I think this is a memoir

Warnings for just a lot of mental health shit, suicide, etc.

It's the sort of thing people used to leave around the internet and I'd like to do so as well. but we live in a time where it feels that true, earnest, raw experiences are valued.

I cannot say that mine are particularly interesting, but they are mine and if you're someone like me, then you're someone who finds interest in reading about what other people think.

it's the kind of thing I'd want to find and it'd make me want to die but at least I'd feel SOME kind of connection with someone out there.

we're very careful these with ensuring that everything we put out is age-appropriate for everyone. that it appeals to everyone. I can't say that my life or personality would appeal to anyone, but I can say they'd appeal to me. is that narcissistic?

I find it difficult to say. I guess the thing is that my life is my life and even if I could trade it for someone else's, I'm not sure I would.

in some ways I'm an extremely typical case: gifted child to burnout transsexual woman. I frequently argue with myself about how much this is my fault. I want to take enough agency in my life that I am able to address difficult situations and come out making the correct choices. but I also need to give myself leeway and to accept that there were some difficult and fucked up things in my life and that going through these experiences has left a mark on me.

The title of this blog sort of comes from my experiences slowly going insane at the end of the world. when I was a teenager I would frequently berate myself for not living a difficult enough life for how bad I felt.

i had everything I needed. I was smart, tall, I went to a good school district, but I was incredibly shy. I was told that I would eventually come out of my shell but that always made no sense to me. I mean, a turtle, a crab (my sign), those fucking die if you take them out of their shells. It only now with decades of retrospect became apparent that people probably would referring to baby chicks.

does this give you insight into the way I think? it feels disordered. maybe it was doomed from the start. it never even occurred to me that you could remove a protective shell and leave the resident alive as a child.

I will say that I didn't hate being a boy.

I wanted to do girl things but it didn't make me upset that I couldn't.

No, that's not true. That's not true at all. I remember from almost as far as I could remember. I remember the boy I had a crush on in the second grade. I remember the time we had to put on tights and makeup for the school play and I was fascinated by how I looked. I thought that there was something wrong. That I was put on the wrong track, enrolled in the wrong course. There must have been a mistake. I was supposed to put all of this shit away and become a man? Fuck that. Fuck you. This is the only way I have to express my feelings.

I'm not allowed to look at the internet when I write this. I mean, I have music open and I might stop to look at notifications, but I've made it a rule that I cannot look anything up. i cannot spell check.

I want to make something that an LLM can't. even if you grind me up into a slurry and pour me into a mold, you're going to get something that is only shaped like me and not the thing itself.

there's nothing there behind the words of an LLM and that makes me sincerely angry. it's not thinking, it's not feeling, it's finding the algorithmic path to the exit.

you understand that's how those things work, right? there's no persistence of self, outside the context of the conversation. it's a ghost. a parlour trick. actually, I just lied about the spell checking. I've already used it. it was that much of a habit.

it's my goal to keep this sufficiently anonymous. to be honest, I suspect no one will read it at all. in my experience in the time of the deep web that you can always put something up and there's so much "content" that you can be assured that it will not catch anyone's attention. i'm counting on that. I'm hoping it ends up lodged in the archive and the digital memory of the web.

ah, but I think my point was that I am aware that these are the ramblings of a madwoman.

no. I don't know if I'm actually going insane. I know that I'm having a very difficult time and would like to express myself. I think that's a better way to frame it.

I'm trying to get into that habit. The habit of looking at things in a healthier way. I will say that, officially, I have only ever been diagnosed with anxiety, depression, and ADHD (inattentive type). I don't like to get too deep into therapy-speak but sometimes I need to pull myself back from the edge.

I feel like i've split my psyche in two, you know? we'll probably get into that another time. today I think I'll start by declaring what I want.

well, what I want specifically from this project. anonymous self expression. while I will reserve a number of events for myself, I think it is fair to warn you that it is not a happy story.

when I read the things I write, it is clear that it is me writing it. I notice my psychic signature in the words.

I worry that someone reading this will judge me. I don't mind being hated.

No, that's not true. I hate it. it's not fair. life isn't fair but that doesn't mean it doesn't suck when bad things happen. "suck it up and move on?" what the fuck is that.

Right. But I just mean that we both know that people don't like us when we're unstable. They like us when we're giving them what they want.

Of course they are. That's how relationships work. All relationships. They have something they want to get out of the interaction and you can provide it or not. But like, it's fine if all they want to get out of it is a pleasant exchange when buying food, right? it's fine to give it to them. that doesn't cost you anything.

What I mean is, the things you do are real things that have real impact, even if they're tiny ones. So you just do them and you hope that everyone else does the little things too and they do that. Maybe you're a shitty person in your own head but that doesn't mean that the things you do didn't actually help people.

It's hard to convince myself that any of it matters.

It all matters and it doesn't matter.

Are you thinking of that movie? Jesus fucking christ.

It hit on some common notes. And you loved it too.

you were driven insane by looking into the meaningless of the void?

yeah, we all are, right?

look. we live in a time where we know the scale of the universe. we know how shit works to an incredible level.

fuck

But it's true! It all comes from the restrictions in the math! when you realize that, like, electromagnetism has to be the way it is because you have a four-dimensional spacetime and the ability for, just, stuff to happen!

off track

The point is that we live in an incredible universe. One full of wonder and structure and TEXTURE.

no

BITE IT.

cringe

so cringe

So yeah. I bet a lot of people write these. What is a journal but fanfiction of your life?

shut up

I'm serious. You're allowed to tell your own story in your own way. Nobody else can tell you that it's wrong. You think you're going insane because you "have an imagination".

oh my god.

Schizo esotericism? Come on. You know it's self-indulgent. The point is that you're allowed to indulge yourself.

you know I'll never feel that I am.

I know, but you still are. It's just words on a page.

A Story about a guy

one time I came across a youtube video that I loved. I watched it over and over

I'll link it later but the video itself is not the point of the story.

It explained a topic I hadn't considered in a way that felt extremely accessible to me. It was adapted from a mathematics book about combinatorics and game theory.

I said I wouldn't check the internet, but I did and I confirmed that I understood what had happened.

The next summer of math videos I looked for a followup but there was none. I eventually looked the guy up on google and found he had passed away in 2021. suicide.

I'm going to be honest here... I want to talk about my feelings and they're not always going to be nice. i am terrified of being judged and canceled for talking about the wrong topics in the wrong way for someone. we need to grant people space to be shitty. understand that I'm doing my best. please.

do I get to tell a guy I've never met that I'm mad that he killed himself? that I'm mad he didn't make another math video? part of me says that that is so, so selfish. how dare I.

maybe he was a creep. there are a lot of creeps out there. but the thing is, I don't care. From my perspective I only know him through one work that spoke to me. what's wrong with that? I'll never know his life story. I'll only know the sliver that I might get from someone else. There's a whole other life!

You know "sonder" is a made up word meaning 'the realization that everyone around you has their own lives'? And I think sometimes people treat it as silly that someone has discovered 'empathy', but the fact is that, if you're some whose own thoughts and emotions and experiences overwhelm them, you can feel a sense of cosmic vastness when you are in a sea of people and understand that they all have interior worlds as rich as your's.

maybe not AS rich. there's a lot of assholes in 2025.

no politics.

politics is going to infuse everything we talk about.

yeah but no, like, ballgame politics, right? You know what I mean? we can talk about living in a fascist surveillance state but let's stay away from the game. focus on the metagame, so to speak.

fuck off.

I like games too!

you like making things fit automatically into little slots

It's satisfying.

automation games are fine.

I know.

The readers do understand that this is all fictional, right?

Every word.

i think it's okay to want more math videos from that guy.

sell me on it.

he made something you loved. you wanted more because it made you happy. that's fine, isn't it?

i can't counter that.

you didn't do anything to him that was disrespectful. you wished he was around more. what's more respectful than that?

yeah.

so, let's work through it. you wanted someone to be around more because you liked something they did. when they disappeared, you felt hurt and betrayed. but you also understand what it is like to feel that way. so you felt guilty. for putting your expectations on him. but when you make things you want people to want more, right?

yeah.

even if it feels like a burden at times too.

yeah.

so we won't blame them for wanting more. you did something they liked and it made them happy.

okay.

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