Introduction
There's a tendency to journal or write blogs only when I'm feeling particularly shitty. Some tragic event must happen to me for me to go "Oh yeah! I knew writing about my feelings is cathartic!"
This time I hope to balance things out more. This has been a great week for my friendships, my self-image, and the dissonance I felt. It's all got me feeling jiggy and warm inside!
There should be some semblance of a memory of a state I have for me to point to and say "I felt this unfamiliar happiness then. I want to feel like that for the rest of my life." This hopes to be that.
This previous year and a half have been very different. I learned a smidge about a lot of things: about everything from how people think to analysis of media to politics and rhetoric. I fear I'm not ready to share anything about those yet. So I'm going to talk about the few things that are improvements to my mental schemas I'd like to carry with myself into the future from here.
Affection is Great
I saw something a while ago that altered my perception of things like affection and love completely: A French Lesbian Romance film. If you're reading this, you probably already know what I'm talking about — it's Portrait of a Lady on Fire.
My parents are not expressive of their "love" each other. They never were. Plus being told to be weary of your affection, sexuality, and desires from early childhood (Growing up Male) mix together to form a very damaged relationship with those ideas.
Love and Affection were things I felt and knew when I felt but showing other people even when I liked them was something I had no experience or understand of. It affected my friendships a great deal. I didn't know how to hug someone. In fact, the idea made me physically uncomfortable and tense up.
It was not as if I did not want to hug someone, it was just there was a thick layer of fog between that feeling and that action. It felt like seeing a picturesque scene but all I have is a shitty Android phone camera. It felt like having a great idea for something creative but lacking the skills to execute it.
The road to fixing all of that began with films of all things. I saw what Love looks like through an empirical dramatized lens of a movie. It made my brain and heart go "This is what turning what's in here into what's out there looks like."
Kissing your partner, Hugging your friends, Snuggling up together when you're all tired, and sitting close to the people you appreciate are things I'm very new to.
Fortunately, with the people I've befriended and attracted, I think I have plenty safe space to experiment.
Friends aren't Far
This part is somewhat connected to the previous one. I mean, all the things I've faced are all sort of "connected." Meeting and speaking to people you think you'd get along with is one of the greatest and underrated experiences there is.
Since middle school, I've been good at making new friends but keeping and kindling friendships was not among any of my expertise.
I've never been very close to any of the friends I've had. There were a lot of things about myself I was always too scared to share. For the most part, keeping to myself was a safety thing than a trust thing.
This year was different. I met people I had never even imagined existing in a place like this. I've been having a great time with them. They are my best friends. They are here to stay.
They are my friends.
They are my friends.
They are my friends.
They are my friends.
There's too much I don't Know
When I started just saying "Hi!" to random people and dropped that malicious sense of judgement that led to my social anxieties and troubles, I met lots of people much smarter than I am.
I met people whom I couldn't understand even a word of. It was overwhelming.
I've always seen myself as an "Engineer." I had no interest in media, art, literature, cooking, fashion, music, culture, politics, and what have you!
It was not that I had tried all of these things one after the other and come to conclusion that there were only a handful of things I found interesting and others boring. I literally didn't even know "Fashion" was a thing I could do.
Growing up in a middle class household where infantilization promoted "Ask an Adult" and discouraged and villainized "Figure it out for Yourself" led me to add two ideas into my "decision making" that I regret:
- What I do must make money or it is useless
- Mother knows best because I love her
Gruelingly, I spent the next few years slowly and successfully pulling these out of my brain. It was not overnight like the film thing (This even led to the film thing!).
After a long time I've come to the conclusion that there's no human with just science. Art in every form is equally if not more important. I enjoy the human experience and want to learn more about it. I want to understand others. I want to create art I am proud of.
Conclusion
I want this stupid little blog to serve as a very primitive foundation for the kinds of things that interest me and what I want from my art.
From a more personal side, I want to look at this blog post twenty years from now and think "Wow...drunk-cuddling with friends for the first time was life changing."
I could talk about a lot of things right now — like how watching Superman 2025 (a very "Hopecore" movie in my eyes) and adopting some ecosocialist rhetoric happened literally days before I could properly see the beauty and magnificence behind my fellow human's eyes — but I think some conversations are just for myself.