Hello and welcome to the log!!
Here I want to document my thoughts and feelings on my life. It doesn't have to mean anything and maybe sometimes it'll get too rambling.
There are some things I would rather not write about too. So just take it as it is.
My simple thoughts on existence.

I know the format is a little strange, bear with me.

To put it simply, the way I'm going to do this is by doing time frames and when I remember something from that time frame I will add it in. So it will not be one continous story. I apologise.

2025+

I started the new year thinking that I didn't really have any resolutions to make, but after going for a New Years Eve meal with my parents and my flatmate, she had highlighted that they didn't have as positive a relationship as I made out that we had. I acted like since moving, we had gotten along much better and everything was fine. But as an outsider to it all, she could see how little they actually respected my feelings. I think that just because they had improved from doing nothing and completely neglecting me, I felt like they were doing great. But she can see that they are not even doing the bare minimum. So I had to decide then and there during the new years countdown that I did have a serious resolution to make. I would have to address the problems with my family and make them understand how I really felt.

It took me a while to figure out how to say something, so I ended up making my statement in early February. I hadn't seen them in a month, which I would have hoped would have driven home the point of what I was saying. I didn't enjoy being around them. But I got no response from my cry for connection with them. An attempt to have them understand and repair our relationship. And I didn't hear back yet at all. The first line of contact I received from them was my father telling me there was a family dentist appointment. When I arrived, they made no comment on what I said, acting like they hadn't been ignoring me for weeks. I'm still working up how to confront them about the way they've been ignoring me. But I'm still just so confused about how they can read my message and not respond at all. They're just pretending that everything is fine. Even when I spell out how wrong things have been.
At one point a year or two ago, my mother did apologise, so I know she knows things aren't right. But she only does that when she's drunk. I think most of the time she just shuts herself off to negative situations.

2023-2024

A big change in my life came from my work. I fell in love with bartending.
From working festivals to clubs to quiet community pubs, I loved being behind the bar serving drinks. And this was a very social job. It brought me out of my shell. I went from staying inside for several months at a time to being out at work constantly and having conversations with people from all over.
I think this led to me really getting my act together, even though I had social bumps and had to learn how to be around people more. I was a lot more comfortable in my own skin as time went on. I had money to do things I wanted to do, rather than rotting in my bedroom with groups of people that were bad for me.

I improved my skills and my confidence, moved on up in life, became more sure of myself. Now I don't carry the fear that I used to. I try to live without shame. I can go anywhere and talk to anyone. I am alive and free.

This kind of growth is something I have to stop and appreciate a lot. Things are good. Even when I'm stressed or down, things are good. I'm secure in myself and that's all I really need.

During summer of 2024 I managed to finally move. I moved with a friend of mine and finally had that kind of freedom and security I needed. Independence was so important. I didn't tell my family I was moving until I had already signed the lease.
Me leaving home really kickstarted my parents to try to be involved in my life. I think they had a sort of fear that me moving would mean they'd just never see me again at all.

2019-2022

This period of life is what I frequently refer to as the dark ages.
My dark backstory. My secret history.
(It isn't that secret. I mean... I'm writing about it here!!)

It's hard to know where to start with this whole phase of my life. Off the back of all my friends leaving for university, I was left to my devices. Awkward and friendless, confidence knocked and no job. I took my first proper step into worse internet circles.
Now, I had enjoyed internet culture from afar from the age of 13 and I even started to engage when I was 16, coming and going. But it was only during my uninterrupted freetime that I would truly start to be "chronically online."
Now I don't think there is anything wrong with being a shut-in, having online friends is just as valuable as non-online friends. If anything I think the connections you make can be so much more meaningful in some cases. However, when you are lonely it is easy to spend time with people who don't care about you. You don't form meaningful connections, you just have so few interactions with people that talking to anyone at all, even cruel people, can seem like a nice way to spend your time. At least there are people who want to talk with you.
This is how I ended up thinking. There were people talking to me day after day, it didn't matter that they weren't good people. In retrospect it was very silly of me to entertain them in that way. I made foolish mistakes. I went from concealing my true feelings to exposing myself too naively to the world. I trusted openly and with optimism and negative people around me mocked my optimism. Despite how much I had grown from where I came from, I had so much more growing to do that sadly had to come with getting hurt.

In August of 2019, a dear friend of mine passed away.
He wasn't always so nice to me, if anything he intentionally went out of his way to upset me. An unfortunate circumstance of this toxic online environment we were in. But despite it all, I really did care about him, I wanted to be able to make him happy. But that's the issue when your friend is lonely in America. It's so far away that even if you could make each other happy, the distance stops you from being able to help.
From him pushing me away, to him exposing private things about me to the group. There were a lot of reasons for me to just give up, but I guess I was so lonely too and used to losing friends that I wanted to hold on to even the negative people in my life. But eventually I put my foot down, I said he was cruel and I didn't want to be friends with him anymore.
That was the last conversation we ever had.
I regret it every day. Even if it wasn't my fault. Even if there was nothing I could have done. Even if I made the best choice for my own wellbeing. I regret it and I miss him. It made it even harder to remove negative people from my life after that, so I didn't want to be apart from the people that knew him even if they were part of the problem.
Before Mikey died, I thought in my optimistic hope that there was never a reason anyone should want to die. Maybe it was immature, but I just thought that no matter how bad things get, we can still smile. It was only after experiencing that loss, watching his struggle, I understood that sometimes the world can be too much for us. It is a horrible way to feel.
I hope one day I can visit his grave and pay my respects in person. I'm older than he was now, which is surreal to think about. If anything I was just a dumb teenager when he knew me. But now he will stay with me forever.
Perhaps I'm a fool. But losing him really shaped me.

Another noteable moment through these years was that I started engaging in communities based around meeting people, both as friends and romantic partners. Due to all my freetime (since I still didn't have a job,) I was almost constantly making a character of myself around others. Expressing myself as much as I could, to combat my loneliness and share my life with people. I met a lot of interesting people from all over the world and really felt like by me expressing myself openly I was helping those around me feel comfortable and open up. Given how well known I was and how much time I had to spare, I ended up moderating for these spaces. Causing me to have a much more involved role in them. But as things developed in my life, I felt less and less desire to be there. Even though my company was welcome, I found that I wanted to recede even from my online communities.

This whole arc tumbles down into one big event. You'd think the loss of a life would be the big one and I guess in a way it sticks with me more. But I can accept that people suffer and face hardships. I can accept they want a way out. I can understand that even doing my best might not be enough to help those who are hurt. I can accept that hope isn't enough for everybody. But the true hardship I struggled with was losing faith in the goodness inside of people.
I believe that even the cruellest person holds love in their heart and wants to be alive. Wants to be happy. Wants to love someone. To know and be known.
I can't change people full of hate to be kind and loving. But I know that the power to be kind and loving is within them. But the issue arises when someone who appears kind and loving, someone who could hold you close and make you feel safe, someone who looks you in the eyes and says they love you; When someone like that is cruel, it is a reality shattering feeling.
I wanted to be loved, I wanted to be understood and I had thought I had found that understanding. But it was all a facade. And even to this day I can't quite wrap my head around the why of it all. Why would someone lie about that? Why would someone be so inconsiderate? How could someone be so cruel?
But in the end, I don't think even he knew. He just acted without thinking, and when I really think about it, I've probably hurt people in a similar way in my life.
But this kind of heartbreak crushed me, it confused me, it made me lose all faith in the good, positive narrative I was living my life by. I became hopeless. Because if someone can look in me in the eyes and say they love me and have that be a lie, how am I supposed to believe anything anyone ever says again? I didn't want to go on living in a world where human beings could be so cruel to one another. It just didn't make sense to me. I thought "surely I'm not the same as these humans, these creatures that hurt each other like this" but I am. We're all just human beings.

It all culminated in this miserable period of life, I was so torn apart from the loss of friends and the isolation from any in person connection and then being heartbroken in such a cruel way. I had no hope after that. For a long time I was totally lethargic and didn't know how to go on, I simply kept living because I knew I had to. But I was unsure of whether it would actually be possible to find lasting happiness.
Then I came to the point where I realised that despite the hardships, we make our happiness and we can enjoy little things, even alone. I was determined to be happy. Even the tears I cry are special, because I am alive.
Life is full of hard moments, but we are able to experience those things because we are living. This is a rare gift. I don't want to miss out on life because I'm hurt. I still want to experience everything I can.
I had some serious emotional turmoil for a while but I grew from it all and became a much better person for it. But I never want to relive those days. Even if I can overcome the suffering and appreciate what it has taught me, I don't think anyone should have to feel that way.

2017-2018

During my time at college, I was in this middleground between friendships. I was starting to spend time with groups of people who enjoyed my company, shared my interests. But I wasn't able to spend as much time with my closest friend since she had gone to another college. Eventually, I ended up falling into that same issue of being treated like I was unusual as I didn't know how to act. Everyone seemed to have their comfortable position but I just always felt extra. I just didn't feel that I fit in.
I got very self conscious and mixed with stress of studies, I began starving myself and harming myself. Uncomfortable with the person I was and the skin I was in.
It was a very very unpleasant time. To make matters worse, I had negative people I got to know online that encouraged this kind of viewpoint and one person who pushed me to escalate my self harm.

One time, after this person who encouraged me to have these unhealthy habits was being quite cruel, saying I shouldn't be alive. I said I agree with them and left the house late in the night.
I wasn't going to do anything, I just bought a chocolate bar and a pint of milk and sat by the railway, listening to the sounds of the nighttime.
They panicked a fair bit, I never responded to them and didn't go online again until a year had past.

I regret the harm I did to myself, I can't undo it. It was just an unfortunate part of this time in my life.
I was seriously unhappy, I wouldn't sleep well, I'd show up late for class and be so afraid to go in late that I would just skip the whole class.

It was revealed at a family christmas that one time my dad was contacted about my increasing absence from college. But he was in New York at the time. So it was 3am and he was stumbling out of a club in New York and he gets a phonecall from my college and he is incredibly confused. Given the time difference and the amount he had to drink. So it was never resolved with my family. The college took him being far away and drunk as enough of an explanation as they needed.
He said he felt like a bad dad. But I never saw that feeling presented to me, they didn't really seem to try to connect with me. I was just sort of left to my business and for the most part I enjoyed being left alone. But I feel that encouraging regular conversation and occasional time together would have benefited our relationship, maybe if they had been supporting me sooner I could have spoken to them about my troubles.
We just didn't talk. I wouldn't approach them about any problems I was facing.

On the topic of my parents, there is likely a lot to say in a lot of different periods of time. I significantly put things down to one time when the Spiderman:Homecoming movie came out. As a child, I loved the Sam Raimi Spiderman movies. I was watching them over and over. And I showed a great deal of interest in the Amazing Spiderman, but was disappointed by how cool Andrew Garfield was. I felt like he was too handsome and not dorky enough to be a Peter Parker. But I digress.
I didn't like going to the cinema alone, I felt uncomfortable in a large dark room all by myself with strangers in it. I still feel this way. It takes a lot to go to the cinema alone for me. But I had no friends to go with, no one who I felt like I could reach out to and ask. Even if there were people in my life who would have gone, I just really struggled with asking. (this is getting back to the actual topic I began with now) My mother brought up the fact that we barely spent any time around each other anymore, she felt like I was being neglected and offered to do something with me. So I suggested going to see the new Spiderman, even if she wasn't very interested in those kind of things. She often brings up how she liked the older ones and enjoyed watching them with me when I was younger.
So she agreed. We set a day and we agreed to go to the cinema that day. But when the day rolled around and she had completely forgotten, I refused to remind her. It was her making up for neglecting me. And she had forgotten about our plans. I couldn't think of anything that sums it up better.
I don't think that they don't care about me. But in that way that most of my insecurities stem from, I just feel that people don't think about me. I don't exist in people's mind. I guess boiling it all down, I just want to feel loved.
But do I think of others wellbeing that often? Do I check in enough on those I care for? I don't think I do, but I care a tremendous lot about them. I just worry about being too overwhelming when I give affection to those around me. I want people to think about me positively, I don't want them to be thinking that I'm a weirdo!

I went through a phase at the end of high school towards college that I thought if I was just super laid back, faking it as hard as I could, then I would end up being fine. But in reality I was surpressing my true desires, my joys, my very self. In fear of seeming unusual.
Nobody should have to live a lie. I know now that it is vital to be completely true to yourself. But unfortunately this is a thing we all have to learn and develop ourselves, me just saying "be true, be honest" isn't enough to make everyone blossom into the best versions of themselves.
Accepting yourself is a serious struggle sometimes. I consider myself very lucky to have been able to find a peace like this in my existence.

At the end of it all, I had left college, 18 years old, with no path to university and an uncertain future. Not much of a social life to speak of anymore and no job.
But I knew who I was.

1999-2016

I was born, as I'm sure most people are.
My first memory was on my 3rd birthday. It's all a haze now but I clearly recall sitting by the fireplace as everyone sang to me. I was told that I was always so happy as a young child. Very rarely crying. I suppose I've always had that in me, just an enjoyment for being here.

When I got older I found trouble fitting in with those around me, at least that's the way I remember it. I wasn't a total loner, but I always felt strange, like I couldn't properly connect with anyone. Looking back I see this as a delusion of learning how to socialise when young, it isn't easy for anyone and we're all figuring it out for the first time, aren't we?
However when I progressed to high school, I had a time when people confirmed to me that I was strange, but they didn't want to help me be normal. They just agreed to stop spending time with me. If we spoke now I bet they wouldn't even remember. But that's okay. I feel despite my desire to be friends with many many people, I've always enjoyed a smaller quieter crowd. Intimate 1 to 1 moments with those dear to me. Those have the most special moments.

I feel that I had the usual ups and downs of being a human. I was hurt and I stupidly hurt others. I had fun without caring some times and I had stress weigh heavy on me at others. The average school experience as far as I'm aware.

Preceding 1999