As I'm wandering

I have ADHD. I have always had ADHD. I have struggled with ADHD symptoms my entire life and it has played a significant part in the difficulties I have encountered and which have weighed heavily on my self-image and quality of life. It took me 25 and a half years, but finally I have an answer and I have medication which allows me to function.

I can be present in the moment now.

I can focus on what I feel.

I can listen and take note at the same time.

I can carry a conversation.

I feel more awake.

I have energy.

Life suddenly feels like something good and fun again.

I won't make this long because I'm still reckoning with all the implications of the medication effects I'm feeling and I want to be able to work today. I just need to note this down for a second because it's so significant and I want to be able to remember this.

I am so incredibly thankful for my partner who's holding me through the entire experience. We've been together three months today and I can't explain how grateful I am for their presence in my life. We share many experiences and we understand a large part of the struggles we've both faced and it's just so incredible to have found this person.

I am so nervous and overwhelmed because of the effects of my medication, while at the same time they calm me completely. I found rest in them yesterday on day 1 of my meds and just laid down on their chest for an hour, taking in the feeling of actually actively feeling someone's skin, their breathing, the way my body finds theirs. Also just being able to openly talk to someone who knows me so well and who understands what I'm feeling is incredible.

I am truly the luckiest person alive to be able to experience this, I am so lucky I still had enough energy to allow myself to fall for them, I am so privileged to be able to pay for the medication I need so that I can be a good partner for them in return and to be able to enjoy my life, on my own but most definitely with them in it. I'm so deeply in love and I can actually feel that now and I am so in awe.

I'm so happy and somehow also scared because this truly feels too good to be true.

In the last several posts I have mentioned friendship more and more. During the past year this has been the main theme of my days, in good, neutral and destructive ways.

I have a very intense friend group and I have a sense of gratefulness for them, but I recognize certain difficulties that I need to verbalize once.

Primarily I need to highlight mental health, and mostly that how prominent it is in the interactions with my friends has become unbearable. While I love that there is no taboo and that everyone can be emotional, the line gets crossed for me when we start taking up a therapeutic role in each others lives. I need to be able to show my raw emotion without it being used later on as a cause of almost a diagnosis or an argument in why I don't have control over myself. We have completely let go of the notion that we all have different experiences and different causes for the things we struggle with. While everyone has the full right to struggle and show it, it's not healthy to transpose your own experience and therapy to someone else and simplify their experience and struggles to the mold that fits your own experience. We do not have full knowledge of someone, no one but that person has. Making that for example certain tendencies may originate in a disorder for one person, but be caused by the environment of another. Or even more importantly, that they may originate from a completely different disorder that needs different treatment.

I have talked about this but I don't get heard at all. I have a certain understanding of myself that has been built through very deep struggling and it is what I take immense pride in, but I get invalidated when I speak about what I understand myself to experience in the context of someone else having talked about similar things with their therapist and needing to convince me that my understanding is wrong and their therapy is correct. While I don't want to deny that it may be correct for them, it is not necessarily for me and talking to me as if I am wrong about myself because I disagree is a judgement of the understanding I have of myself as well as an assumption that you know better somehow, which is infantilising.

Another aspect that I have been struggling with is depth of connection and the link with love.

Three of my friends have been close to me for a year. One has been close to me for five years. There is a deep connection between me and the latter, one that has withstood an immense amount of heartache but also laughter and joy. That is fundamentally different from the relationship I have with the others, which has been forged by first finding comfort in each other during difficult times and then became a group dynamic where everyone was held to an equal standing. But I have realized that I do not see them all the same and I do feel as if my best friend had started to see me as one of the others. And in the same line that the others tell me how to behave towards my best friend from the point of view of how they want me to behave towards them. I shouldn't have believed and followed their advice but I did and it has fucked up my friendship.

Recently through experiencing the pain of not feeling like I still have a best friend as a result of this, I've realized something that I'm not sure if I can mention because I don't know how I will respond if it's not reciprocated: I like all my friends and care about them, but I love my best friend. For a while I wondered if I was going through such a difficult time because I was in love with my best friend, I really have been trying to repress the intensity of my feelings for them as a result because that would have explained why I so desperately wanted to have a closer connection again and it would be almost unfair of me to mask that within friendship. But recently I've realized that I'm this is not a romantic feeling. I simply have a very pure and deep love for them, which has been feeling one sided and which hurts somehow more than unreciprocated romantic feelings. This is far deeper than a crush would be. This is an experience of kinship and finding an extension of yourself in another, without falling into the well of transposing my struggles, but rather recognizing and amplifying my joy in another person.

And I miss joy deeply, I miss the understanding and I miss the kinship.

And losing that is worse than breaking up with someone, it's losing who made the vast expanse of life that extends beyond romantic love enjoyable.

Maybe this is codependency, although I am surviving and living and finding some level of joy with others (even newer friends), but I refuse to diagnose it as a problem. It's a pure love that I now know I can feel and that I am allowed to grieve, but also fight for.

I've know so many different types of pain, both physical and emotional, but not a single one has been as prominent and enduring as the pain I feel now being exposed to who once was my best friend no longer being so while a different person is taking over the role I filled in their life.

If my friends were not all interconnected I would distance myself because this breaks me every time I see them, but I don't have another place to hide but with myself.

And I am treated as if my hurt is me feeling attacked. I can't understand why it is so hard to see that what I'm experiencing is the worst and most stretched out heartbreak of my life. I no longer am close to the person that is the most important to me. And I fought to avoid it, I did all I could, but at the core I was the one that fucked it up beyond repair. It was me that lost the last chance we would recover and for that I will forever carry anger at myself.

I fucked up the purest thing I had. And no matter how hard I tried I lost it, even worse, I saw it being recovered by the person I fucked my friendship over with.

And while that doesn't make it any less my doing, it makes being around them, being what we once were so much more painful.

Because I'm no more than a bad memory now. Seeing my pain is causing them frustration and it makes me want to hide it but I can't always. Often I'm good enough at it to put on a mask for the necessary time but it falls the second I acknowledge the pain or if it's verbalized to me that the friendship has diminished (and that I have to accept it, as if I haven't by just internalizing my hurt to let them enjoy their time).

I don't know how long I can carry this because this hurt is not weaning. Some mornings I wake up and feel completely taken over by pain and I lose control of my thoughts for hour on end.

So I take walks and I write here and I try to breathe my way out of my pain. But am I not just making it worse by seeing them?

I don't have other places where I don't see them where there isn't some level of intrusion of them in the periphery. So I can only really avoid the pain by being alone or with family that has no link.

When I was younger, between 14 and 18 years old, I was to be described in many lonely ways. But not all of them bad. One of the things that defined me was that I was driven by nothing than desire for the future. I was passionate beyond my current comprehension, because what I wanted most dearly in life was to be in love with my day to day.

It faded somewhat during the start of my studies, thinking that I had now set course on what I intended to do, just following through was the next goal. Not to forget as well that I had friends for the first time. I even had a very easy friendship, one that worked without thinking, which to me at that time was something that I had never known.

And I lost sight somewhat of me aside from who I was in those moments. With the small exception that that friendship did at times allow me to verbalize the dreams I already had, and supported me in those ideas, but I still didn't dream up new passions.

When COVID hit, that friendship weaned and I met my ex partner with whom a new relationship formed (which would be the best thing, the most impactful thing and the most devastating thing in the next four years), I lost track of myself completely by running away from the horrors of my own mind in lockdown with my family members that were all losing their minds in their own way.

After the pandemic there was the time of seemingly reaching my goals but having no weight on them anymore. My only dream was to not have a cloudiness in my mind anymore, because I couldn't feel anything truly deeply and forming thoughts unrelated to interaction with others didn't work anymore. The past few years have been defined by a near permanent panic and tense friendships that were no longer easy, not in the way I had known. All while I struggled to focus on my work or even my hobbies.

There is no more me left that spends time with just herself. In a not completely unexpected turn of events I let go of the isolation that defined my youth and by doing so ignored the deep-rooted need to have time to think.

I can spend days on my own, when I do it on purpose, but lately I have looked at time alone as time to do nearly mandated recreational activities. Because sitting alone in silence for several hours isn't exactly considered as healthy, I have disregarded it as an option. And I think that just that is what I need to do to get back to myself.

Yesterday evening and well into the night my mind started spinning off track due to something small that pushed me off my well constructed and usual track. As tends to happen more often as of late. It was the first time in what must be almost five years where I allowed myself to talk into the silence and verbalize the needs that I have and the panic and fear I carry.

I spent time consoling myself over the pain I have been feeling and didn't include anyone else in this and it felt effective. After it I could find rest.

Today the breakup is looping through my brain, likely because I am giving a presentation about my love life tonight (it seemed like a good idea when we planned it). Or maybe because it's my birthday in two days, the first one without her since 2019. Or maybe even because she left for camp today and we always ended up far apart by the end of her camps.

No matter why, today I've been missing her. So fucking much.

Today I've been feeling the crushing hug again that she gave me when I picked her up at the train station the evening we broke up. The hug that made me realize it would be over by the morning.

The way I tried to ignore it for as long as I could that night by curling up to her and trying to enjoy her warmth. The way I couldn't do it and just ended up asking her to say it.

I remember her handing me the letter and reading it, being broken but knowing exactly what was coming. Having known it was coming for months. And then getting up and giving her my own letter where I had written I couldn't do it anymore.

The crying over the end, but also the slight relief of the tension being broken echoes through my body.

I remember having the first real open conversation in months with her in the bed we shared that night, honest and with nothing more to lose.

I remember how she begged me to call in sick in the morning, because she didn't want it to be real just yet.

And then came the numbness.

But I also remember seeing her again about a week later and holding hand and kissing sneakily, as if we were teenagers hiding from their parents.

And I see all the times we were the good versions of ourselves together afterwards, not together, but warm and comfortable with each other.

How we finally managed to talk again and to enjoy the calm with one another. However few and far between, because we lived our lives separately now.

I don't know if there is reason to believe there's a future, but today I feel the love I have for her deeply. And it worries me, because that means I'm not moving on. But on the other hand knowing that I miss her and that there is love at the end of the storm of emotion I've felt also allows me to verbalize that I do want to be together again.

I don't have expectations of others. It sounds almost boasting, not like something I can truly claim, how can you not expect anything of others?

I don't, but there's no positive explanation for it.

In any type of relationship I have in my life, I have let go any responsibility you could possibly expect someone to take over their interactions and behavior towards me. I don't assume anyone will be there for me or care for me, I take no offense on being left alone or being treated in a way that makes me feel set aside. This can be with friends, family or a partner.

There's two beliefs I have that cause this, I think:

I believe that any hurt I receive is born from an inherent failure of my being, that I am evil at my core and any hurt I get is caused by my own wrongs. My pain is my own doing.

I believe that making me feel cared for is too difficult and I can't expect others to go through figuring out how to do it or to act on what I indicate will make me feel better.

In the end they come down to the same conclusion: I feel undeserving of love. I feel as if there is no other person that could desire me or want to be there for me, when it really comes down to what would help me feel better.

When this is discussed in my life, because it shows that I let myself be treated horribly, I say that I simply don't believe that any adult holds responsibility over another. What I don't add is that what comes in turn is that I believe that how you treat another is based fully on how you want to treat that person and whether you want them in your life or not.

And I've been treated badly by people that I desperately wanted around, which has enforced the idea that I am not wanted. I'm not talking about events or singular decisions here, that would link everything another does to my presence, which is fucked up in its own right, I'm talking about consistent trends when I have already spoken about the effect they have on me.

It's worse when the people I have fought the hardest to keep around have told me I deserve to be cared for, but not by them, that they can't give me what I need. Then every insecurity of my own desires being too much for anyone is reinforced, regardless of my own attempts at being there for them in the way they want.

That does cause me to pull away, which is something I can freely be blamed for. I end up alone because I tend to feel unwanted in life, which just cycles.

I don't have expectations, but there are things I desperately want.

I want someone to just every now and then remind me that I am someone they in general like having in their life. And in case of a partner that I am to them someone they desire, not just sexually but as the person the closest to them.

Tell me you like my softness and don't hit me in the face with it as weakness. Or I'll just hide myself away and disappear.

Show me by wanting to spend time with me, actively pursuing being around me and not just tolerating me when I'm there.

And maybe for fucking once someone please listen to me when you see me disappearing instead of blaming me for my silence? I promise I told you why.

Lately my quiet days have been more difficult to get through.

It has been an intensely busy few weeks, which has allowed me to focus on working (be it not for my job, but that's a different story) and dimmed the intensity of the ebb and flow of loneliness I have been feeling since my last relationship crumbled. But now life is calming down outside of my working hours and it is starting to leave me alone with my thoughts more often.

Instead of falling asleep out of pure exhaustion after a busy but well spent evening, I now have time to miss someone next to me when I go to bed. I self soothe more lately, moving my fingers across my own skin, just to feel gentle touch, which is to this day the only type of affection I truly understand.

But it's so much broader than just the physical. There is no one I can be open to without any filter, that I can fully trust with my being, no one is truly easy to talk to, because I don't feel safe to talk and it makes me panic, which in turn makes me say the wrong thing or stumble over my words. When I'm truly feeling at easy talking is never a problem and now that I don't permanently fill a role where I'm expected to function, I'm not at ease. With my friends I can't be at ease, because there are so many expectations on how I need to behave and they're not unfair, but I need to actively handle my behavior, instead of just being. It's not easy, it's actively difficult because my needs don't align with the needs of others. And when some expectations are absolute needs, but they don't match with your own natural capabilities or even needs, it means someone can't behave without actively controlling what they do and how they do it.

I remember the ease from early on in my past relationship, where I felt good and wanted, where of course I still took her into account, but we were light and talked openly and sometimes allowed each other to just be quiet but we would hold each other even if life sucked beyond compare and talking about it wasn't what helped. There wasn't the requirement of telling someone what exactly you want, it was the calming knowledge that the person you want to be supported by would try different things until they found what helped.

That's something that takes a mountain of effort and I would never expect from a friend. But someone who I can fully trust and who wants me and works with me through difficulty, that's what would help, because then the happy me isn't locked below the sad me who can't be let out because that control and open sadness can't exist together.

Instead of only writing when life is too heavy to carry without expressing the pain, I wanted to write about getting a little better and what I've learned in the meantime.

The week off from work and away from my responsibilities was deeply needed and for the first time in months I have some semblance of calm in my mind. Of course the fact that I now have my own place in the world again is helping too. 2024 will be the year of moving out and I can already feel the peace of having my own time returning to my soul. Living in between places was making me feel constantly rushed: there was no time for rest, which I needed.

Instead of new years resolutions, I would like to note a few old years lessons, because they're worth remembering.

I need time alone. Not just a few hours of reading, but taking trips on my own. Not talking and just living. It calms me down and gives me peace.

I often struggle socially because I stumble over my words. It's not always there, but sometimes I stumble and it fully blocks me and brings me down. It's something to keep in mind, maybe I could even solve this?

Other people influence my mood more than I do myself. Interactions with others define my days, sometimes it's a high, but more often than not, interaction (or unexpected lack thereof) will bring me deep down. I want to find a balance in this.

I find it nearly impossible to forgive myself. I will rarely mess up, I always want to be as morally sound as possible. It's in the inevitable moments where I fail to do so, that I realize I don't know how to deal with fuck ups. And I will fuck up again, because I'm not infallible, I'm human. It wouldn't hurt to allow myself some forgiveness, but that's something I haven't yet learned to do.

It's difficult for me to focus. Be it social media, having a difficult time mentally, a random occurrence during my day, I have been struggling to focus on work. I'm trying to get better at this, but it's a slow process and I hope that I learn quickly, because I actually care about my job now.

My self image is infused with self hatred. It needs work, and I am working on it, because it's at the root of far too many problems. I've been confident before, right before the world fell apart, there is a me that can breathe easily, I need to find that part of myself again.

I don't always feel my feelings, sometimes I only think them. It scares me sometimes. I used to believe it made me evil. Sometimes I still believe that, but now I do know that there actually are indeed feelings that if feel.

I'm already handling myself quite well. Despite all I've been through last year, I can recognize that I understand and control myself enough to be healthy in how I cope. That deserves my own respect.

My true needs will be answered, if I allow myself to do so. I can give myself everything I truly need to survive. It will be more difficult on my own, but I can offer it. I've seen it this past year. I can do this.

In an attempt to formulate what's going on in my head, I'm going to type out my thoughts as I believe them here, rather than the rationalizations I usually write. That means this will be fairly dark and hold some mention of suicidal thoughts and general very negative self talk. If these are things you struggle with, I would advise you to stop reading. I'm just writing this to get it out of my head so I can see how irrationally negatively I look at myself.

Lately I've been struggling with who I am and want to be.

When I was younger, mostly during my late teens, I had this very clear moral goal set for myself. I was still in a simpler setting, where right and wrong was seemingly easier to identify, life was less nuanced and I had less connections to the life I was leading, none of it was what I had sought, it was just what I was born into.

I didn't have people around me who I had chosen and with whom I would experience the theoretical behavior I wanted to show. Being a kind and steady friend is a lot easier in theory than in practice.

When I got older and met people I would grow close with, I learned that once connections grow deeper, purely defining yourself on how you want to fulfill a role in the life of others doesn't suffice.

For 23 of my 24 years I've had the focus on my role for others, sometimes in ways that I still find pride in. I will never curse my kindness and being someone others count on, but I've been forced to focus on my own intentions for the first time this year.

But that left me in a space where I now had to navigate combining my own desires with being the person in the lives of others I had always set out to be. And I realized I'd never done that before.

I'm not saying that being a good friend was against my own interest, far from it, but for the first time I was pausing on choices where I would before always have ignored what I wanted in favor of whatever made my friends feel best.

And I've made mistakes in choosing myself.

After a rush of experiences I've gotten to the point where I'm reflecting on myself as a person and I find that I don't know how to set course. Right now I chose to start with the kindness I hope to express and to then move from there. But I need to accept that I am morally flawed and that I will have desires that don't match up with centering others. Simply because I need to center myself at least in my own mind.

With that I don't mean I should act on every impulse, but I can't hold my mind to a rational moral standard, because then I diminish myself to nothing but a servant to others.

Two years and a bit later and I'm in a completely different life.

Short summary: I stayed with my ex after she cheated, we got over it but the feeling she had that she wasn't ready for a serious relationship loomed over us. Beside that I was progressing through my studies and I graduated with honors in July of 2022. Quickly after I took an an engineering job at a multinational.

The job didn't really match with me and I was constantly out of the country and away from my friends and my ex. It weighed a lot on me and my relationship, which was going through more downs than ups at that point with me being in a bad place generally and her still longing for her independence from a partner. It got better for a while in the beginning of this year, but she left on a semester abroad in February and that's when things started changing.

She didn't want me to stay too close during that time, she was too far away for me to be able to visit without preparation and she didn't want me to plan any visits or really to talk to me too much. For the first two months I kept a daily sort of diary for her about my life with short notes about things I would love to tell her that day, reading it back now it's heartbreaking because you can see me falling apart slowly. After a few months it all cracked. Me sending her that I loved her would make her cringe and just in general anything that referenced us as romantic partners would make her close off.

At that point my mental health started shattering. I hated my job and I knew I was losing my relationship. Because I was away so often it was also hard to get support from my friends, I was living far away from them and I was too lonely to get myself out of it. So I started to go to a therapist.

Slowly I worked on understanding myself better, to give myself the space to think and to process what was going on in my head and my heart.

Once my ex came back it was clear we were done. It took about a month and a half where I saw her maybe 4 times before we finally sat together and told each other we couldn't do this anymore. From her perspective she couldn't be in a relationship right now and from mine I couldn't be someone that was the worst part of someone's day. It was destroying me to be actively unwanted, not necessarily for who I am but for simply filling a role that she didn't have room for. So we ended it after three years together.

A week later I sent an e-mail asking about PhD positions to my thesis promotor, three days later he responded that he wanted to look into it with me and I went to pride and kissed my friends (I had a situation with one of them after that also broke off, which is a whole other story), four days after pride I booked a meeting with my promotor and quit my job. Three weeks later I got a PhD position which is what I'm currently spending my days with.

Life is still difficult to navigate, but I need to be grateful as well that I'm here now. If the me of April this year would see me now, I think she'd cry. I'm not where I want to be yet, not professionally, personally or mentally, but I got myself out of my lowest point.

I'm dealing with a lot still. My ex and I still talk and it's clear that we still haven't finished this completely. There is a lot of love left there from both sides and it's not clear to me where my romantic life is going to head. I want to be loved well though, I understand now that I need to be actively wanted. I need a partner that wants me around as their standard, I want to be with someone that wants to take steps with me (in due time), someone that wants to move in together, that wants to have a life together, so we aren't just updating each other about our separate lives, that we live a part of each others life as well.

But I also think I need to literally & figuratively fuck around a little before I can try doing that again.

My next step is moving out of home, I don't know when that will be, but I'm working on it.

It's been a year and a half and honestly I forgot about this blog, but when shit goes very wrong, it's where I turn to. So that being said: shit is very wrong.

I've been in a serious relationship for over a year now, with someone I was intending to try for forever with. And she cheated on me. In a serious, not considering that it would break me, way.

I'm not okay, I'm fucking broken and still I decided to try to get through this together. The thing is, my trust as it stood is irreparably broken. She doesn't realise the level at which I'm fucking rupturing at the seams trying not to fall apart I think. I'm a fucking honest person, I don't lie and would never in my fucking life mistreat her. I know you shouldn't say this about yourself but I did not fucking deserve this.

The only thing that helps is that I do understand this wasn't about me, but rather the idea of a relationship that carries a lot of responsibility and weight.

That doesn't help a lot though. Nothing helps a lot. I need space and yet I don't want to have to miss her and I'm just feeling like absolute shit.

So I have feelings for three different people...

Well I am dating one person who I like and have beginning feelings for, I have one friend who I think might like a little more than would be cosidered friendly (and it's pretty mutual that way) and then there's my ex who I still see regularly and am not entirely over.

It's all complicated and this time is a weird to interpret feelings in, so I don't know what is actual feelings and what is just me being lonely, but this is still on my mind a lot.

What I can say is that my (so far unofficial) girlfriend is someone I have really good chemistry with and so far like spending time with when I can. Also we've slept together several times an I wouldn't mind continuing that habit once quarantine is over.

My confusing feelings friend is someone I've only known for a short amount of time but I'm super intrigued by her and if she wasn't someone that my friend used to have feelings for I would probably have jumped at the chance of letting it evolve (but friendship does take priority and I'm not even single so I won't go for it).

And then there's my ex who has completely shattered my heart twice and who still occupies my mind from time to time. She's the first girl I kissed and also the first person I've liked who liked me back at one point. We work together and we're working on a tentative friendship because we both didn't want to lose that, but no matter what I do, no matter who I kiss, she's always there in my mind even if it's only for a moment.

This just sucks because I feel like it's unfair to my date mate but I can't stay single to heal forever, part of moving on is actually moving on with someone new so I took the plunge and now I'll see it through. It's just so insanely frustrating to have all these feelings for people and guilt intertwined in all of it...

Take breaks. For real. And don’t spend them at your desk on your phone, actually go outside for five to ten minutes, get some air. You’ll feel less exhausted after. 

Find something to reward yourself with as a longer break, I personally go running for half an hour every other day to get my mind of things. It keeps me calm and gives me something to look forward to.

Drink water, screw energy drinks they’ll make you dependent on them and can cause you to crash during the actual exam. Water or tea (or a limited amount of coffee) will allow you to be hydrated and functioning without making you ignore what your body needs.

Which brings me to: get your rest, don’t think all-nighters are the solution, because they are not. Only if you have an amazing short term memory and the course is purely knowledge than you might be able to pull off one, but the second you need to have skills more than knowledge, an awake mind will get you a lot farther than having read every chapter again while you were half asleep. 

Stop listening to other people you are in class with when it comes to their study schedules, please, everyone has other schedules.

yeah

So romantic things didn’t work out. I’m feeling fairly shitty about the whole thing, partly because I was very excited about this possible relationship, but also because the other person is someone that’s been a close friend for a long time and we see each other frequently.

I’m not a stranger to being rejected, which is not a plea for sympathy. It allows me to assess just how I know to get over this. It’ll take a while and the friendship will probably never be the same as before, but in time I think the pain and the insecurity it brings me will fade. 

I’m still having a good time in my life all things considered. School is hard, not gonna deny that. And I realise I’m not being the kindest person I can be to my friends, so that I’ll have to fix. But all in all I can’t complain. 

I think it might be time to focus on myself and my friendships for a little while. Right now I feel like I’m becoming a character, one with many traits, but I realise I’m starting to act as to be in accordance to those traits, instead of being authentic.

So that’s something I’m gonna be working on now.

More than a year I think.

But guess what: I'm doing good!

Okay that might be trying to be a little overexcited, but in all honesty I really am. I'm almost completely done with my second year, only one exam left on Tuesday that I should, all things considered, pass without a lot of problems.

My grades aren't exactly amazing, but they suffice and I'm still standing and taking up all my classes so academically I'm honestly a model student.

My personal life over this last year has had insane shifts, at least that's what they feel like to me.I had my heart broken twice, which I'll admit, was painful as hell, but I came out of both of those and recently something happened that makes up for both of those. (More on this when I'm not scared of jinxing it anymore...)

Aside from my romantic life I've formed kind of a family unit with my dorm mates, specifically with one of them who is something akin to a brother now. I mean he's closer than my brother but it's very different, well, argh, we're just really close.

My gay life is also now just part of my daily life, which is a change I didn't expect or plan.

Starting from October I am taking up a function in the LGBTQ group to lead activities, I've told my mom enough about them that I now can just go on weekends, there are people that I think could become life long friends and l... well I'm in love with someone I met there, again, well see how that turns out later.

So all in all, shit has been good, some might say amazing. But my brain is still a little bitch sometimes and that does make enjoying it all a little harder.But I'm good right now.

Shit it’s been long.

But I’m here now so I’m writing this. My second semester passed in the blink of an eye and now it’s August 17th and I’m studying for the three exams I have to retake. My first one is in three days. 

Honestly I don’t want to write about those, I want to tell y’all about something else. 

I’ve changed. A lot.

This last year was without a doubt the best year of my life. But I didn’t start out feeling that way. When I started I absolutely despised being away from home every week and not being the same straight-A student I used to be.

I was rereading my old posts and I remember the way I felt when I wrote them, I was lonely, stressed and I didn’t think I’d ever finish the second semester. And now here I am, in the top 30 percent of all 560 engineering freshmen with (only) three retakes in a course where the majority has 5+. 

It’s not just my capabilities as a student that changed. I’m so freaking different as a person. 

I made two really good friends since I last posted, both in my course and surprisingly also both in my dorm, one of them I sit with in pretty much every class. Honestly they’re the first people I’ve known who’re like me in the nerdy ways. Also I had a two hour discussion with one of them over a glass of bourbon about the sub-genres of metal we like, that was pretty fun too. 

I’m also a LOT more confident. 

At one point last semester I was talking to high school students for three hours straight about the things lgbt people face with a dear friend next to me, which I would never in my life have expected. I actually thought that was fun, even when there’s hurtful discussions I love doing it because there’s that few kids that finally see there’s a future for them in us and shit that feels amazing.

But it’s more than my gay identity that I’ve grown more confident, I’m actually a lot more comfortable talking to strangers now, and talking to people I used to know. I reconnected with an old best friend recently and I never expected that to happen, honestly it probably wouldn’t have if I wasn’t a sarcastic shit, but that’s another story. 

What I’m saying is that this world is so good for me. I’m thriving, I actually love where I’m at, even if I had to reevaluate my priorities at some points.

I can’t wait for October to roll around and for classes to start again, I can’t wait to see my friends again and honestly I CANNOT wait to see what next year brings.

I love feeling like this.