancient civilisation were probably just as prone to such thoughts and the major political figures (or corporate leaders) of today are probably no different than the great figures of the past either.

It really does just seem to be something inherent, at the very least inherent to men. Now this is pure speculation, from someone who doesn’t have any kind of academic credentials whatsoever, but one idea I’ve had is that perhaps it’s an evolutionary trait. See, you kind of have to convince yourself you’re the best in order to justify being the one who reproduces, in an ancient/ stone age ooga booga times kind of environment I mean. Obviously I’m being a bit silly here, but hopefully you understand what I mean. I don’t want to just be another goof online who spouts “redpill” ideas because most of those people are just repeating things you’ve been told before but in increasingly dumbed down and less accurate ways. It’s not even that I disagree with most of it, what people call the 80/20 rule, terms like hypergamy, sexual marketplace, alpha/ beta male, etc etc. all the usual stuff. I’m kind of on board, a bit, or at least I have spent a great deal of time since my mid teens with those kinds of ideas around me. I’m trying to do my own kind of thing here though, and when those ideas influence me I might need to mention them as background, but that’s about all.

As I said I don’t really want to talk about that because having heard it all before, and I’m sure the same is true for some of you, it’s rather boring to go over. Rather I kind of want to build on it a little. See there’s a common thing that gets said, that you have twice as many female ancestors as male ones or something like that. This isn’t just a total asspull from incel philosophers like me (that’s a joke, I don’t have so little self awareness to seriously consider myself a “philosopher”) but something I’ve heard from actual legit academics and science magazines. I think it’s all something we kind of recognise, the whole meme about how women live life on easy mode being an expression of it. I think that it is undeniable that “finding a partner” being an actual difficult task is a male problem. I mean, the way women talk about their future children like it’s just a guarantee is really what gives it away. At the same time though they also seem to not get it, I mean you hear women ask things like “why are men so obsessed with sex” and it’s not a perfect analogy but just imagine someone from a modern first world country who can go to the supermarket and just pick food off the shelf asking why hunter-gatherer tribes in the amazon are obsessed with food. It’s absurd, isn’t it? I guess I’m just gatekeeping hunger now, I mean you still have to walk to the supermarket and pay for the food, people in modern first world countries get hungry too y’know, I’m just clearly a misog.. anti-firstworlder.

I’ll get back on topic in a second though, I’m giving off major incel vibes. I really like that expression btw, incel v i b e s, my friend said it to me last summer when talking about someone. It was when we were away on a camping trip, me and the only two friends I really have. I think I’ve mentioned this trip before briefly, but we were away for a few days and just went walking most of the time. It was also my first (and as of now only, because I haven’t found a good time to take those morning glory seeds yet) experience with psychedelics, but it was a mild dose of 2cb which is itself a very tame drug. Anyway, one of the days we took a really long walk over to this island (connected by a causeway) off the coast near where we were staying and up to the tip opposite the mainland. It’s shaped a little like a diamond or oval, and at this other end there’s loads of crags and cliffs and a lighthouse. It’s really spectacular, the waves smashing against the rocks can come really high up. I’ve actually been several times before with my dad when I was a lot younger. The area, a few hours drive from where I live, is very special to me and I have a lot of memories associated with it which is why I brought my two friends there.

Anyway, we were walking along this big open field just before getting to the end of the journey and were very tired. It was the height of summer, and one of my friends was struggling so much with the heat and a blister he got that he had to stop and me and the other friend went ahead to the café at the cliffs to get drinks for us all. So the final stretch before we got there was this long and wide open field, and we chatting and joking about this guy he knew of. Well, first we were talking about the heat and I said something like “right now I wish I was in Finland” and we were laughing about that and he mentioned that he actually knew someone who moved to Finland. This guy apparently met a girl online, some online dating site I think, and the madman actually moved to fucking Finland to meet her. So that was amusing and he was telling me more about the guy, and how he would often whine about tfw no gf, and that’s when my friend said it. It wasn’t “He gave me incel vibes” or I got incel vibes from him” it was just standalone. He said his story about the guy and then just at the end, like a cherry on top, “Incel vibes” and he chuckled a bit.

It’s a pointless story honestly, but for whatever reason it’s really stuck out to me. I like it a lot, it’s kinda funny in a way. In fact I was almost going to use it as the name for this blog, I’m actually still not sure whether I made the right choice. I think my mood, because of the situation at the time, may have influenced me to go with the title I have instead but looking at everything I’ve written both work fairly well. I mean this very post that I’m writing right now would fit perfectly under either title. On the one hand like I said (and what got me on to this topic in the first place) I’m certainly giving off incel vibes. This is not an “incel blog” by any means, again as I said I don’t just want to repeat things that have been said before because stagnation is death, but those very ideas have clearly had an influence on me and they do leak out. On the other hand, this post is very much me just rambling and the reason for that is indeed my neurosis. I hate to self diagnose, and I know it seems like nowadays everyone has a mental illness, but I think it’s fair for me to say that I’m not completely mentally healthy. After all I’ve been very isolated for a long while, take those two friends I mentioned who were on that trip with me. One of them I haven’t actually seen in person since, and that was like half a year ago now. The other I did see last night, but still I only see him in person an average of perhaps once every two or three months.

I do think being quite secluded most of my life has made things difficult for me in a lot of ways. I get unhealthily attached to people, and I don’t necessarily mean infatuated here it’s not a lower case romantic kind of thing. At least I don’t think it is, it’s hard for me to tell and that leads to further confusion. A lot of people are much more in tune with these kinds of things than me, and I’m realising now that I’ve come back around to what I was initially intending to talk about in this post, in a roundabout way. People like me, who will just endlessly waste their time thinking themselves to death tend to assume all problems can be solved by them thinking their way out. They might think they’re depressed because they don’t have friends or a gf or any goals, but then you’ll listen to some normalfag say something about how they started adding some herb into their meals and they felt better. Or they’ll suggest listening to music, and admittedly upbeat/ high energy music can in the short term affect my mood rather significantly. The weird thing is they just seem to know this stuff, and it’s so fucking alien to me because they’re literally talking about thoughts. Depression is ultimately just bad thoughts, and they chew some ginger root or whatever and something about hormone balance and bang! no more bad thoughts.

Not only does it just come naturally, the idea that if you’re having bad thoughts you shouldn’t continue with them and try to solve things internally but that you should just “do exercise for those endorphins bro”, but it’s not something that bothers them at all either. To me that’s kind of horrifying, that your thoughts aren’t really your own (and this is something that I do spend way too much time fretting over) is a scary idea. That you just need to min-max nutrients and vitamins like life is an RPG and that will literally change how you perceive what’s going on around you is a big deal. I’ve spoken before about religious stuff, and yes I have a very limited knowledge of religious philosophy and theology, but my current way of seeing things as I explained in much more depth in older posts is that God is kind of like all possible knowledge at once. That thought, ideas, etc. are our divine aspect. We are all made in the image of God, at least I think that’s what the bible says, and people take that to mean our material forms, two arms, two legs, standing upright, relatively hairless, and so on are what is meant by that. This is where the whole bearded man in the sky thing comes from and perhaps that’s part of it but I imagine pre-Christian depictions of deities like Zeus/ Jupiter are as well. My point though, is that God is a metaphysical being, the anthropomorphic God is silly and this is why fundamentalists are such cancer. No, it’s thought or reason which separates us from animals. Divinity is immaterial, you cannot touch or smell it. I also see ideas of enlightenment in eastern traditions like Buddhism as getting at the same thing, but again I have even less understanding of those.

If thought is just another part of instinct, which I guess I kind of also contradictorily agree with sometimes because a lot of evo-psych ideas sound rather plausible to me (clearly, after all I was spouting similar stuff myself in this very post), then how can you take any thought you have seriously. It just puts me in this constant state of self doubt, which again I can’t help but obsess over like I always do. It’s quite the conundrum, I feel like I might never achieve any sense of freedom from these thoughts, it can be quite oppressive. I know that these evo-psych ideas have this negative effect on me because of something that has been happening recently in fact, and which I was hoping I’d find a reason to talk about in this post actually just to vent.

So I found out my manager is quitting, she’s been here since I started of course and is the one who gave me the job. I know it’s the boss I work for, but it was her who gave me the interview and I imagine ultimately made the choice for me to start working there officially. So, I’ve been thinking that I should say some kind of thank you for that, but it’s very difficult for me. I don’t speak a lot, I’m not articulate at all or able to just rattle on forever about something like I do in my head or in writing here. I’ve explained it how I see it before, like there’s a cage that I’m trapped inside of when I’m outside with other people and I can shake the bars and scream all I want but my body (the cage in question) will just continue on awkwardly brute forcing through any interaction in a very forced and unresponsive way. The only sign of life is my hands shaking noticeably when I’m particularly stressed. I imagine that some of you, those who came from /r9k/, experience a similar thing although maybe not as severe.

So I decided that I had the right idea the last time and that I should write a letter, a more substantial one this time not just a little note but a real letter. Which is why this post is kind of a hastily done thing, I know I’m no longer holding myself to the weekly upload thing but I still want to be writing something always and this is kind of what I’ve been doing to take my mind off of the letter which is what I’ve been giving most of my attention to. I know it sounds silly, it’s going to be a few paragraphs long, shorter than any post I’ve made here so why is it taking such focus and time? Well the thing is it’s like every line I type I have to redo 100+ times, it’s like a minefield because as I was saying I’ve been isolated for a lot of my life and I have a lot of difficulty knowing the various societal boundaries there are. I really have a difficult time knowing what is and isn’t appropriate, after all this is a married woman. So I’ll admit I’m nervous about it seeming like I’m trying to confess my secret feelings for her or something when (in this specific instance) I’m really not. Yes, the fact that last time I actually did have secret feelings for the person I left the note for might also be causing me to worry this way I’m aware of that too.

I’m just not sure, I know I’m not able to say something in person whenever the last time I see her may be I’m just too much of a coward and I can’t get more than a couple sentences out without spilling my spaghetti. Not just with her obviously, with practically anyone even other guys. I’m saying that because the whole spaghetti meme is usually really only associated with an object of one’s affection, oneitis I suppose. Not that this woman is unattractive, although she is quite a lot older than I am, in fact I think she’s rather aware of how pretty and pleasant to be around men find her given some things I’ve heard her say before. Which is exactly my problem, I can’t help but think that when you’re a good looking woman and have been hit on by countless men since your late teens you must become a bit jaded. Any expression of genuine affection or appreciation from a guy (particularly a younger one) that isn’t an attempt to get something, that isn’t anything other than just a “thanks for what you did for me”, will not seem so. It will appear to be just more of the same, just more empty male words to get in your pants.

It’s back to the whole “nice guys” meme again, you know this idea that “nice guys” aren’t actually nice they’re just trying to get you to sleep with them but in a sneaky way. It’s easy to dismiss those people at first, after all you know you’re actually genuinely nice right? and you know truly internally, you understand your own motivations and they’re not just to “get laid” or whatever a few harpies with the thousand cock stare have to say. Then the self doubt creeps in, all that evo psych stuff you’ve been surrounded by. What if it is all some strategy you’ve adopted without even being consciously aware of it. Is everything I say and everything I think, not actually what I say and think truly but entirely at the whim of the animal I inhabit’s needs and urges? Is free will, true choice, an illusion. Now I’m starting to get into the hard determinism thing, which I have also been thinking about a lot lately after a really fascinating thread on /lit/ but I do plan to make an entirely separate post for that subject so I’m going to steer clear now.

I know that last time when I left the note for the other girl who left I felt bad after, I kind of regret it now and instead wish I hadn’t done it. The reason though is because I regret having feelings for her at all, because between thinking about how little I really knew her and understanding the way desperate people can delude themselves I realised that my thoughts were kind of “not my own”, which as I was just talking about is something that I spend a lot of time thinking about and being concerned by. This case is kind of different, even with the weird evo-psych ideas about secret unconscious mating strategies it doesn’t matter, because consciously I know I’m not trying anything with this woman. I’ve never had any kind of fantasy, or daydream, like I would have fairly often about oneitis girl. I’m so conflicted, I know it seems so stupid that I’m almost having a crisis over this crap but it’s really kind of more a catalyst if you think about it.

Here’s the situation, I’ve had a couple days to think now. This entire post other than going forward of course was written primarily in one evening, kind of rushed over a few intense hours and now I’ve had a couple of days my head is a little clearer. I stopped writing that letter, but I think I will finish it. I don’t think that I will be giving it to her though, and I will explain. Tonight there’s a gathering/ social thing and the entire team is going to a restaurant and the pub. There was a group card and we all had to leave a short note goodbye there. I didn’t get to say everything I feel I’d like to, but after that and also the goodbye messages in the group text chat anything else would start to feel a little cloying and excessive I feel. Which is exactly the opposite of what I want, see I’ve had time to think and I realised that I was more doing this for me than for her.

I was thinking about it and I realised that I was being kind of reductive by assuming the only desirable role that women can play in a male’s life would be that of a romantic/ sexual partner. See my thinking was that even though I feel quite sad about this woman leaving, because I don’t see her that way, the warm feelings I have for her are something “pure” or “true” or dare I say it “platonic”. Then I remembered what I’ve spoken about before, that maybe because my mother passed away I’m looking for a mother figure almost as a replacement or at the very least to kind of fill that missing need, and that maternal role may be how I’ve been seeing this woman. As I did with that other woman who trained me and then was fired right after I started. Now on the one hand this is quite helpful, it would mean that I’m not secretly and unconsciously trying to long game my way into getting laid which would kind of make me disgusted with myself. On the other hand though it still means that my feelings are conditional on biological or at least psychological needs, so I’m still to a degree not in full control of my thoughts if this is an accurate way of seeing things.

Anyway, whatever is the case I cannot know what other people will think, and I care a great deal about what other people think of me. I don’t have any good reason to assume that were I to write such a letter, this woman would give even half as much thought to these things as I have. It’s very possible that she’d just assume I did secretly have feelings for her all along, I mean I have good reason to think this because of something she said at the last social event. The topic of tips came up, we leave a tip jar at the front of the counter. Now most of the time people just drop change loose change in there they don’t want to keep, and an actual larger tip is less common. So we were talking about those larger tips, I don’t remember exactly why, and she said something about how it’s “usually men”. This is the problem I face, I remember these little comments people make that usually go ignored and I read into them maybe more than I should but I can’t help it.

So, if I leave this letter and that is the assumption made about me then her last impression of me will be forever tarnished, any positive memory of me will be stained by this idea that all along I had some ulterior motive. If she has a similar way of seeing things as I do, and she thinks I’m just a kid looking for a mother figure, she probably would be more understanding at least. Nevertheless that is still an imposition, I’m putting her in a role that she never wanted to be in. This is an adult with a life of her own, I’ve developed some kind of warmth for her because I have very few people in my life and most people in my situation wouldn’t have. It is certainly inappropriate either way, and while at least it would be accurate to be remembered this way it would still be unfortunate. So it’s a 1/3 chance that I’m remembered as… idk a sleaze? or maybe more accurately a failed one (either of which are completely absurd if you know anything about me), a 1/3 chance that I’ll be remembered as a developmentally stunted weakling, and a 1/3 chance that I’ll be remembered fondly without any baggage placed on top..

Wait, no that’ll never happen not in this culture. Outside of maybe certain reactionary circles I don’t think anyone believes there are pure intentions anymore, in fact I think even those people are just pretending to themselves as well. So it’s more like 50/50, and I’m not sure I’m willing to take those odds, when it comes to something like how I’ll be remembered, which as I said is incredibly important to me. Like I said I do still plan to finish this letter, so I haven’t made my mind up 100% yet. I suppose that my decision rests on the answer to one more question, if I don’t leave the letter what will be the impression of me that is left with her? Will I even be remembered. or is this just another person quickly drifting through my life with me as a brief distraction?