Dec 20, 2020
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Düşüncelerle ve gerçeklerle dolu bir yaşam...
- A quiet city -
October 2020
2020
~5 months later~
Ok I lied. I’m not going to talk about my Japan trip in this post. Instead I’m going to provide an update on what’s been going on in my life for the past 5 months since my last post. Lol.
Okaaaay. So we ended up having a second wave. Hahah..aha..hah. A very intense and overwhelming one, at that. There was a day I believe when the number of new covid cases reached almost 800? It happened around mid this year. I remember it being a really devastating and disappointing period of everyone’s lives. It would seem like the number of new cases would only get worse everyday. I would be so put off from watching the news or reading about anything related to covid ‘cause it would only make me depressed.
Today is a notable day to write this post ‘cause today’s the first day, since this second wave started, that VIC reached 0 new cases and 0 new deaths. 4 stages of lockdown (plus an extension) later, we're finally here! Everyone up until this day had been feeling it - despair, restlessness, anger, hopelessness - at this lockdown that seemed would never end. But today we got the news that VIC will be re-opening again (1st stage) this Wednesday (it’s a Monday today), then even more on Nov 8. The glimmer of hope we’ve been waiting for, for literally months now.
Now for the non-covid related updates. Lol.
It’s tempting sometimes to overgeneralise 2020 as “the year wasted”. “Nothing happened this year” (besides covid of course). But there have been a few new things I’ve experienced this year which I think would be worth noting. And a few thoughts I’ve been having lately that I really need to deposit somewhere before I forget them.
Ever since I became single early this year, I’ve received some interesting dm’s via Instagram. One of the first ones was from this guy from Canada, who sent me one of my posts via my DM then proceeded to comment “cute haha *monkey covering it’s mouth emoji*”. I got this message while I was showering, at like 3am, so it was pretty unexpected. This was the beginning of a very strange friendship (?) thing. Long story short, and around a month later, I found out him to be a very strange guy. He was cute, seemed like a catch at first. BUT he gave off major player vibes and also, he was basically 4-5 years younger than me, and didn’t live up to the maturity he claimed to have (emotional maturity mainly). He would make it seem like he was after a relationship with me sometime in the future but also kept implying that he wasn’t necessarily after a relationship right now, and just wanted to “go with the flow”. He was always complimenting me, always wanted to FaceTime everyday, and would sweet talk me with things that were nice to hear. But I couldn’t shake off the feeling that he was bad news and wasn’t really serious about any of this (I even kept telling him I was thinking this). I should mention he was asking for a selfie and wanted to FaceTime from the very first conversation we had (after only exchanging a few messages). We didn’t even know each other yet?? Lmao. After a few weeks of talking to him I eventually caught him in a lie, and yeah. That was one of the biggest red flags. I had a weird feeling about him from the get go, but I guess I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt (and also what threw me off a lot is that he told me that he told his Mum about me - but I’ll never know if that was just a lie too). He also told me that he was going to visit here from Canada in August (it’s October now) and kept going on about how he wanted to spend a whole week out of the two weeks he was going to be here, with me, and how I’m so chill and fun to talk to that we would have so much fun spending time together. Lmaooo. He told me he’s dated a lot of older girls (I’m not sure if this is a fetish of his), but every time I asked him how many exes he’s had, it would always be a different number (which is hella sus ‘cause it seemed like he was lying then). He tried to do some weird sexual stuff as well which I never entertained and pretty much shut him down straight away whenever he tried. Not sure if he was just joking, but it was disturbing nonetheless. I won’t go into detail ‘cause this isn’t the place for it. It eventually got to a point where I was decided on the fact that I couldn’t take this guy seriously and didn’t want to waste both our time so I started replying less/later to his messages, basically friend-zoned him by calling him “man” and “dude”, and teased him about other girls saying that he had potential with them. I think he eventually got the hint ‘cause one day he just stopped texting me “good morning” everyday. Lol. But anyway, yeah that was more or less the main stuff about guy #1.
Guy #2 was from London and it started with one of my girl friends messaging me and asking me if I was talking to someone at the moment. I said I wasn’t and she proceeded to tell me that one of her boyfriend’s friends found me really pretty and wanted to follow me on Instagram. She then sent me a few photos of him (screenshots from his IG account), asking if I would be interested (I felt like I was on a dating site for a moment lmao). While flattering, I remember thinking this was so bizarre. To be honest with you though the guy wasn’t my type (looks-wise). My friend said he was “a real sweetheart”. Even though he wasn’t my type, I gave it a chance and told her that I don’t mind him following me. We both agreed that the guy and I had nothing to lose, and if anything we’d just become international friends. Lol. So soon enough the guy follows me on IG and then starts a convo via DM. He introduces himself, seemed like a nice/decent guy. Very articulate, and well versed. He would comment on my stories here and there and try to get a conversation going, try to get to know me better and try to share things about himself. I think I recall him saying he thought I lived in Japan ‘cause I had a lot of posts from Japan. Lmao. It would get to the point though where he would write massive paragraphs, but the energy wasn’t called for, and didn’t feel mutual. I think I found it a bit overwhelming and felt like he wanted to take every opportunity to write an essay about his views on everything. There was a particular time I did an IG story post where I was venting about something, and he replied to it with like two long paragraphs worth of his thoughts, and then said he would be there for me even though we didn’t really know each other that well yet etc. Which was really sweet - yes. But also felt too early, premature. It almost felt like he was trying to forge an emotional connection too early on in a relationship which wasn’t even at the friends stage yet. We’d only been talking for like 2 weeks or so. I couldn’t help it, but I think my neutral and short replies gave off a hint, and he commented less and less on my stories. Till eventually he stopped altogether. Lol. Also I think I may have accidentally called him “man”....on purpose. I feel like a horrible person. There was a point early on though that I looked through his IG profile and tried to find things about him that I liked (I basically tried to convince myself that maybe the guy wasn't so bad). But I think that wasn’t successful. And yeah, it was hard to hide that fact for long I think.
Guy #3 is this random guy that just followed me out of no where and liked a bunch of my photos on IG all at once. He then started commenting on my stories quite a lot. He would leave brief comical comments, and tried to get me to play animal crossing with him. Lol. He tried to start a convo one time but I didn’t reply to it for a few hours, and then found that he deleted it. Lol?? He would then like a few more of my IG pics. He was a bit strange. I wasn’t quite sure if he was trying to show that he was interested, or if he was just bored and wanted more friends. But yeah he doesn’t comment on my stories much anymore. Now that I’ve gotten those out of the way, just thought I’d go on about my recent thoughts. So lately I’ve been feeling really stuck. I have a quarter-life crisis pretty much every day. I feel like I’ve plateaued, and I’m not really growing much right now. I feel like I need new experiences, new company. Most of the ones I have at the moment aren’t serving me well or helping me become a better person, if I’m honest. And I’m not happy. The company I have right now aren’t encouraging me to level up, or helping me expand my thoughts and horizons. I’ve noticed that a lot of the friends I was close to pre-covid have changed a lot, and so have I, so we’re not really offering much to each other. I’ve become so low energy lately that I find myself trying to avoid or escape dealing with people or situations that I feel aren’t worth my energy. Which I want to start doing more of from now on. I want to be more selective of the people I chose to surround myself with. I also want to find my community or a new community which I can be part of and grow from. Not sure how or where I will find that, but it’s something I’m keen on delving into more as time goes by. I want to be more myself, I want to change up my look, my fashion. I want to expand my knowledge, expand my vocabulary, expand the diversity of ways I talk/present myself or respond/reply to situations. I want to feel like I have something to offer - not only to my future partner, but to the friends I make in this lifetime. I feel like I’m too basic and uninteresting. I feel like I’m also too careful, too slow, too afraid to make mistakes. Too afraid to take risks. I want to stop “complaining about things, but doing nothing about them”. I want to be confident in myself, no matter what I feel that I am. If that makes sense. I want to speak more clearly, slower. I want to be able to speak Filipino fluently. I want to find the career that I love and work in it. I want to work with people that I can genuinely be friends with, not just colleagues or “fake friends”. I want to not care about what people will think about me, and just do me (especially on IG). I want to be unapologetically myself. But before that, I want that self to be the kind of self I aspire to be. Can you want to be different, but also want to just be yourself at the same time? Can someone confirm this?
Üsküdar, İstanbul / Turkey