Introduction I'm gonna start by exploring that title. I literally just came up with it on the spot but I think it captures the essence of this journal. In a way I've given my life away, and now it's high time I take it back. I look at all the failures of my life and think that, yeah, I gave my life away to these things. I gave my life away to video games, to unhealthy food, to movies, TV shows, internet browsing, alcohol, coffee. Trying to make myself liked by people who will never like me and who I don't even like, hiding my emotions from others and even myself. Getting angry at others and arguing with them but only in my head, never for real, that would be insane. Never, ever, cleaning my room and then my own apartment. Not pursuing anything creative in my life and trying to improve the world in some meaningful way, in fact now I don't even know what I should be doing that would have any kind of meaning! At some point I was just straight up depressed, and attempted suicide. So I very much almost gave my life away completely. And ... I have not healed any of the trauma I've gone through my entire life. So it's over. It's time. I need to take back my life. Some of these things I've already fixed. I've not drunk alcohol for almost a year, I've had a total of maybe five espressos that I didn't finish since early 2020, I haven't played a video game in weeks, and more broadly, when I do play, it's only for maybe a couple hours on like a Sunday afternoon. And also I haven't been depressed for like eight years. I had one experience of very deep sadness that I did consider it depression recently, whereby I was introduced to a group a friends by someone else and they barely even acknowledged me, they just said hello and turned away and talked among themselves. It broke my heart, I'm crying again writing this. I've been exercising pretty heavily for the past few months and I've been going four times a week and for a long time (typically the total workout time actually exercising, including breaks between sets and exercises ofc, is 60 minutes), so I can absolutely say the habit is implanted. Buuuut that's about it. There are a lot of things I really want to improve in my life now that I just haven't been doing. Friday: The Party So alright let's get started, let's talk about some of the recent events of my life. Let's take this weekend as an example. Friday night, there was a big work party, loads of people came. I spent some time with people of my team, with people not of my team. Some people came from another office of the company, I spent some time with them and it was great to see them and hang out with them, they're awesome people. We danced, they drank (I didn't, though they're all hella annoying about this), had an awesome time overall. Took the train home at 5am, literally did the closing. In fact I wanted to go to a night club when I arrived in my home city, but they close at 5. I think I can confidently say I have fun at parties now. Like it's not that parties were never fun to me, but that, since I wasn't fun at parties, that would both ruin other people's experience at the party, and it would make ME not have fun because I was such an unfun person. That's not really the case any more, I don't think. There are still a lot of things to improve, I didn't approach a single person there even though I definitely really could or even should have, I didn't really have a lot of conversations with people and I struggled to come up with things to say. And that's typical for me at parties but, despite all that, I had fun! And that was a huge improvement. Someone from my team this morning annoyed me though, and I need to go on a rant. He told me "You really hyped yourself up even though you didn't drink alcohol". There are SEVERAL THINGS that really piss me off about this. Number 1) He said "hyped yourself up", this is translated from French, but I think, if he meant that I was fun to be around at the party, he wouldn't have used that exact phrasing. Of course, I have very little social skills and experience, so maybe that's what he meant but I don't know. Someone else used the exact same phrase WHILE AT THE PARTY and it didn't feel like they were complimenting me, it felt more condescending to me.
And honestly they can fuck right off because THEY'RE not fun at parties either, but I don't go around telling them and other people they're not fun. And, honestly, they're the people I was talking about at the beginning of this post, people who will never like me and who I don't even like. Number 2) He said "without alcohol". BITCH! I have MORE FUN without alcohol! Alcohol makes my head spin, it makes me less socially calibrated, it makes me get drunk VERY VERY VEEERY quickly, it drains my energy, it makes me hungry as hell and then I feel sick with all the alcohol and unhealthy food in my system. This substance is just HOOOORRIBLE to me on SO MANY LEVELS!
And I swear the number of people who shit on me so hard for not drinking really pisses me off. These people actually believe that everyone needs to drink alcohol to have fun and even to BE FUN TO BE AROUND. They keep asking me "why don't your drink?", they tell me "life is short and you should have fun while you still can, the clock is ticking", they tell other people "you can't just let me go to a night club with Emrie alone, he doesn't drink!". It is SOOOO ANNOYING to me! Like yeah maybe I'm not too fun to be around right now but I just need to practice it, work on it, have fun with it, and alcohol has absolutely nothing to do with it. Not to mention many of these people knew me when I was drinking and have spent time with me when I was drinking and absolutely know I'm not really fun even when I do drink There are a few more points I want to talk about in regards to the party. I realize I'm spending a lot of time on the party but actually my social life is my overarching, long term, and very difficult project of my life right now. I am literally talking about turning myself into the most sociable, most fun, just generally super-social person that I can be, so that the people who knew me when I was shit (my family, as an example) can look at me and say "wow you've really changed and you have much better social skills now". The first is that I completely busted the limiting belief I have that I need friends to go out. In January of this year I moved to a big city. I got a very sweet place that's deep into the city center. I mean literally the closest night club is a 5-minute walk from my place, then there are 5 more within 5 minutes. There's an area that's all commercial (read bars, clubs, and shops) that's just right there and it's just perfect. But, I haven't been going out and socializing because ... "I don't have any friends". I was telling myself "join a club, join a sports league, go take some X and Y classes, do things that interest you and meet people similar to you, and you'll make friends that way". And of course I was not doing that either because ... well you see McDonald's and reddit are more important. This is all bullshit, the bottom line is I need to bite the bullet and talk to strangers. Risk not being fun, risk running out of things to say, risk being kind of annoying to other people, risk being rejected or not even being acknowledged by other people (see the comment above about the group of friends that made me almost depressed). This will suck, but this is necessary. And I will feel sad on some days, I will likely cry. But I need to do it, it's worth it. And in fact it's becoming more and more non-negotiable that I do it because I can't keep putting it off and making excuses, it's leaving me in quagmire, doing nothing, and realistically making me regress. The second is that this is all so fucking foreign to me. I am SO SCARED. I've never kissed anyone. The most intimate touch I've had with another human being has been a hug, and it's, you know, familial love kind of hug, not romantic love kind of hug. I'm so touch-starved that when someone puts their arm around my neck and shoulders at a party, it just feels so freaking amazing to me, it is truly some of the best moments of my life. So the thought of even just someone else's lips touching mine is freaking me out so much, I am so incredibly scared of it, I don't know how my body will react to it. Is it going to feel amazing, am I going to have a panic attack because I'll just be so fucking nervous from it, am I just going to have a huge boner from it? Like this shit is so foreign to me, it's insane! And I know that I'm not just going to kiss the first person I approach, it'll take a lot of buildup to get to that and by that time I'll probably be much more comfortable with it all but... I'm almost 27 years old and the fact that all of this is something that I have NEVER EXPERIENCED IN ANY WAY is really fucking saddening to me. In fact, even disregarding the whole touch thing, the concept of me approaching a stranger and making conversation with them scares the shit out of me. Like I just have absolutely ZERO experience, I have no clue whatsoever how it's supposed to work, what I'm supposed to say, how I'm supposed to handle myself. Obviously I know this is generally pretty common sense stuff, you know, just talk to each other in some sort of coherent fashion, riff off of each other, try and make them laugh, tell them stories and shit, just very basic typical stuff, you know. But I have no experience so I have nothing in memory to draw from, and it fucking sucks.