soos_mite_ah

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.

I wanted to include this quote from my other journal into this one. I feel like this is a good snap shot of where I'm at right now regarding my emotions and my development. I look forward to seeing this particular post later on as I work through my self development to do list just to see how much things change.

To Do List Execution 8/18/2021 I wrote out how I'm going to deal with each of these issues as I see fit in the moment in blue and turquoise. I also reordered the list according to what I find most important. Basically, these are the things I need to do in order to fulfill my objectives: Focus in class especially on the classes that are going to grow you personally and deal with your academic/professional trauma. Journal in "The Female Gaze" Shift your priorities Continue going to therapy Be vigilant of your eating habits and body image. Goal is to have most of these dealt with by the end of this semester and tie up loose ends during winter break.

Decided to make a new post instead just so things are more organized. Consider this as a continuation of the previous post but not necessarily a part 2. So yeah... I feel like the odd ball in this campus and I am sooo tempted to just give up socially and keep my head down for the next couple years. And as much as I want to give up, I did make a promise to myself on how I was going to try to build a social circle. Not sure how I'm going to pull that off while not getting the virus. I know people say it's safe and give the conservative atmosphere of the school, a lot of students are comfortable going out without a mask. But I'm not even though I'm vaccinated. Maybe it's the way my parents dealt with it or maybe it's me being really risk averse, but I just don't feel physically safe 100% to put myself out there. I had a couple classes and both classes were packed. The only difference pre pandemic and now is the masks and that's it. No extra distancing, no online courses, nothing. I'm not super freaked out by the whole thing but it definitely feels unusual to be in a crowd of people and not being 6ft apart from everyone since that was my habit for a year and a half now. I know I've only had 2 out of the 4 classes I'm taking this semester so far but I'm intimidated by those classes. I talked about one of them and I have another that I'm going to talk about in this post. I'm taking a class on negotiations and it's out of my comfort zone because normally I don't try to test people. I just take things at face value, try to be as transparent as possible, and if it doesn't work out I just walk away. This also relates to how I feel like a lot of my business classes have the ick factor. A lot of the stuff I'm learning, they aren't bad inherently but I can clearly see how people use things to con other people instead of helping them. Like with negotiations for example, obviously you can use it to manipulate people but you can also use it to advocate for yourself and see through people's bs. That is one example of many and I'm not even getting into the specifics of it. I'm also a very noncompetitive person and I just don't want to deal with other students who are really cut throat and confrontational. I had to deal with that once and I ended up getting yelled at for 2 hours straight by 8 different people. That zoom meeting was also recorded and sent to my professor for grading. It wasn't fun. I cried afterwards lol. And I feel like I'm going to deal with that pretty often in this class. I'm not looking forward to that. Then there is my experiences for the last few years especially during the pandemic so far. This situation has left me feeling really unsure of myself, unsure of my abilities, unsure of where I'm going with my life and what the future holds, unsure about what my place is socially. I'm definitely not my most confident self and I don't think that helps given the classes I'm taking this semester. I also want to emphasize that even though I'm unsure, I'm not exactly insecure. There is a lot of ambiguity and doubt, and while that does overlap with insecurity a bit, it has a different flavor. It's more panic inducing rather than shame inducing however the shame isn't completely absent. The panic is just more front and center.

A Different Kind of Hell Hey, so it's been a minute. For the last week I've been sorting my life out for school. I moved in a few days ago and almost didn't get a room because something happened to my housing application. After running around packing and 3 heart attacks later, I finally got a place on campus and I got out of my parent's house. Honestly, thank god. The moment they left, I felt a weight get lifted off of my shoulders. I also got assigned a random roommate which I was mentally sort of prepared for. I was expecting to room with a total stranger and for it to be awkward and me having to be this Spongebob meme for the rest of this semester instead of being my regular self. But luckily, this random roommate assignment actually turned out to be someone I knew. She is an acquaintance from one of my classes from a couple years back. We get along really well and we have a ton in common. I would also add that the room is better than the one that I was originally anticipating on getting so basically even though this whole process was panic inducing, things turned out much better than expected. And while my mood overall as been more optimistic and the depression side of things are being well handled, the same can't be said about my anxiety. I'm going through the same culture shock that I experienced when I first started going to this school except it isn't as intense. I remember the first time I came here, I was mainly shook about the lack of diversity, the amount of people who came from money, how everyone has the same body type and sense of style, the conservative atmosphere, etc. This time it was the lack of diversity again (I almost forgot exactly how white this school was until I went to my first 2 classes and realized that I was the only woman of color there), and the same body type/ style. I stg in this day alone, I just saw different variations of the same 3 outfits on different white girls who all look like a clone of the same person. I'm not wearing anything crazy but I've been walking to my classes thinking to myself in the back of my mind *was there a uniform that I didn't get the memo for tf?* Also, this hit me at the same intensity as the first time but WHERE ARE ALL OF THE THICC PEOPLE ON THIS CAMPUS!?!?!?!? I wrote about some of this in another post in one of my other journals but I thought I'd include the most relevant part of that post as it relates to this. I'm also linking that entry as well. This semester I'm also taking all business classes. I haven't done this before. I did take classes in the business school before however I always had a couple of social science classes to balance things out. Broooo... This place sets off my fight or flight response. It's basically everything I described above and more. I just feel really out of place here. There is one class that I'm really excited about but also panicking about. It's this business leadership class which focuses on public speaking and career readiness. I'm not super excited about doing public speaking related things at 8am in the morning in a place where I feel like the odd one out in a variety of different ways. But on the other hand, I think I really need to focus on developing the skills that this class focuses on in general for my personal development so even though this isn't exactly what I want, it definitely something I need because I don't know wtf I'm doing with my life career wise. Speaking of not knowing what I'm doing, It's 12:43 pm and I've already reevaluated my life choices probably like 5 times today (wish I was exaggerating but I'm not). I really feel like the awkward theatre kid who is stuck in the body of a business major because she wants to be employed in the future. Don't get me wrong, I love what I'm studying, I just don't feel like I fit in socially all that well. I think that pretty much summarizes my college experience at this particular school if you ignore all of the traumatic, crazy shit that happened to me in the last few years. The traumatic shit I would say isn't linked to anything as far as this particular school is concerned (I'm pretty sure that even if I went elsewhere I would have had to deal with similar things), but this place didn't do anything to help (or hurt) the situation if that makes sense. Love the school, just don't resonate with the people. Will make edits and add to the post later on. Submitting this because I have class in a few minutes.

Dead ass this post is just to puff myself up because I've been feeling stagnant and done with life lately and I need some self reassurance that I am headed in the right direction.

To Do List 8/18/2021 Deal with your body image issues and your relationship with food: I'm finally moving out of my parent's house and even though I have been good about keeping my distance and keeping my boundaries up with my mother, I know that her mentality around her body and food in general has been affecting me, even if it is slowly eroding me. I don't know what after affects will linger and to what extent but it's been a lot for the last few months. It's important for me to be mindful and vigilant of these after affects and deal with it accordingly because I haven't been in a healthy environment. It's like being mindful of being in a place with a lot of toxic radiation. Sure you don't have noticeable symptoms right away and you might not develop them but it's important to be vigilant of anything that might develop since there is a high likelihood. Get into an exercise routine that works for you: Not sure if I'm going to tackle this right away because of the previous goal but it's definitely in the back of my mind. Since I moved back home, I made it a point to not do a lot of exercise because I knew that the environment I am in can make this into something really neurotic that I'm going to have to deal with later on. Prioritize relationships and relationship building in your life (platonic and romantic): I'm currently in a place where I feel like I need a shift in priorities. But my previous priorities have a lot of momentum so it's going to take a moment to transition out of it and rearrange the priorities in a well balanced way. Nothing wrong with the priorities I had before, they were right in the moment, but my needs and wants have changed. Deal with the wound "I'm tired of doing everything myself and I wish I had an actual adult helping me. I'm so tired of doing everything myself": Basically this is both my mommy and daddy issues combined. The statement I mentioned feels like the heart of my current pain body. If left unaddressed in a healthy way, I see this morphing into seeking a parental, guiding figure in romantic relationships and friendships. I don't want that. Don't have time to deal with that kind of trauma later on. Might as well deal with it as it comes up. Continue unpacking things related to your attitudes with sex and sexuality: I have a whole list of things I have yet to write about and this thing will be done when I'm done with that list. Also explore things in direct experience if possible. Deal with the internalized racism that makes you feel undesirable but also sexualized: I need to start seeing myself as an actual option romantically and sexually. There is this whole notion of how I feel unworthy of these situations, how they feel super unreachable, and how they are meant for other people. Lots to unpack. Integrate the notion of how you don't have to be fully healed in order to get into a healthy relationship: Journaled about this and had an entire thread open to help me with this. Deal with your academic and professional trauma that you got in the past year or so: Basically this last year has fucked up my self esteem and has made me feel like I'm operating under a scarcity mindset when advocating for myself and my skills. School and work gives me a lot of anxiety. It has me feeling like I don't have anything to offer or intellectually contribute and that I'm not valuable in a professional or academic setting. Learning (and relearning) to assert myself in these situations is important. Also I don't have a procrastination problem, I have a big time anxiety problem. Figure out what the next steps are after college and start using the career center at school because you have no idea wtf you're doing.: I really need professional guidance and my common sense is telling me that my boomer parents are leading me straight to hell by telling me to not apply to jobs online, go door to door, and never advocating for yourself. Deal with your existential dread regarding your current life situation as well as how dystopian life has been in the last couple years: This pandemic gave me a new flavor of crazy. Honestly the only things holding me together is manifestation, a bunch of shiny ass rocks, and using astrology as coping mechanism so that my life feels like it has a sense of predictability. I let myself believe in these things because it helps me sleep at night but I know that it isn't necessarily rooted in truth and that I'm going to have wean off of this later lol.

It's been a while. I have worked through somethings and strayed from this original focus and decided to work on other areas of my life. Life and anxiety as a whole has been kind of overwhelming in the last couple of months especially given my home situation. I've mainly been trying to recover and cope with that. I also find my priorities changing and I want to create a new list. But first I want to reflect on my previous list: Some Additional Things I Have Been Working On: Emotionally coping with gaslighting and emotional unavailability to heal my attachment issues on the spot as the trauma occurs by journaling, relying on friends, and therapy. Exploring my thoughts around sex and sexuality and just unpacking a lot of shit Trying to get things together for me to move out my house and logistically making moving to college easier (basically dealing with the fin aid office and the health center). Healing some of my unhealthy mentalities with food (I don't count calories anymore and I'm more in tuned with my body) I got a job that took up a lot of my time in addition to the internship so I have some money now. It was good for me to have that experience.

I guess what I'm actually tired of is the disappointment. And I guess the only thing that's keeping me holding onto a sense of hope is the few good experiences I have had. Like I know this shit is out there. I have gotten bits and pieces but that's it.

Having Your Cake and Eating It Too I really want to have a relationship and connect with someone but I dread putting myself out there and actually dating. Maybe this is because of how forced the last situation was when I tried to talk to a guy on Tinder that I really didn't click with. Dating feels like a chore if I'm going to be honest. I don't get how people just enjoy this process. Don't get me wrong, I have been on good dates and I have had good interactions but there is just so much shit that's out there and even in the instances where things went right, they weren't right enough to result in an actual relationship. I haven't gone on a date since like 2019. It's safe to say I was forced to go on a break. But, I don't feel rested. My head doesn't feel any clearer. I still kind of hate everyone lol. Like it literally takes me years to find someone I actually like and that I actually get feelings for. Clinginess is far from the issue for me. And after working on my attachment issues more and learning to open up to people, I realized that in a lot of ways, I'm not dismissive avoidant rather I'm just not into some people. I talked a lot about this both on a platonic and romantic level in my main journal And online dating.... oooofff...... that isn't an option for me. Never again. I have seen enough men have profiles where they hold up dead animals as if it's some kind of Trump supporter mating call offering (you know kind of like how those penguins present a shiny pebble to their love interest as a part of their mating rituals. Kind of like that but much less vegan friendly lol). I've talked about how dating apps just don't work for me in another post: Then there is the whole screening process both for yourself and for the guy. I try to screen myself to make sure that I'm getting attached to someone in a healthy way so it's not just me going by the impulse of my pain body. And I definitely try to screen the guy to make sure at the very least I'm not going to end up on Dateline in a couple years. I have also talked about the whole racism aspect of this. I have more to say but I think one of the big reasons why dating feels exhausting is because of how a lot of the racism I have encountered on a one-on-one, personal level, had to do with dating or sexuality in some way, shape, or form. I just want to skip all of the formalities of dating and screening and jump straight into actually clicking with a person and feeling comfortable around them in every way, developing feelings naturally in a normal pace, and then going to their place often just to cuddle and watch whatever tf we want. I'm not really a hopeless romantic and I'm definitely not the person who wants a grand gesture. I just want a sense of intimacy both physically and emotionally. But also, maybe I don't want to deal with the formalities and planning when it comes to dating because I haven't found someone I actually like and I'm enthusiastic about dating. And I guess in order to do this I need to make some kind of social circle. I already need to do that anyway but also it's just like ugggghhhh I just want to skip to the fun part and go straight to finding a boyfriend. So basically, I will lose my mind if I try to force connections, I don't feel comfortable with casual sex, I hate the dating apps, I don't want to date around, and I don't even like anyone. Buuuuuuuttt... I am horny and emotionally thirsty.I know this is dumb, but I want this to come naturally without me putting in all this effort because I'm exhausted with the process and I'm frustrated in more ways than just sexually. In other words: I. Hate. It. Here.

Sexuality at Stage Blue Part 2: Colonization Another conversation I had was with a friend recently. We got on the topic of birth control and how our families would react to something like this. She was like, "I don't think it clicks in a lot of brown parent's minds that people sex for the fun and pleasure. I'm pretty sure that the only times my parents had sex were when they tried to have me and when they tried to have my brother." She was dead serious when she said this. I was like "honestly... same." I never grew up with my parents showing any amount of affection. They were arranged and they low key hate each other lol. Based on the conversation that my dad and I had that I mentioned in the last post, even though he never straight up said it, I can kind of infer that this man hasn't gotten laid since literally the previous century. And I would say that it's almost worse for him because he isn't no where near as repressive when it comes to sex compared to my mom. I can at the very least have some kind of conversation when it comes to sex (that is if I bring it up) and I won't be the most awkward thing in the world. When it comes to mom, based on how repressed she is, I highly doubt that she ever came in her life and I highly doubt she sees any of this as a problem. I feel so bad for both of them tbh. Then me and this friend started talking about the attitudes that our mother's held when it came to their bodies and sexuality and what they tried to pass onto us. I told my friend on how in the summers I have this habit of sleeping naked and how my mom freaked out about it initially and how once she calmed down about the whole thing after I explained how I like to sleep naked because it's more comfortable, she said something along the lines of how she doesn't really get where I'm coming from because she doesn't even feel comfortable with seeing her naked body in the mirror before taking a shower because it's gross. Both me and my friend started talking about how sad that sounds and how fucked up it is that there are women out there who feel gross about their bodies both from a body image perspective but also a sexuality perspective. Because a woman's naked body isn't gross, disgusting, impure, or sinful. We also talked about how a lot of this rhetoric comes from colonization. Because prior to colonization, South Asian women didn't wear blouses under their saris because it's waaay to hot for that climate wise in that part of the world (in many parts of the world especially in hot climates, breasts aren't sexualized and even if they are, they weren't before colonization). A lot of the modesty that is put on South Asian women comes from the Victorian era. The British kept sexualizing brown women and kept asserting that they are like animals because they aren't as covered up and repressed as they are. As a result, those women were pressured into these norms in order to be seen as decent and worthy of respect. Then there is the whole thing on how gay sex and fluid gender identities were considered perfectly fine before colonization but again, when the British came in and saw that we didn't have the same view as them, they labeled us as barbaric and set new norms. I remember when gay sex was finally decriminalized in India in 2018, a lot of people were saying that this isn't because of western feminism's influence on making the country more progressive. Instead, decriminalizing gay sex is an act of decolonization because that law and that taboo wasn't there until the British made it illegal. Growing up I always found things like the Kama Sutra, explicit statues on temples, and tantra really strange because of how open sexuality was. Because I mainly know about the repression of sexuality that is in South Asian communities from my experience. It wasn't until much later when I took a few classes on how colonialism affected the Indian subcontinent that I found out that a lot of the repression has to do with stage blue white people shoving their beliefs on to us. And something that I find particularly interesting as someone who grew up Hindu is that even though my mom slut shames me and the way I look, she never brought religion into this. She never used the word "sinful" in her vocabulary even when she was uncomfortable with something that looked blasphemous in her stage blue world view. She always used "respectful." Because of that, I never got a religious connotation from her remarks. Rather, I always took it as a cultural thing. The thing is, I didn't know that it technically wasn't coming from my South Asian culture. Because, even outside of this particular subject, the more I learn about the impact of the British Empire, the more I realize that my parents or any other conservative brown person aren't traditional. If they were truly traditional, they'd be much more sex positive, they'd be more accepting towards gay people, and they wouldn't push modesty so heavily. They aren't traditional. They are colonized.