soos_mite_ah

Clicking with People and Trying to Make Friends Part 1: Leftists So, I'm trying to build my life and socially get out of this liminal space. And I have made an observation as to whether or not I click with people and how that normally pans out. I'm so grateful that I clicked with my roommate and that we're good friends. It happened pretty quickly but really naturally in the sense that it didn't take long for either of us to feel comfortable around each other and we basically didn't have the awkward phase. And I was trying to pin down why exactly it was so effortless for me to become friends with them and why it's not the same with other people. I think it comes down to two things. The first is exactly how far left are they and the second is how comfortable with things outside of their comfort zone (I guess if you took the Big 5 (OCEAN) personality test into consideration it would be how high they score on the openness factor). I felt much more comfortable around this person when I found out that they were a leftist. I more or less got the sense that I could let loose politically in the sense that I could say what's on my mind, explain my takes on things, and not have to tip toe around conservative ideology or go into a whole explanation of where I was coming from. It made me realize just how much being a leftist is a part of my identity and how much of it affects my hobbies and interests. I'm very much related to anything that is related to the social sciences and a lot of those topics often have a leftist undertone to it. There was something about knowing that this person was a leftist that also made me feel more comfortable with being vulnerable around them. I think there is a correlation there for me when it comes to how far left they are on the political spectrum and how comfortable I am opening up to them emotionally. When I'm around conservatives, I guess there is a thing in my brain that kicks in and is like "well if they hold conservative views towards race, gender, sexuality, and economic issues, they are less likely to have a healthy outlook or to be emotionally validating when someone tries to open up about their personal lives." I think this comes from this subconscious knowing on how there is technically no such thing as a personal problem rather all of our problems are symptoms of systemic issues that affect us personally since our problems don't exist in a vacuum. And when your issues on a larger picture have to do with things like racism, sexism, homophobia, late stage capitalism, ableism etc. when you know that in the big picture that the person you're talking to doesn't give af, you're reluctant to open up to the smaller more personal side of things. Like for example, I'm not comfortable in engaging or even mentioning how I had to take a break from school because of the way the pandemic affected me and my family if I know the person I'm talking to doesn't even believe in masks and vaccines. I also have a few liberal friends who do agree with certain leftist talking points like health care for all, funding college education, dealing with wealth inequality, having higher wages, etc. but they aren't to the point where they see capitalism as the problem or see how it affects daily life (as in they are going through their hustle culture/ girl boss phase even though they aren't pushing that onto others). And while I am friends with them, I do enjoy being around them, and they are very supportive about my mental health regarding my family (especially since they have similar experiences with their parents), I don't feel comfortable with talking about the anxiety I feel searching for a job in this apocalyptic times. I have tried to talk about it and I'm sure they get where I'm coming from, but the moment I touched about my big picture thoughts on how this relates to capitalism, it just didn't click with them. I kind of got the vibe from them that was like *I get what you're saying but you're looking too much into this and you need to get back down to earth and be more practical when it comes to dealing with your personal issues.* I decided that I wasn't going to plop down my leftism just yet lol. Which I'm ok with. Sometimes you need that healthy stage orange to sit you down and tell you to come back down to earth when you've been spiraling about things like climate change and capitalism which are not exactly in your control. But at the same time, I felt this lack of connection and sense of emotional distance because of different world views. Then I have a few centrist acquaintances who I don't feel comfortable really talking about politics or a lot of my more unconventional interests around them. Basically it's the normal SpongeBob meme. I can generally get along with them but I don't feel comfortable fully being myself. I feel like I have to straight jacket myself and present this really vanilla version of my views and my life in general. In conclusion as far as emotional openness and vulnerability for the sake of friendship is concerned, conservatives ignite my fight or flight response and centrists make me want to straight jacket myself. I'm comfortable with opening up to liberals about certain things but not totally so I tend to hold back my "craziest" thoughts and experiences. And when it comes to leftists, well I feel like I can be very authentic around them.

Liminal Stages So I got side tracked from my work and I started looking into this genre of memes that are often characterized as "weirdcore." One of the things I found there was the concept of liminal spaces. What are liminial spaces? Well they are spaces that we typically pass through to get to one place to another. As a result, because we aren't supposed to stay there too long, when we do stay and look around, since we aren't used to it, the whole experience just feels really creepy. In a way, it feels like you're in an alternate reality. And in a way you are because you are stopping at a transitional period between two different places/ realities. I found an article that explains the concept of liminal spaces really well. https://theludlowgroup.com/2018/05/31/why-do-liminal-spaces-feel-like-an-altered-reality/ And here is a tumblr post that also explains this pretty well. I really like how it talks about how our brains are hardwired for context. \ Now, what about liminal stages. I think for me personally, I have been stuck in a liminal stage in my life. I feel like I have been in this awkward in between stage where I'm just waiting to step into who I'm supposed to be. This started in 2016. There is both a personal and collective element to this. Personally, I lost a loved one during this time and because I saw this person on a daily basis, their absence was very existential crisis inducing. Their room still feels like a liminal space of sorts. The existential crisis really caused me to revaluate a lot of things in my life. But here's the thing, we aren't supposed to stay in this grief/ existential crisis for a long time. It's supposed to be a phase. And in a way it was. I can say that I have processed and moved on from this event. But soon after I was done grieving and I was ready to go back to my friend group, I realized that I changed as a person and that I no longer resonated with them anymore. That was difficult to go through and it was like I traded one type of grief for another. On top of that, I went through a phase of not having many friends or having a social circle. That isn't too weird and a lot of people pass through that stage. Except, this isn't a stage I passed through. I would say that I'm still in it. I thought this phase was going to end when I graduated high school and entered college. After all, I was going to be exposed to new people. But then I had a bunch of physical and mental health concerns kick in and I wasn't able to really put myself out there socially. Then, the moment I started feeling better, the pandemic hit and as a result I'm still dealing with social isolation. I lost my social circle around late 2017. It's late 2021 now. I've been in this liminal space of not having any friends for 4 years. The existential crisis from that death didn't pass either. It just morphed into a different kind of existential crisis. Once I finished grieving the death of a family member, I started grieving losing a lot of relationships. Once I finished that, I started having an existential crisis regarding wtf I'm doing with my life in college and how tf am I going to heal from my family issues. Once I finished dealing with a lot of my family issues, that was the moment I got dragged back in because of the pandemic. And now I'm dealing with and existential crisis regarding my academic issues, my family issues, and what life is going to look like for me in a couple years. Now for the collective side of things. I know that when Trump got elected in 2016, people were talking about on how this whole thing feels like they stepped into an alternate timeline. We're just in an awkward place in history and this is simply a phase we will just pass through. BUT NO, SHIT GOT MUCH WEIRDER AS TIME WENT ON. So as a result, this isn't just some weird transition phase, it's a whole ass stage of it's own. Then we have the pandemic. Because you aren't going out and doing things, internally it feels like not much time has passed but externally time has gone by. The fact that it will be 2022 in a few months and 2020 would have been 2 years ago doesn't make much sense to me. There is the whole thing on how life is never going to be the same after the pandemic. With something like 9/11, life wasn't the same after that event and it did mark a transitional phase. But with the pandemic and how long it's dragging out, the fact that this thing isn't over yet feels like a liminal space. Also when the lockdowns were happening, a lot of spaces that used to be bustling with people were empty, thus doubling down on the whole liminal aspect of this time period. And the whole feeling of there not being an exit and time feeling stagnant (that is talked about in this video) I feel is also applicable to my condition. This transition phase in my life, this pandemic, both feel never ending and kind of ominous. I'm going to explore this video more and a couple other ones and how it relates to this stage of my life.

No, I think it's fine to have a genital preference. It's pretty biological imo. I'm not obligated to be attracted to people. That isn't a violation of human rights. Just as long as you don't treat transpeople as subhuman and get grossed out at the idea of being with someone who is trans, or judge people who are open to dating trans people, I think you're good.

My Fears Around Pregnancy Was meaning to write this since I first started this journal but I think now is the perfect time to write this. Why? Because Texas just put a 6 week ban on abortion where you can't get an abortion 6 weeks after conception. It honestly doesn't make sense because it takes like 4 weeks or hell sometimes longer to know if you missed a period or if you might be pregnant so it's safe to say that this is a back door ban. These men who are making these laws don't know how a woman's body works nor do they care even if they did know. Ugggghhhh... I can't say that I'm shocked or angry (I mean the law was passed this May and it has only come to affect now). It's Texas. This is just where we're at as far as politics and consciousness goes. But I will say that as far as my life goes, it takes my anxieties around sex and heightens them. One of my main fears regarding sex is the possibility of becoming pregnant. Even if I didn't identify as asexual in the past, because of my parents, I didn't have access to birth control so that influenced my decisions. Even now with birth control, I'm still hesitant to do anything and I prefer to be on the side of caution because of all the things that pregnancy comes with. Also, there is still COVID going around soo there is that. First of all, just the idea of something growing inside of me and then having all types of side effects for 9 months straight only to be bust open from the inside out seems like some sci fi shit to me. The whole process just seems traumatic. That's not even getting into how your life gets affected logistically during and after this whole thing. I don't think I could deal with the mental and physical anxiety that comes with all of this. It's just a lot. It's also really frustrating for a bunch of men to treat this as some type of minor inconvenience because they have a lack of empathy on this topic due to it not affecting them directly. My mom and I occasionally get to the topic of why I'm really hesitant to have kids and she keeps trying to bring up the amazing aspects of being a mother and how every woman should go through pregnancy etc. and when all of that fails, she resorts to trying to reassure me by telling me how the women in my family typically have really easy pregnancies. WELLL.... I'm not buying that shit. I've seen and heard waaaaayy too many pregnancy horror stories from other women and from sources online to have a few statements change my mind. Also, you could literally die in the process and in the U.S. we have some of the worst infant mortality rates and it's even worse for women of color because no one takes our pain seriously (like it's a whole thing systemically in the medical field where some doctors believe that people of color don't feel as much pain). And as horny as I am, the thought of getting pregnant or having a pregnancy scare freaks me tf out to where all of the abstinence preaching shit that I dealt with growing up actually starts working on me. As much as I don't like abstinence preaching because of the way it shoves religion down your throat, adds a bunch of moralizations to sex, and doesn't do much on educating about sex and how to do it safely, I do agree with the whole notion that abstinence is a 100% guarantee of not getting pregnant and how other methods of birth control can fail. And as someone who scared to death of getting pregnant, that 100% guarantee does feel like a nice cozy safety blanket to my anxiety ridden self. This isn't to say that I'm not even willing to engage in safe sex. I'm not that paranoid. But I know that the chance of something going wrong is there and having a safety net whether it be the Plan B pill or abortion, even if I never use it, does give me a sense of peace of mind. But these politicians are trying to ban both because religion so there's that. In conclusion.... I hate it here. And the last thing I want in my life is to have a chapter that resembles this movie:

Also, regarding the last post, if anyone gets any kink shaming undertones in my posts, please bring it to my attention. This is something that I'm trying to be mindful of in order to work towards my path to sex positivity. And I know I definitely have my blind spots because I'm still trying to figure this out.

Kink Shaming The basic overall definition of kink shaming is that it's when people shame a person for what they like in bed or the label a person as evil/bad because of their preferences. It usually goes along with a sense of embarrassment of demonization. I also think that the topic of kink shaming is also important to take into consideration when talking about sex and just discussing why we like what we like. I think that the classic form of kink shaming through analysis involves people psychoanalyzing others and coming to the conclusion that what the other person likes in bed has to do with a mental illness or some type of trauma. There is a shame that then gets associated with the kink in question and it almost undermines the kink because it writes the person off as crazy. That said, I still think it can be beneficial to reflect on what and why you like certain things. And from my experience, there are somethings that I like sexually that has some link to a form of trauma. And that's fine but that's something that I need to come to a conclusion myself rather than have someone come to that conclusion for me because there is only so much other people know about me and only so much they can draw on. Consequently, a lot of their discernments can come across in a judgmental way in the sense that they are jumping into conclusions and generalizations without really getting to know the situation and get a feel for it through direct experience. Basically what I'm trying to say is that It's fine to analyze yourself but analyzing others is when lines can get crossed. Which then brings me to what I began thinking of when I finished the last few posts I made on how attraction, standards of attraction, and just what people are drawn to sexually doesn't exist in a vacuum. I think there is a difference between personally judging someone for their preferences versus judging different social constructs and how it affects the collective. I believe that the later comes more so from a place of discernment because you are looking at attraction from a systemic view where you are analyzing things like political and socioeconomic factors. And also, what you find attractive as far as looks goes isn't really a kink so that and how people are treated because of their looks is fair game for critique imo (for example, liking red heads isn't a kink/fetish though some people treat it as such). It also goes without saying that fetishizing someone's appearance vs just simply thinking they're attractive are two very different things.

FOMO and Being a Virgin Later Than Most of Your Peers I think I read somewhere that the average age of losing your virginity is 17 years old in the U.S. Well... that puts me above average lol. Tbh, it doesn't really feel that way irl because a lot of my friend group is either made of awkward gay people who were questioning at that age, people more focused on other areas of their lives to where sex and dating took a back seat, or people who are homebodies. I don't really feel bad about my lack of experience but every now and then I do encounter people who are dicks about it and I do sometimes go into a self loathing spiral when I'm on the internet too much. Speaking of self loathing and the internet, another reason why I try to avoid the dating section of this forum is because it makes me feel bad about my lack of experience. Sure it isn't like people attack you or make fun of you for that but there is a lot of insecure energy with the guys who make a big deal of it for themselves and start spewing incel attitudes. Even though it is their own self loathing and they're simply expressing THEIR problems, when you're around that energy enough times, it sometimes rubs off on you. And that's what I noticed started happening to me. It's similar to how hanging out with a group of people who constantly pick their bodies apart and who are constantly dieting might effect your own self image even if you didn't have body image issues prior to meeting them. Like I said on the previous post, I have journaled about a topic similar to this in the past in my main journal. Here is that post: Along with the shame, there is also the envy (which also comes with a very brief amount of anger and some sadness/self loathing) that I expressed in previous posts. There is an element of repression that comes from not being able to act on my feelings because I don't like anyone and because I don't have that many opportunities to meet people during the pandemic (environmental / circumstance issues). There is also the infantilization aspect to this. I wrote another post on that earlier in this journal: There is a part of me that gets affected by the infantilization aspect of this especially. It makes me feel like my lack of experience is some symptom of not having enough life experience and being emotionally stunted. I know both of those are not true but still, I doubt myself sometimes. I guess it's because part of my self esteem and life satisfaction if you will is tied to how much I'm growing as a person to actualize the best version of myself and live my best life. Which then circles back to the FOMO. So basically you have the following emotions circling around and intersecting with one another: FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) Sometimes feeling shame (or being shamed) for your decisions Feeling Envious (which also comes with a few seconds of anger along with some sadness/self loathing) Feeling Infantilized --> Feeling like you're emotionally stunted/ not growing up ---> Feeling like you're not living your best life Feeling Repressed And I think so far I have done a good job at dissecting and dismantling each of these factors that goes into this. This doesn't mean I'm never going to feel these emotions again again but being aware and focusing on each of these aspects I believe can help deal with a lot of limiting beliefs I have had consciously or subconsciously.

What does CR, WR, and DR mean? I'm guessing CR means current reality and DR means dream reality but I'm not sure

Looks like I still have a lot to write about. I also get additional ideas every now and then which I feel like exploring which is why I haven't gotten to all of the items on this list. Some additional things that have come to me include: Pole Dancing The Sex Work Industry and the Ethics of Using Your Body for Profit Unrealistic expectations and colorism Encountering Asexual Flirts Am I Actually Horny or Am I Deprived of Human Connection? Different Layers to My Sexuality and Vulnerability Music I've Really Been Enjoying (I feel like this goes along with "Art Work That I Really Enjoy", but I wanted another post lol) Dealing with my Limiting Beliefs and Feelings of Undesirability: Where I am Now in That Journey Reflecting on My Writing Thus Far: Findings from Writing in This Journal Also, if there is anything else that yall want me to write, explore, or think about, feel free to comment. Definitely if you notice any blind spots, let me know but do so within reason (note, I don't speak for all women even though some may resonate with my writing so what I like isn't some type of across the board statement).

Dealing with Collective Trauma So it’s safe to say that after a year and a half of this pandemic that I have a few screws missing and that I have acquired a new flavor of crazy since 2019. The whole new variant thing is freaking me out tbh. I’m so tired of dealing with this stupid thing. And I’m not even the type of person who checks the news very often. If anything, I don’t check the news unless it’s necessary because I know this shit stresses me tf out. And now I’m in school. I was driving to campus on Sunday and I ran into a bunch of protesters with signs saying “death to Fauci”, “1776 is stronger than 1984”, and people calling mask and vaccine mandates tyranny. Honestly, I can’t even say that I’m angry. I don’t have the energy to be angry anymore. All I did was sigh and say “oh god, this shit” under my breath. I’m just exhausted by this whole thing. I also have a few classes where we end up discussing this pandemic a lot from an HR and corporate perspective. And so far I know that I have classes with a few anti-mask/ anti-vax people. Listen, I get that my college has an over all conservative leaning and that even if you identify as a liberal (much less a leftist), people are going to look at you like you sprouted a second head. But of all things, why does this shit have to be political. I can’t even say that I completely disagree with the *muh freedon* people. I’m just as tired as they are and I don’t want to deal with this stupid thing anymore. I empathize with their emotions. But it’s like… these are the sentiments that are causing this to prolong and mutate. And it’s just like….. can we not?!?!?! It would be one thing if I had to deal with this for a few months. I think if that were the case I’d would be fine for the most part. But it’s different when you end up dealing with a prolonged stressor like this. And I’m not even the type of person who feels super emotionally impacted by current events long term. Yes, they do emotionally impact me but after a couple weeks I’m back to normal. And if that’s not the case, I simply put boundaries on the content I consume for a duration of time. But this shit….. this shit feels like it’s been lasting forever. Like if there is anything I wish for, I would say that I wish a future version of me could travel back in time to this present moment and just tell me when this thing will end just so I have something to hold on to and count down from. Because a large part of the exhaustion is the feeling that this thing is never ending and trying to figure out how to deal with the uncertainty. And because I’ve been readjusting to the culture of this campus and now everyone else’s attitudes with this pandemic, I feel rather tired even though it’s only been 2 weeks. Time feels like it’s dragging on and in general my anxiety has been all over the place. I haven’t hit the ground running and I’m trying to be gentle with myself when it comes to this. But I do get this temptation to be more critical of myself especially because I’m surrounded by people who are rather cutthroat.

I mean I think there are other factors involved in how long distance relationships don't usually work out but even though there is the physical connection thing, it's not necessarily a sex thing. Like I know personally, I can't build a relationship, whether it be romantic or platonic, through online means in the early stages. There is something about technology that brings out my inner sociopath because of the way the medium lacks in the connectivity element which I'm thinking about journaling later. Also with the whole "there is no bond without sex" thing is that it dismisses the connection and bond you make with a person prior to having sex. For me, the other thing that gets under my skin when it comes to this attitude is how it frames sex as an obligation or expectation rather than something both parties do when they feel ready and it feels natural. It's basically an ultimatum. You can still have a healthy, fulfilling, and deep relationship with someone even if you don't do much physically.

There are a couple of trans men who I was cuddle buddies with for a period of time and if I was ready for a relationship and if they were attracted to me, I would have taken that opportunity (they were both gay so it was out of question). So yes, yes I would date a transman because they are considered men in my eyes.

Had these two videos on my watch later list for a minute and given what I wrote about a few days ago, I find the videos to be relevant.

I'm confused too lol. What even counts as "status" and to what extent is it determined by your level of consciousness? What even counts as feminine and how does it relate to the quality of consciousness of either gender? Because I feel like my natural levels of masculinity/femininity hasnt moved as much as both polarities just started manifesting differently. In order for attraction to be a thing, do you have to be far on either side of the spectrum for your respect gender (ie be super feminine if you're a woman)? That doesnt sound right. Wouldnt it make more sense to find your own authentic levels of masculinity/femininity and then find someone to click with according to how well they complement those energies? This too^^ Lead with stage orange, attract more stage orange.

Ok I was rereading some older posts on this journal and it finally hit me as to why this bothers me. Before I get into that, I think I want to add another detail that gets under my skin and that is on how there cannot be a bond unless there is sex. I've seen Leo say this a handful of times on this forum and it also rubs me the wrong way. Part of it is because so much of my life experiences contradict this notion and because it puts sex at a pedestal and a gateway to human connection rather than just letting things develop naturally. But anyways the reason why the above gets under my skin is because it puts a formula to human interaction. It's similar to how a bunch of "nice guys" think that if they perform niceness and push the right buttons, they would achieve the connection they desire. It's the same shit but in different fonts.

Envy and Why There Are So Many Incels in a Spirituality Forum Another thing that Natalie mentions that set off the light bulb moment in my head is how “looking envious up at the rich is painful. It makes you feel inferior. And a way to alleviate that pain is to sublimate envy, and pretend that you’re and aristocratic aesthete scoffing at the vulgar taste of the arriviste.” I think you could replace rich with people who have social/sexual abundance, pretending to be aristocratic with pretending to be an enlightened sage, and scoffing at vulgar taste with scoffing at the unconsciousness of society. And when you make those replacements, then it makes sense why there are so many incels on this forum. There are people over here who have a lot of misanthropic tendencies and instead of admitting that they are jealous of the normies, they try to paint themselves as a bunch of sages who are dedicated to contemplation and solitude when really, some of them are antisocial hermits. I’m not saying everyone is like that. I think there are people who authentically feel that they need to go into hermit mode and figure their lives out and it’s a whole soul searching moment. I’ve been there. But I can’t help but feel that for some people on this forum, their spirituality is a massive cope because how tf are you spiritual and you don’t experience basic empathy towards women!?!?!? There are times where I genuinely feel that my TikTok feed and the people I talk to on a semi regular basis are much more conscious than some of the people I encounter here. Another example Natalie explains is shit talking plastic surgery (around 54:30). Some transwomen talk about how “at least they don’t look like a botched sex doll” and it’s a form of envy because to achieve this doll like aesthetic, you need to have a lot of money and that’s out of reach for a lot of people. As a result, those people resort of claiming that the thing that is out of reach is not worth having anyway as a way to cope with frustrated desire. This whole thing sounds like the whole envying social and sexual abundance thing where there are people on this forum who claim that they are some how above the social game and that it’s all unconsciousness anyway. It also mirror a lot of NLOG attitudes that Natalie goes into around 55:30 where some women start being envious and contemptuous of other women they deem to be more socially acceptable and they try to puff themselves up by throwing femininity under the bus and deeming it as stupid to hide their feelings of anxiety and inferiority. And a lot of times, the other girls don’t even exist and they are just an idealized construction of womanhood from the media. You’re basically comparing yourself to a very one-dimensional caricature of womanhood. And then at some point you realize that other women are still multifaceted people with a variety of interests, personalities, and values. I guess you can apply the same logic to the “unconscious” people who don’t spend all that amount of time sitting alone working on themselves. There isn’t any one way to perform self awareness and self reflection. You don’t have to go down the spirituality route, the academic route, the psychedelic route, the self help route, etc. if it doesn’t resonate with you. You can still build a sense of self awareness and find yourself through different life experiences. And there is no right way to experience life. That’s something that I’ve been contemplating lately especially when the topic of priorities come up. Sometimes we judge one another on the priorities we have and when they don’t align with our own, we judge them as “wasting their life away.” I feel like people who were considered more nerdy growing up is more prone to this type of thinking that the media perpetuates. There is this trope of peaking in high school or college where during those years in your life, you were really social, really talented, really hot, etc, and you focused more on those efforts than you did to your work and then you end up basically failing at life. Peaking in high school or college is often characterized as a popular kid thing but honestly, I don’t think the dorks are immune to this phenomenon. I have met some people who have this whole complex about being a nerd growing up where they’re like “when I was in high school, I paid attention in school and didn’t party and stayed away from drugs and now look at me killing it in life.” And to the people with that complex, all I have to say is “how is your social and emotional health going? Do you have a good way to balance your work and your life or is the success you got from work pretty much ruling your life and you cling onto it because it justifies your pain and trauma you got from lack of social connection growing up and now your career makes it seem like that suffering was ‘worth it’” (listen, I know this sounds really bitchy but like mood). I guess what I’m trying to say is that don’t get a superiority complex around your life decisions because you can still learn from the experiences of others. If they have different experiences, odds are that they probably have something to teach you as well. And I feel like a lot of the stereotypical smart/good kids sometimes get shades of this because growing up they are told that they are prioritizing the right things and that life is going to fall into their lap if they continue like this and that you will grow up to be better than those other kids in the long run. It’s just a breeding ground for contempt. It’s ok to be envious about someone else’s lifestyles and priorities but I think it’s important to recognize that and see yourself in a different lane doing your own thing that is right for you. Your lane isn’t better or worse nor is your destination going to be better or worse. And you’re probably going to go through different phases of your life where your priorities shift around anyways. We’re all in a different season in our lives and while Chad over there is prioritizing his social life and is developing his social skills and figuring out dating at 16 and then goes into contemplative hermit mode 10 years later, that doesn’t make his path better or worse if compare it to how you went into contemplative hermit mode at 16 and then decided to focus on your social skills more later in life. For the people who decided to take the self help route later in life, that’s ok. You didn’t waste your life. Sure there are pros and cons of doing this work earlier or later but one of the big pros is having a lot of life experience and being able to draw on those past experiences instead of theorizing a bunch of what ifs. And as a result, you may have more concrete examples of lessons in life as opposed to abstractions of what you should and shouldn’t do. And for the people who took this route earlier, there is no need to get a moral superiority complex around all of this. You aren’t ahead of anyone in life. You just decided to prioritize different things and that’s ok. I also feel like some young people who get super into self-development early and go hermit mode does feel envy towards normies because of the shit they've gone through on this journey but because that’s painful to admit, they transform it in moral superiority. I think it’s also really important to look at the part around 1:19:00 where Natalie talks about this moralism turns inward and attacks the individual conscious which then produces asceticism, self-denial, and guilt. Because slave morality not only calls out the external factors oppressing a person but also the internal factors with in, or our animal instincts. And this results in hating our nature, hating ourselves, and just hating life itself. The only thing I thought of in this section is the spiritual ego and how it can cause you to hate yourself and others causing you to want to meditate in a cave somewhere for the rest of your days instead of saying yes to life.

Envy, Cringe, and Incel Tendencies Been meaning to take a crack at this since the video came out but I needed time to contemplate and have the message marinate in my mind. I love how aware Natalie’s videos are and how I feel like I walk away with more brain cells after watching her videos. But this one strikes a very particular chord with me. I feel like envy is something I’ve been experiencing a lot and on some level has been my default setting since like last October. And it hasn’t been fun. Natalie said it herself, envy is the only sin that doesn’t come with pleasure. Like, with the other sins like lust, gluttony, and sloth, you can at least have fun with. So first Natalie talks about incels. Later on, she also talks about the proximity effect where you are more likely to be envious of people you have things in common with because their fortune looks like something you could’ve had but you don’t. One of the reasons why it was difficult for me to come to terms with being potentially straight (honestly, I’m still questioning) is because of the proximity effect. Before when I identified as asexual, there was a distance between me and other straight/gay people in that I didn’t care about sex at all. Therefore me not getting any wasn’t a point of envy. But now that I am straying from that asexual identity, I catch myself feeling salty when people talk about their sexual experiences. First it starts with a feeling of envy, then it leads to anger/ contempt, and soon enough since I repress anger and contempt, it just turns into this sadness. And when people are talking about this, they genuinely can’t tell all of this is happening just beneath the surface because for one, I’m good at hiding it and acting like nothing is going on and two because I go through these emotions really fucking quickly. Like I would say that I go through these stages in a matter of seconds and then I’m left with this incel depression for the next couple days. But yeah, I didn’t feel this envy before when I was asexual and this was something that I learned how to deal with. I don’t know if this is the healthiest way to deal with this but I mainly just try to set boundaries, distract myself, and unpack my own feelings of unworthiness. Firstly, with boundaries. I have two. The first is that I don’t talk about sex with my friends all that much. I’ve told them something along the lines of “hey, can we talk about something else, I’m not super comfortable with this topic.” They know I’m questioning so it’s all cool. The second is that I don’t watch porn because it isn’t healthy for me emotionally and it just reinforces that sex is something that isn’t for me and that it’s for other people instead. Then when it comes to distracting myself, I try to stay busy dealing with other areas of my life in order to remind myself that this isn’t the only thing that defines me and that there other things that makes me and my life interesting. And trust me, I have plenty of other shit to sort through. And finally, I try to journal about my own feelings of unworthiness and deal with the underlying emotions and unpack underlying experiences that contribute to the self-loathing. And to add to all of this, when it comes to incels and my own self loathing/ incel tendencies, there is this cringe mechanism that comes in. Something me and the incels have in common is that we want sex and intimacy but for one reason or another, we just aren’t getting any. And there is this group representation aspect that kicks in because I know plenty of people who are single and have little to no experience and they aren’t a bunch of potential mass murders. There is already this notion in society that if you aren’t dating, in a relationship, or having sex regularly, that there is something wrong with you and that you’re probably a hermit with no social skills. When in reality, there are plenty of well-adjusted people who aren’t neurotic about this whole thing and are just vibing. I feel like socially, the whole incel phenomenon is a self-fulfilling prophecy. You have society saying that something is horribly wrong with you if you’re a virgin after a certain age and then either you end up questioning shit about society, or you end up internalizing a sense of envious self-hatred and next thing you know, you actually end up with something wrong with you. From 34:00 to 37:30 Natalie talks about how conservative politics are often brimming with envy. This whole section is a gold mine and I recommend just checking that part of the video out because I can't do it justice by trying to put it in my own words. (I made an edit on this post after trying and failing lol). But some important quotes to consider include the following: “Envy is felt more intensely by prideful people (because envy is a response to ego threat) so it’s especially sharp when it targets people who are ‘supposed to be’ beneath you." Natalie then goes on to reference Dworkin who explains that “This dominance of men by women is experienced by men as real-emotionally real, sexually real, psychologically real; it emerges as the reason for the wrath of the misogynist… The woman appears to control sex. The man needs it. This causes his rage at her perceived power over him.” So then basically, “women control access to what men want, which gives women a kind of indirect power that some men envy. They envy the sexual power of women. It doesn’t matter to the misogynist that women objectively have less power in society than men. He envies women because they ‘have’ what he desires.” She then references the quote that “It is not the absolute differences between men which feed envy, but subjective perception, the optics of envy.” So here’s the thing about the incels. I do have empathy for them because of the shared experience that we have. It’s perfectly reasonable to feel awful about your lack of sexual experience in a society that praises and expects such a thing from you regardless of your circumstance. It does get lonely and the lack of self-worth and feeling of ugliness when you’re comparing yourself to a very narrow standard of beauty is easy to internalize if you don’t contemplate about this shit. But their envy is what really gets under my skin. It’s like they do have the opportunity to make valid points but instead they are out here taking it out on others. There is a part of me that wants to yell WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO COMPLAIN ABOUT because most of these incels are not only men, but a lot of them are white men. YOU ARE LITERALLY IN THE TOP OF THE HIEARCHY BUT YOU STILL FEEL THIS NEED TO SPIN THIS VICTIM NARRATIVE THAT ISN’T BACKED BY ANY STUDIES LIKE AT ALL. That’s not to say that their experience, especially emotional experience isn’t real in the relative sense but it’s to say that in absolute terms, men being oppressed by women simply they can’t get their dicks wet isn’t true…. like at all. They want to say so badly that women have it better when it comes to things related to sex and they refuse to take the very real threats we have to deal with on a regular basis when it comes to our physical safety WHICH THEN CONTRIBUTES TO THE DANGER WE EXPERIENCE. The whole Chad thing as well as rating women on this 1-10 scale also makes me really irritated because, it’s like they are so close to examining the issues with unrealistic body standards for men but instead of looking at things in a critical lens of how society is the problem, the project this shit onto women by painting all women as materialistic pieces of shit and the subject them to even harsher standards. It also goes back to the whole WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO COMPLAIN ABOUT thing because a woman’s beauty is already very harshly critiqued and policed, even more so when you consider the experiences of trans women and women of color, so for a man to sit here and say that he has it worse is frustrating to say the least. Men’s body image issues are real and I have wrote about that before but it’s different from what women have to experience because of the power dynamics that are at play. Again, they have the perfect opportunity to critique the hierarchy and deconstruct it but instead their male ego kicks in and they want to puff themselves up as being “alpha”, or god forbid a “sigma” (new male type who dis?) as a way to puff themselves up and regain some of the control they lost from their own envy. And next thing I know (hell even in this post you can probably smell it) the cringe mechanism comes in and there is this sense of stage green moral superiority that kicks in where I genuinely feel better than the incels for not being a misogynistic piece of shit and for being more self-aware than them. This also ties in with issues I have with my spiritual ego. Don’t worry, it’s getting better. I used to be much angrier and more triggered at one point and at one point I wasn’t even aware of the moral superiority complex that I sometimes have. That’s something else to unpack for a different day. But anyways, this explanation tying in envy with the experience of incels makes a lot of sense to me and it helps me make sense of my own negative emotions that come up when I’m discussing things in this journal.

Attraction Doesn't Exist in a Vacuum Part 4: Hypermasculinization and Hyperfeminization I feel like I have touched on both of these when it comes to racial fetishization. I know that hypermasculinization is huge thing for black people (and I think also Latino people due to things like the angry brown woman trope that isn't just limited to black women even though black women face this at a much greater extent) and by painting them as hypermasculine, any amount of pain or vulnerability or softness that comes from the effects of systems of oppression are stripped away and instead are replaced with this notion of "we can continue treating them badly because they have the pain tolerance and they can take it." Hyperfeminization is a huge thing for a lot of Asian people. By painting Asian men in a hyperfeminized light, society paints them as emasculated and not as empowered as men of other races as if they are some how less of a man or weaker. For Asian women, there is the whole "submissive Asian woman" trope on how she lacks authority and agency and as a result is seen as more desirable because she isn't seen as a threat. I think living in Texas as a South Asian woman gives me an intersectional perspective on this. On one hand you have people who see me as Asian first and see me in this hyperfeminine light but also there are people who confuse me for being Hispanic and that comes with it's own problems with being seen as hypermasculine and angry. I don't have a mixed identity but I feel like different people see different things depending on their prejudices and attitudes. I also think even when you take getting mistaken for being Hispanic out of the picture that being Indian is kind of in this awkward in between in these dynamics especially when South Asian men are taken into account. Because on one hand again, you're seen as this submissive Asian woman trope especially when you take into consideration the ways that South Asian men and women are treated differently in the family. But on the other hand, you are seen in this hypermasculine light when you are compared to white women who are seen as the feminine beauty ideal. In those situations, you get seen as this hairy disgusting angry beast. (Tangent: The whole body hair thing has shades of pedophilia but also racism and capitalism involved. Racism comes into the picture because a lot of POC tend to be hairier or have darker hair compared to white people and that has been used as a justification that POC are more animalistic and less evolved. Capitalism comes into play because the whole thing with women shaving came up during the world wars because men were going off to war and dying. As a result, razor companies wanted to target women as a way of making up their lost profits.) In short, hypermasculinization is associated with being seen as a heartless beast with little to no human qualities and everything you say is exaggerated as being violent and doing the absolute most because the people in power would rather have you being quiet. Hyperfeminization is associated with having your agency stripped from you and submitting to whoever is in the top of the hierarchy because your human thoughts, needs, and emotions don't matter and you're essentially like a child who is at the mercy of who is in charge of you. Both of hypermasculinization and hyperfeminization come down to a lack of respect and dehumanization because you aren't seeing that person or that group of people as they really are. You are instead simplifying them to a collection of tropes and you're taking their expressions to the extremes to where they ignore anything else about the person. To reiterate from the previous post: And I think that by taking this into consideration, it's so important to be both well integrated yourself but also have a well integrated view of other people especially when women and people of color come into the picture. Going into extreme hypermasculinity or hyperfemininity or expecting other people to do so doesn't help anyone.

Attraction Doesn't Exist in a Vacuum: Articles I found a few articles that are relevant to some of the stuff I've been talking about and I thought it would be somethings that would be helpful to look over. https://www.ntdaily.com/fetishization-of-black-men-is-a-form-of-prejudice/ https://www.jstor.org/stable/2904350?seq=3#metadata_info_tab_contents https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10057104 https://vc.bridgew.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1132&context=undergrad_rev https://aninjusticemag.com/youve-heard-of-rape-culture-but-have-you-heard-of-pedophilic-culture-8ecd67f2c696

Attraction Doesn't Exist in a Vacuum Part 3: PH Categories Annnnnd there is that whole other post on this. I remember about a year ago there was a post that was going around on twitter that was along the lines of "are you a pornhub category or are you priviledged?" And honestly, that's a fat mood. While analyzing an individual's kinks/preferences can be a messy process in the sense that I don't always think it's appropriate to psychoanalyze what people are into and why (can be a whole nother topic tbh), I think analyzing the collective trends and preferences to be something that is important to look into as a way of cultivating social awareness through analyzing the collective ego. In a way, I think that the categories that are most popular on ph can be quite revealing as well as the way different groups of people are portrayed. Though they may be pleasant I don't see emotions like desire or joy as inherently positive emotions. I think it's important to also look into things that spark up positive feelings in us in order to work through any shadow elements that maybe present. Which is why I think it's important to pay attention to what turns people on collectively. I think something that makes more sense than only looking at porn through the male gaze is specifically seeing it through the gaze of white men. I have talked to POC and regardless of gender, there is a consensus that a lot of porn gives off an icky feeling especially when specific categories are taken into account. I think one of the best examples of this is how black men are portrayed in porn. They pick out the most stereotypical role for black men and reduce them down to this hype masculine trope. And this really comes up when interracial porn comes into the picture which a lot of the time, interracial usually means a black man and a white woman. Even though interracial porn isn't limited to that (i.e. you can have a white person and a latino person and it's still interracial), odds are the videos that are tagged as interracial usually follow that particular format. I don't think this whole thing being a fetish is a coincidence. There is a whole history dating back to slavery of how black men are seen as hyper masculine, sexually deviant, and having this thirst for white women because white women are painted as this ideal for femininity. There is a history of how black men were often targeted with false rape accusations towards white women just so white men can have an excuse to torture black men. Basically by even looking at a white woman in the wrong way can easily land you into a lot of trouble. And I think that people who are into categories of porn that sexualize an entire group of people tends to literally get off to the idea of their prejudices being confirmed through this narrow form of representation. There are also a lot of white women who sexualize tf out of black men. There is this whole thing of how some white women try to get with men of color as a way to piss off their parents and be adventurous. I know a couple of guys who got into situations like that and it's messed up to say the least. Granted, I don't have personal experience in this but from what I can gather is that when you end up dating a person like this, you aren't building a relationship or a narrative together. It's their world and you're just living in it. And you aren't really living in it as a well fleshed out character either. You're reduced down to this particular trope and as this object that is just there to symbolize going against your parents. They aren't with you because they are genuinely into you and care about you. They are with you because you represent something to them. In my opinion, seeing someone for who and what they are is a factor that goes into respecting a person. And respect is something that is incredibly important in any romantic and sexual situation. Knowing you're respected and that the other person sees you as you are is the gateway to intimacy emotionally and psychologically. By seeing someone as a collection of symbols and a narrow trope limits the complexity of that person and therefore you aren't seeing them for who they really are. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Also, the fact that "teen" and "barely legal" categories are popular is concerning. Like, why tf are we hyper fixating on really young women like that as a culture? Also, it brings into the whole pedo culture that is in the beauty industry and how much youth is considered the end all and be all for a woman as if the little amount of worth we have expires at a certain age. Then there is the whole body hair thing and being really skinny and petite etc. And I'm not trying to define what a "real woman" is or to say that "real woman have curves" or some other bs. I'm not saying that if you're into really petite women that you're a pedo either. We're allowed to have preferences but it doesn't hurt to be mindful or aware of where those preferences come from. All I'm saying is that it's rather sus that we put traits that are associated with prepubescent girls on a pedestal as something that women should aspire to. It's very sus on how in general we tend to infantilize women socially through mansplaining things to them and treating as if they are irrational children who aren't capable of doing much and then at the same time have shit like this be glorified in porn. It's very sus that we take things like naivety, a lack of life (or sexual) experience, and submission and collectively associate them with femininity. It's as if being overpowered is simply part of the feminine condition. And in a way it is because of the way society treats women and feminine presenting people. But to say that our experiences are inherently like that because of nature and that this is just the way it always is and always will be is dangerous. And I feel like as far as collective standards go, there isn't an equivalent for men to be young in order to be considered attractive. Even when women say they like shorter guys or skinnier guys, or guys that have that "pretty boy/ feminine" look/energy to them, age and youthfulness doesn't come into the conversation as much. Most of the things that correlate with cultural notions of an ideal man usually has to do with height, a developed body, hair etc. In other words, signifiers that you are in fact a grown ass man. The same can't be said about the cultural notions of the ideal woman especially when the whole "men gain value after the age of 25 and women lose value after that age" thing is taken into consideration (the whole thing is so predatory and icky.... I just can't. I feel like I talked about how that's fucked up all over this forum back when I still had the emotional energy to engage in certain places on this forum).

Manifestations Ok so I have a really freaky story about manifesting and I'm basically a believer at this point. When it came to my dorm, I found out the day before I supposed to move in that my housing application got cancelled. A couple months prior, I have been in a consistent mood where I felt as if nothing was going to get better and that I'm going to be stuck with my parents for the rest of my life. I was acting as if which is a manifestation technique. By acting as if or by acting under assumption, it's like you're basically sending out subconscious signals of whatever you're acting like is going to happen and then you end up manifesting that very thing. So as I was panicking with not very many options, I decided that I'm going to try out this last minute manifestation technique. Basically I wrote a letter to the universe basically saying "hey sorry about emitting negative energy, can you fix this for me? I know you can do this because you have moved mountains for me in the past and I have faith and trust in you." I also did this thing called scripting where you get into the zone and write out exactly how you want a situation to go in a very detail oriented way because that's also a manifestation technique. I wrote this once I released the negative emotions I was feeling when I got the news. I let myself feel and didn't bypass it. Once I was done with that, I wrote out the letter and it came from a feeling of acceptance, peace, and confidence. I was still pretty anxious about the whole thing. But I do think that being anxious while still having the faith that everything will turn out ok is possible. I didn't tell my parents about anything. Still acting as if, I quit my part time job, got packed up, and every time I caught myself feeling anxious I told myself that I was excited because my manifestations always come true. And whatever I scripted actually did come true. Just to be sure I also added a bunch of details that were along the lines of things that would be nice but things that I'm not attached to. It was kind of like bonus points. I have this habit where I try to aim high because even if I don't reach that ideal goal, I still get pretty far. So in this bonus round I scripted that I was going to get a discount for my dorm and that I'm going to be good friends with my roommate. BOTH OF THOSE THINGS CAME TRUE With the roommate thing, I was fully prepared from the start that I was probably going to room with some random stranger. Yes, my roommate was random but when I moved in, I found out that it was actually someone I had a class with 2 years ago. We were both excited about that and we basically skipped over the whole awkward phase of getting to know your roommate since we were acquaintances before. And I'm sure at this rate we'll be pretty good friends tbh. I feel like we're already pretty good friends because of how comfortable we are around each other when it comes to opening up and communicating. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I also did this thing about a month ago where I wrote out all of the things I want to happen in my life along with a bunch of affirmations. Like I said in previous posts, I've been getting more into astrology. And I found out about this thing that is apparently really astrologically significant when it comes to manifesting. It's something along the lines of if you try to do a manifestation ritual on these following days, it's guaranteed success. Honestly, I don't know how much of that is true but I'm just having fun with it. I think that's why a lot of my manifestations work. I believe in it and I know ways that it makes sense in a non woo woo kind of way but at the same time I don't take it super seriously and I enjoy the process and that makes me detached from the outcome (because giving out negative/desperate energy comes from a place of lack and that blocks your manifestations) . Prior to the experience with housing above, like I said, I believed in the law of attraction and manifestation but it wasn't in this magical woo woo way. I kind of saw manifestation as this long term thing where you need to take your time releasing blockages and working through your limiting beliefs and that your manifestations come slowly after a lot of hard work. And don't get me wrong, that is the case in a lot of situations. But also, thinking that manifestation is always this time consuming, emotionally laborious thing can be a limiting belief on it's own as well. Manifestation can be easy if you want it to be and in the housing situation, I really wanted manifestation to be easy and instantaneous. And so I released that limiting belief in that situation. I think another reason why I had this limiting belief around manifestation was because I didn't fully believe in it. I believed in it enough to make things happen but there was a block that was still there in the form of doubting things like spirituality, woo woo things, and intuition. Like I believed that manifestation only worked in certain situations and as a result, it only worked in certain situations for me. But anyways, now I'm choosing to see as the universe as my personal wish granting factory because I guess if you want to bring nonduality into this, I created everything and I am a part of everything. And as a result, I'm manifesting everything all the time.

I'm in this mood where I want a guy to shower me with attention and affection, cuddle with him for a couple hours, and eventually have that turn into kinky but also really gentle sex. I want to turn red from being praised and complimented and feel overwhelmed emotionally and physically by someone. Edit: realized I wrote about something that relates to this exact feeling. Wanted to include it again here:

Attraction Doesn't Exist in a Vacuum Part 2: Racial Fetishization One of the grossest things I ever had a guy tell me is the following. "I like Indian women. You're as sexy as a Latina but you aren't angry or fiesty because you're as feminine and submissive as an Asian woman. It's the best of both worlds." BITCH WTF?!??!?!? There is so much wrong with this. This man managed to sexualize Latina women, East Asian women, paint some WOC as angry and aggressive and creep me tf out in 3 sentences. Yeah this mf got blocked really fucking quickly. And the worst part of this type of treatment is that it isn't even a thing when it comes to white men. It's a problem with men of all races. Another time I had a man talk shit about black women on a first date in order to lift me up. That was awkward af and I'm not the one. I'm not going to sit here and validate your hatred. So I walked out with no explanation. Then there was a guy who asked me what my racial background was. After I told him I was South Asian, this bitch tried to mansplain TO ME about MY RACIAL BACKGROUND and he JUST MET ME!?!??!?! He was like "nah, you too fine to just be Indian, are you sure you ain't Latina or Middle Eastern, you sure you aint mixed with anything." I awkwardly laughed and said "yeah I'm pretty sure I'm just brown." And he was like "No but are you sure?" and this was a whole thing. How tf are you going to tell me about what I am when you just met me and act as if you know me better than I know myself. Then there is this whole thing of being considered "exotic." I find it so weird that Asian women are considered exotic because globally there is literally a billion of us. Like i get that there aren't many of us in the U.S. but it just adds to the whole othering of Asian people and not being considered wholly American. And the different ways that WOC are sexualized also have to do with histories of oppression and colonization. We are literally more likely to be sexually harassed and assaulted because of these stereotypes. And plus, it's just plain gross to fetishize an entire race of people. I don't have much to say other than it gives me the ickiest feeling. And dealing with this icky feeling is also one of the reasons why I don't like the whole process with dating. Like there is this whole racism aspect I have to deal with and I would just. rather. not....... At the very least maybe not at the environment I'm in. I'm not even talking about preferences. There isn't anything wrong with having preferences. I'm sure everyone has them to a certain extent. But when those preferences comes to fully excluding one group of people or hyperfixating on a group because of some underlying issue, that's when shit gets weird. It's a different vibe than "just a preference" because those "preferences" don't exist in a vacuum. It's shaped by history, power dynamics, trends etc. Like I know damn well that if I was alive in the 1920s, I would be considered an ugly beast. I'm pretty sure that I'm the exact opposite of what was considered attractive back then. Speaking of beauty being a moving target and being fetishized, I think the intersection of those things are really relevant now. Things like full lips, tanned skin, curvy bodies, small almond eyes are a part of today's standard. It's to the point where white people try to get plastic surgery to appear more racially ambiguous and get these dark ass spray tans. It's that time of year meaning I'm running into plenty of white women who have darker skin than me and I find myself standing there like "is this borderline brown face?" or "is this bitch doing the Ariana Grande?" The whole thing makes me uneasy because it's like the features of women of color are praised on white women but when one of us has those features have naturally, they are labelled as ugly. Thick eyebrows weren't considered attractive until Cara Delavigne. People with small almond eyes were targetted until Bella Hadid came out with the whole "fox eye trend." People would bully you and call you names for having full lips until Kylie came out with her lip kits. People thought curvier bodies and large asses were disgusting until the Kardashians came into the picture. It's irritating. You love our features and you want them for yourself but you don't give a single fuck about us as people.

Attraction Doesn't Exist in a Vacuum Part 1: Being Swarmed by One Rigid Standard This is something I've been meaning to write about more. I know I already talked about some of this when it comes to being sexual vs being sexualized. but I want to get into this more because it just hit more intensely than usual as I've been readjusting to my school atmosphere. There are two factors in this and that is race and body image as well as how they intersect. Here are a couple things that are relevant. The first is from this journal and the second is in my regular journal. I'm going to start with the body image thing first because I feel like that effects me more. Like I said, there aren't really any thicc people on this campus. Lack of diversity culturally is one thing but when it comes to everyone being more or less the same body type, that's a different level of weird. And that same body type is really REALLY skinny. Basically on this campus if your stomach isn't flat, you're basically considered fat. There is a huge diet culture here as well. It isn't uncommon for people to gain weight during college due to life style change (often called the Freshman 15) like not eating home cooked meals, not having gym class, drinking and partying a little more etc. Well, here, you don't get the Freshman 15. You better have a Freshman Negative 15. Also I know that in a couple of sororities there is a requirement to go to the gym because god forbid yall are known as the sorority with girls that aren't as pretty. Granted, I'm not in that scene socially but that vibe definitely permeats throughout the whole school. Also there is this huge things with thinness and dieting with upper middle class to upper class white people. I'm really referencing the shit out of something I wrote months ago but it's relevant af: But yeah. Throughout this week I caught myself comparing myself to most of the girls in this school. I can't even claim to be a curvier or bigger girl realistically but by the standards of this school, I might as well be. The main things that stuck out to me is me comparing arm sizes, obviously my lack of flat stomach, and my boobs. Dead ass I didn't know how big my tits were until I first starting attending here. There is a part of me that feels really vulgar and chunky for a lack of a better word. The stomach thing is just a really big insecurity of mine in general. And the arms thing, it's something that I used to be really insecure about but now a days it comes up every now and then. But the thing that surprised me what how I started feeling insecure about my legs mainly because I normally really like the way my legs look. My legs are a little thick compared to the rest of my body, has a nice shape (I think lol) and is well toned/ muscular. But on this campus, I feel like more people have skinny legs that look more elongated if that makes sense. And in comparison, I find myself feeling chunky which doesn't make sense because my legs are muscular. Which then leads into the race thing. I hate to admit this but something that I notice is that I find this subtle feeling of insecurity creep in when I'm around tall skinny white women. Bonus points if she's blonde with blue or green eyes. This feeling is really subtle to where I don't notice like 90% of time unless I was trying to be mindful. But in this case in a predominantly white school with an emphasis on thinness, this feeling isn't as subtle because I feel swarmed by this exact type of woman. And it has to be all three factors. White skinny women don't affect me. Tall skinny women of color don't affect me. White short women don't affect me. It has to be tall skinny white women. The way I feel when I'm being swarmed lol is that I feel like the awkward chubby brown kid who hasn't gone through puberty. Which doesn't make much sense because I think one look at me would be enough to know that I'm a grown ass woman. I guess it is this feeling of being the opposite of this type of woman that is often pointed to as the standard of beauty. I think this feeling of infantilization comes from how this reminds me of my childhood experiences and how people simply labeled me as ugly. It's like I turn into that kid again even though it's been like a decade since I encountered that type of treatment. While to body image thing kicks in immediately, the race thing comes in slowly. I remember at one time I caught myself thinking, "oh I'm pretty but I'm not pretty in this environment." The best way I can explain it is that I know that I'm beautiful but here I'm very aware that I'm not the standard. And that leads to me feeling like *yes I can accept myself but I highly doubt other people see me in the same way.* It's this feeling of invisibility, like knowing that I'm not the image that comes to mind when someone envisions their type. Like when people talk about "what's your type, do you like blondes, brunettes, or redheads?" I know damn well that women of color can have all of those hair colors naturally but I feel like when someone asks that question, there is this unspoken but understood notion that we're talking about white women. And when women of color come into the picture, there is this notion of fetishization and being othered out which is a topic of it's own. And while I've long been aware of Eurocentric standards of beauty, because of the conformity culture and the homogeneity on this campus, it takes those standards to an extreme. There is a very specific way of being considered beautiful and/or attractive. I think all of this goes back to this whole notion of how I don't even see myself as an option when it comes to dating and relationships. But on the bright side, at least I don't attract Nazis because I'm don't exactly look like Hitler's wet dream. (I have met full on Nazis on this campus and I have this one blonde haired, blue eyed acquaintance who would occasionally be approached by really creepy conservative/fascist white guys). And that's a problem I will never have lol thank god.

I have 3 friends out side of school and a couple at school. The ones at school I see on a regular basis. One of them I live with so I see her everyday. I also have a handful of acquaintances that I see regularly in my classes. Not close to them but they are nice to have to be able to keep up with course work and ask for help. I talk and text on the phone with the friends I don't see on a regular basis. I probably talk to them once a month or so but we're still close because we already built that bond growing up over the years. Every few months or so we meet up and either hang out, get food, or do something else like watch a movie, cook together, have a picnic, go on a drive, etc. For the couple friends at school, I don't do much other than chat with my roommate since we're pretty much always around each other but we still give each other space and we have our other social circles as well. My other friend and I just get food or study together because most of the time we're busy and we want to be around each other but not make it into a whole thing. Used to growing up when I had more of a social life. Was pretty close to them as well but as I grew up me and my friends naturally grew apart because we were developing as people differently and intuitively figured we need to give each other space (isn't really a guy friends thing, it was the group of people I was hanging out with at the time). My guy friends and I were platonic. I did naturally develop feelings for one of them after a year of knowing him but I mean that's 1 out of like 10 guys I was friends with. None of them ever had feeling towards me nor have they expressed anything seriously. I don't even know if this counts but a couple of the friends I have that are outside of school have younger brothers that tag along with me when I'm hanging out with my friends (their sisters). I'm also acquainted with my friends' younger brother's friends as well and basically am cool with them. Even though I'm not friends with them necessarily (as in I'm cool with them, enjoy their company, and hang out occasionally but I'm not super close with them), I would say they are still a part of my circle. Mostly school/college as well as through family friends and cultural/religious events growing up. Platonically speaking, not often. But I did deal with that a lot growing up when I first started growing apart from people and had no idea how to deal with the situation because I didn't have proper guidance in those situations nor did I have the life experience to have some objectivity. But I do have a longing for human connection since I've been pretty isolated in the last couple of years. Repressed is a better term than alone. I guess the closest thing to loneliness I have felt recently is feeling like I'm going crazy because no one is relating to what I'm going through and because I was being gaslighted and emotionally invalidated at home. Relating can help you see the relativity of a situation instead of getting stuck in your own head and that can be incredibly helpful at times. But when I'm by myself outside of my family, I very rarely feel alone. I also really enjoy doing a lot of things myself. Romantically, there is a longing for wanting to connect. But again, I think repressed is a better word to describe my situation rather than lonely. I really want a relationship but I'm not desperate for one to where I'm willing to lower my standards and compromise my boundaries just go along with anyone or any situation even if it doesn't feel right. Like, I'm not willing to do anything to get this thing met because again, it's a want but not a need. That's a broad question and I have no idea where you're thinking of going with this.