When people don't give me genuine replies I feel like they don't want to talk to me.
Situation
Person (describing the Netflix series American Vandal): [it's] about poop
Me: oh it's about poop? what does that even mean?
Person: it's about poop hahah
Me: I don't understand what you mean by poop
Person: literally the show is about poop
Analysis
This event made me really sad and I'm trying to think about why. I think it's because when you describe an entire show using a single word and nothing but the word, it just shows a real lack of effort. It's like the person literally cannot be bothered to give even a single full sentence to describe what they're watching. It's like if someone asked me what Attack on Titan was about and I said, "It's about titans", or like if some asked me what Code Geass was about and I said "It's about robots".
I feel like the only time where you could adequately describe an entire show using a single word "poop" is if you were describing a documentary on faeces and it literally only talks about what poop is, where it comes from, what it's function is etc.
Of course, I could just go and look at the actual American Vandal Wikipedia page and read up on what it's actually about (which is what I inevitably did after giving the person several other chances to redeem their poor answer) but there's just something more about hearing directly someone's opinon on something and what they think about something.
I dunno. It's like if a friend went to a particular cafe and I asked them how it was or what kind of food they served there. Of course I could just look up their website and read their menu and read reviews but if I ask someone, I want to hear it from them. I think the lack of effort in the person's response makes me feel like the person does not want to actually tell me, or does not actually want to talk to me. And that makes me sad.
Why am I such a negative person? Why is it that every morning when I see myself in the mirror I just hate the person starring back at me? Why is it that I hate my appearance, my thoughts, my personality? I've tried pinpointing what exactly is it about me that makes me such an unattractive, unlikable person and I still don't know why. How can I change myself to be a more likable person? What exactly is it that I need to change? Sometimes I see very likable people with a phone that's always buzzing from people wanting to talk to them. How can I be more like that?
What even is self-worth? Why is it so hard not to compare myself with other people? How many friends someone has, how many notifications they get a day, how many friends are tagging them in memes every day on Facebook. One of the reasons why I turned off almost all notifications on my phone was because it just felt like a reminder that no one wants to talk to me. My phone doesn't vibrate as much as other people. So by turning off notifications it makes it a mystery. Maybe someone somewhere out there is actually wanting to talk to me. Who knows?
Christmas is a time of spending time with those around you and appreciating your friends and family but sometimes just seeing the fun and exciting times of my friends around me just makes me feel even more alone. My little brother, Justin, has lots of friends that he plays League with and even though I'm sure he's sick of me asking him to play Melee with me, when he does play with me, it makes me feel less lonely. It really makes me appreciate the value of family. Everyone needs some sort of will to live -- something to get them out of bed each morning. If there's one thing that's worth living for, it's that, after seeing the love my parents have for me and my siblings, if I were to die, it would be such a waste of my parents love, dedication, and investment they have put into my future.
If there was one word that I would like people to describe me as, it's the word "genuine". But the truth is I am a fake. Dear reader, do you think I am a considerate person? The truth is I am very selfish and more often than not think only about myself. Sometimes I look around me and see lots of other fakes too. But I too am a fake.
Why is it that I can't just be happy for my good friend Aaron who is in Korea having the time of his life? Why is it that I am jealous that Aaron is at an equal if not better level of Korean than me even though he has only learnt for a year while I've learnt it for 7 whole years? Why is it that I am jealous of Aaron that he has made so many Korean friends while I haven't and couldn't even though I lived in Korea for a year? What is it about Aaron that makes him so likable and me so unlikable? What is it about me that makes people not want to be friends with me? I always assumed the answer to simply be because I'm a selfish asshole. Also Aaron is arguably much more handsome than me but let's pretend that's not the only reason.
Why is it that I feel like there's no place on earth where I belong?
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We are right here!!
I'd say that I've probably been battling depression on and off for several years without me knowing it. Or rather I think I didn't really want to acknowledge that there was really anything wrong with me and that I'd just "get over it" soon. Recently I had an extra severe bout of depression that lasted probably over a month. During that time, I didn't want to talk to anyone, I didn't want to see anyone, I didn't want to leave my room, I didn't want to do anything. I had no energy (even less than usual), I didn't want to even get out of bed, I just wanted to do nothing, say nothing, eat nothing, and just let time pass by. During that time I really started to reflect and try to think about what it actually is that makes me so depressed. I guess this is an attempt at explicating some of those thoughts and reflections. A side note, the reason why I haven't updated this blog in over a year is because I've recently taken quite a liking to Twitter and would've probably posted these thoughts on there too but even with the recent increase to 280 characters per tweet I would probably need like 100 tweets before I could convey everything that I want to say.
Let's talk about expectations. There was a post I saw somewhere once and probably reblogged which basically said that "Happiness equals Reality minus Expectations". That is to basically say that if you keep your expectations low, you will never be disappointed. I have a history of getting really mad at my friends. Well not mad. I think just disappointed. I generally don't explode at them though that can happen if enough incidents occur. It has caused friendship terminations. Anyways, what I have come to the conclusion of recently is that I think I have too high expectations of my friends. And when friends fail to reach that expectation I become disappointed. Not necessarily disappointed at them, but I think just disappointed in general. What do you mean expectations? Good question. I'm going to lay down what I'm calling ground truths which will help set the foundation for the rest of this piece.
Ground Truth #1: If I say something to my friend, I would want my friend to say something back.
After having lost friends in the past and not wanting to lose friends in the future, I had this naiive thought that if I keep giving my all, putting 120% into every friendship I will never lose friends again. That is humanly impossible. I am human. I have tried. I have failed. Therefore, it is impossible for all humans. (That's how logic works right?) At the end of the day, we only have a limited amount time. We can't possibly talk and maintain relationships with every single person we meet ever. And hypothetically even if we did have infinite time in the day, we only have limited amounts of energy. I don't know if you've ever tried really hard to be friends with someone but you just know that they don't really want to be friends with you so talking with them is basically just super draining. If you're the only one putting in effort in maintain a relationship it's completely unsustainable and you just end up burning out.
So with the limited time in a day, limited energy that I have, if I decide to talk to you, send you a message, a funny video, ask about how you are, I expect a somewhat genuine response. My thought process is basically, since you are my friend I want to talk you, and if I am your friend I assume you would want to talk to me too. There have been several occasions where I am genuinely interested in someone's day and how they have been so I start a conversation with them, but then they reply with the things like "Yeah good" with pretty much no attempt at follow up conversation. Yeah I understand, everyone can be busy with life and what not but even if you don't reply within a day, a week, or a month, when you do decide to reply I would appreciate a bit more of a genuine response.
Another incident occurred when my friend told me that if I ever needed to get something off my chest or if I ever needed someone to just rant to, she would be there to listen. She told me to use this voice-messaging app called Voxer which basically let you leave messages and kind of talk to each other like a walkie-talkie. I downloaded it used it exclusively for that friend. I decided to take her word for it, and basically had a massive rant to her about something and told her all these things. She never replied. You know seen-zoning? Well she basically heard-zoned me. Like mate, if I didn't want a response I would've ranted to the wall or something. At least walls don't get your hopes up or make false promises. This basically leads me to my second ground truth.
Ground Truth #2: If my friend says something to me, I would want my friend to mean what they say and tell the truth.
I don't know if I am abnormal for doing this but when someone says something (especially if they are my friend) I expect that they actually mean what they say. I would rather you say nothing than say something you don't mean. Like honestly! Let's say I sent you a YouTube video which I wanted you to watch cuz I thought it was awesome. And you say something like "I'll check it out later." but you actually don't have any intention to check it out because you're not interested in it or it's just not that appealing or whatever. I would rather you not say anything than say "I'll check it out later" because after you say that I have an expectation that you will live up to your word and actually do what you say.
But what about Ground Truth #1? You said you expect your friends to respond, right? Yep. So what you could do if you didn't just want to leave me hanging, is to make things ambiguous or add a bit of uncertainty. Like "I'll see if I have time to check it out later" or "I might watch it later" cuz at least that way it's nothing actually certain. Obviously if I never hear from you again about that video then it means you didn't watch it (because I still would have expected a response to that video) but in that case I will just remember that those kind of videos are not appealing to you and I won't ever ask you to watch them again. Kind of like how YouTube learns about what videos to recommend to viewers, I will learn that you don't particularly care about what I sent you and I will refrain from sending such things to you in the future.
Another incident occurred where someone said the words "Wish you were here". Holy crap, Vince. That's actually a nice message! How can you get mad at someone for saying that? Yes, it was a very nice thing to say and I did actually appreciate the message. But put it another way. Person A mentioned in passing to Person B about potentially travelling to Location X in the future, but says nothing more about it to Person B. A short while later Person B finds out through someone else that Person A is in Location X and also received a message from Person A saying "Wish you were here". Is it wrong for Person B to feel a bit upset that they weren't at all communicated the details or intentions of Person A? Would the words "Wish you were here" not seem more genuine if Person A had attempted to communicate their travel plans to Person B?
One word comes to mind whenever I think about my thoughts towards friendships and expectations. Petty. It all just seems super petty. It's like Wow. I can't believe you are so salty just because your friends didn't watch the video you sent them or they didn't invite you to go travelling with them. And in one sense, it's true. It is all just super duper petty. But at least for me personally, it doesn't matter if you're a friend I've known for one month or friend I've known for ten years, if you are my friend, I would expect you to mean the words that you say to me. If that expectation isn't met, I get upset.
And so what I tried doing was to lower my expectations. There are some people that you have zero expectations of. Strangers for instance. If I gave a rant about my life to a complete stranger, I would not expect that they would care or listen or reply even. Like if I was to post a sob story on the internet, I wouldn't expect the randomos on Twitter to care but my friends on Facebook maybe a little. I tried to expect less from my friends. Expect that they might not always mean what they say. Expect that they might not always care to talk or make conversation with me. I thought that maybe if failed expectations is what's making me sad, then lowering/removing expectations should solve that problem. What I have noticed is that it doesn't really. Rather what I have noticed is that expectations and friendships come almost hand in hand and can pretty much not be separated.
Are expectations not what separates friends from strangers? I would expect my friends to care for me. I wouldn't expect that from strangers. I would expect my friends to be there for me when I need someone to talk to. I wouldn't expect that from strangers. I would expect my friends to check up on me once in a while. I wouldn't expect that from strangers. I would expect my friends to mean the words that they say. I would not necessarily expect that from strangers. When you remove the expectations you might have of your friends what differentiates them from random strangers?
If there was a contest for over-thinking things I would win, hands-down, no questions asked. Something as stupid as someone not giving me a heart-felt response over instant messaging can lead me to think "This person does not consider me a good enough friend to give me genuine response". Something as simple as not watching a short YouTube video that I sent them can make me think "I am not a good enough friend for this person to actually care about my messages". I mean if they couldn't spare 2 minutes of their life to watch a video, how on earth could I request ten or twenty minutes of their time just for me to talk about my feelings and life problems? I began to feel lonely and helpless, hoping that someone will randomly reach out and be interested in me and my life problems but when no-one does, I feel more and more alone, like no-one could care less about whether I'm alive or dead. I was basically caught in an endless cycle of negative thought and emotion. In the past, I liked to believe that I didn't actually expect too much from my friends -- since all I really want from my friends is that they speak truthfully, check up on me once in a blue moon, and maybe also watch the videos that I send them. But as it seems, that might be asking too much.
So not ready to start school tomorrow. I don’t want to have to wake up at 9am when I’m so used to sleeping in til like noon. I am pretty excited to learn Chinese, make new friends, and have new adventures, but I just don’t know if I’m ready to start getting into the swing of things. Though at this stage it’s not like I have much of a choice haha.
I wrote my friend a poem and when I wrote her name at the top, I decided to try write it in a bit more of a fancier font since just writing it in a plain sans-serif font made it seem very lackluster. So the first picture was my very first attempt at lettering and I was actually really proud of it even though it wasn't particularly very good. The second picture was my next attempt, when I wrote her name on the envelope. It turned out waayyy better than the first one. On the blue envelope I started by writing the TO and FROM in a fancy font but then I realised I couldn't just write the Korean in normal font otherwise it would look weird. So that's why I had to write that in a fancy font too and dayum man that was freaking hard. Think it turned out alright though -- especially for a first attempt.
Home Isn’t Home Without You - Mother’s Day Card (May 10, 2015)
I wasn’t going to make Mum a card but my Korean teacher was like “Really? You’re not doing anything for Mother’s day?” So then I thought “Yeah okay. I probably should.” So it was a spontaneous ordeal in the middle of the night. I wanted to make a popup card house for my mum (because she likes houses and is always looking at real estate advertisements) but I literally had no idea how. I experimented with my own ideas for a few hours but eventually I gave up and just based my card off this video. Took a lot of effort but I think it’s probably one of the cards I’m most proud of.
