Hello, my name is Matt and I'll be your tumblr for the evening. I'm 19, Canadian, and studying cognitive science at Carleton University. Since no one outside the program knows what that means, my two core subjects are linguistics and computer science. I'm also not very good at being brief! But I try to make my walls of text somewhat friendly.
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A little story about the title of this post: I took LING 3002, Phonetics I, this semester. It wasn’t necessarily my cup of tea, but that doesn’t mean it was a bad class. There was a lot of data and practical application involved, and I’m at the point where I’ve been thinking about the phonetics of British English thanks to Xenoblade. I can even develop analyses that provide the right results without giving any of the right answers! In particular, we had one assignment involving “Homeric infixation” where I (at least, I think I did) provided a more-or-less correct analysis based on consonant and vowel clusters rather than stress patterns. So here’s to my continuing edumacation!
If you look at my archive, there’s a pretty sharp decline in the frequency of my posts over time. At the very beginning, mid-2010, I was doing 20-30 posts per month. That was my last year of high school, and around the time when I’d stopped working at the local convenience store to focus on school. My first semester of university was more or less the same, but then second semester it was down to 10-15 posts per month. Around the same throughout the summer. I’ve practically disappeared this semester, though - I’ve got about 30 posts total from September through to the end of December. The reason for this is pretty obvious - university. I still haven’t really figured out a proper balance to get the most out of my work and my play, and “work” time is still being inflated by procrastination. The work gets done, and my grades haven’t gone down, either. But I’ve been getting more and more distant as I supposedly spend all of my time “working” and then have no dedicated relaxation periods or time for socializing.
I’m not happy about that, but there’s a pretty obvious pattern - work gets done a lot faster when I’m motivated to do it. When it came to lab work, programming assignments, and studying for my intro to cognitive science class - I was there at all times and totally focused. But it was a challenge with my other classes. That’s probably bad. I’d say being able to do things you don’t enjoy and just generally be dedicated is good. On the other hand, I’m probably going to wind up doing more work that I enjoy as time goes on, not less. Either way, I’m planning to work on it.
So while I’ve been stumbling in every other area of my life, school is going pretty well. Working at the Language and Brain Lab has been fantastic, and I’m working on a short write-up of what I’ve learned. I think you’ll be allowed to see that when it’s ready. Along with some promo photos of me looking snazzy! Aside from that, the seemingly disparate areas of my degree have started to connect in important ways. I’m starting to feel fairly competent in a number of domains - cognitive science as a whole, linguistics, and programming too (though maybe not computer science, I’m definitely lacking when it comes to algorithms).
In reference to an article I read earlier this year, it feels like I’m getting an education, not just a degree. For all the people I knew in high school who agonized over where they wanted to go and would be willing to fork over ridiculous sums of money to go to a “better school”, you’d think the degree is all that matters. But if they don’t capitalize on the opportunities available, the way I’m doing at Carleton, no amount of money will help. While I had a brief crisis when I first read that article in April this year, I think it says a lot about how I’ve changed over the year that it now makes me feel better. Including books for two semesters and everything else, I’m probably totalling $7,000 per year of university. Four years for the degree, and I’m really not sure I could get the equivalent elsewhere.
The only catch to all of this is that I’m probably failing horribly at a number of promises I once made. I said that I would live for the people in my life and find meaning in them, yet I’m mostly focused on myself. I promised I’d always be there for the people I care about, but now I expect them to come to me. I’ve said a lot of things I probably thought were trivial at the time, but I’ve now forgotten them so thoroughly I can only say I’m likely not staying true to my word. This kind of follows on from spending too much time “working,” but that doesn’t make it alright.
I’ve upset people occasionally, sometimes severely so, but I think what’s worse is all the things I didn’t do. I don’t know if that’s going to change in the future. That’s probably what’s really important here. But I have no guarantees. So while it doesn’t really mean anything, know that I am truly sorry. I sincerely wish I’d been better in a dozen ways, and that I had taken the time to reach out instead of withdrawing. I’m no longer sure that doing too little is better than doing too much. For the people who still read all of this, you know who you are. To the people who cared enough to start reading, but decided to stop - I’m sorry about that, too.
So here’s to 2011. I learned a lot, and I played a lot of Final Fantasy. Looking forward to 2012 and the downfall of Kefka.
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[title inspired by the least important line in Streetlight Manifesto’s ‘A Better Place, A Better Time’. The rest of the song is incredibly beautiful to me, too, but for entirely different reasons. Do me a favour and read the lyrics, alright? Whether or not you can connect the dots, I think you’ll get something out of it.]
I read something in my psych textbook last year that’s really stuck with me. It was a single-line comment, something a good student knows they won’t be tested on, along the lines of “people with anxiety disorders often feel more in control of their lives when they worry about things.” I can guarantee that if I ask the people I know who’ve taken that exact same course, and read the exact same textbook, most of them wouldn’t even remember that part. What I can also tell you is that it’s more like a subtle reassurance than some sort of powerful feeling of controlling your own destiny. And that it takes a hell of a long time to think about the worst things that might happen, and debate how I should react or whether it’s worth the risk. It doesn’t feel good to take three hours working out a 30 second conversation; but think about what might have happened otherwise! I have to keep doing it, making mental conversation trees, guessing at people’s reactions, because to do otherwise is to give up the illusion of control, and risk facing problems I might not be prepared for.
As you can probably guess, spontaneity isn’t one of my strengths. Makes me a terrible role player, too.
The unfortunate problem is that I habitually use most of my downtime to think about these sorts of things. Worse still is the fact that trying to fall asleep is essentially infinite time to worry about things. Lifehacker posted an article this summer about dedicating time to worry - and not doing it during the rest of the day. It’s easier said than done, especially when you have a lot to do (and worry about), and when you’ve spent years replacing sleep with worrying. But it’s definitely something I need to work on, because it’s a big part of why I have trouble with people. Even though I know it’s true, I kind of have to remind myself that nobody is going to remember that time I said something dumb (even if I remember it forever), or expect me to be perfectly eloquent all the time (even if I regret not saying X for days afterwards, and why didn’t I think of that at the time!?). It’s a lot harder to carry on a conversation when I’m trying to keep all those things in mind. And it’s not like I often manage to map things out and predict how someone is going to react. It’s just a reassuring habit I fell into years ago.
From the outside, you probably can’t tell how hard it is to break out of this pattern. It’s incredibly powerful, and incredibly pervasive. The associations get so strong that relapse is completely inevitable. Years of an almost ritualistic reliance on a seemingly harmless activity don’t go away overnight. Maybe you don’t want to see the harm it causes, or you can’t quite connect the dots. Either way, it sometimes seems a lot easier just to work around it rather than try to change.
I’ll do it, though. I’m tired of being paralyzed as I hover over the send button, wondering whether I could improve the message (text, IM, e-mail) that I’ve been writing for 5-50 minutes. I’m tired of being tired, because I tried to go to bed early, but instead stayed up for two hours worrying, then woke up in the middle of the night and worried for another hour before falling back asleep. Tired of psyching myself out to the point where I can’t even talk to people, or talk in the presence of people when it comes to class discussion. It might take me six months, or it might take me two and a half years. But I’m tired of not being able to explain this to people, leaving them guessing as to what the problem actually is. I can take care of that problem now, while I work on the rest.
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Had a “wonderful” experience this morning of trying to overcome my anxiety enough to speak up in my philosophy of mind class. Something I’ve done before, actually, although I’d never participated as significantly in the class discussion. For whatever reason, just the thought of raising my hand and presenting an argument was enough to leave me shaking due to anxiety. Maybe it was because I wasn’t sitting next to anyone I knew, though pretty much everybody was present (something about essays being assigned raises attendance dramatically). Maybe it was because I was doing more than just asking clarification questions after waiting to see if anyone else would (this might actually be it, because it didn’t bother me when I raised my hand at the start of class to say it was nice to finally read a more cognitive science-y paper). Or maybe it’s something else I haven’t though of yet. I still did it, though, because not only had I done the reading for the first time in weeks, it was like a checklist of all the things I’ve been learning about in other classes. Applications of Ungerleider and Mishkin’s cross-lesion studies to the multiple realizability problem? Hell yeah! Let’s get some actual evidence for our philosophical arguments, please and thank you.
And yet, I spent most of the lecture alternately shivering anxiously, in anticipation perhaps, and then being frozen in fear after I’d finished talking and opened the floor to responses from the prof and the rest of the class. It’s not a public speaking thing, either, because I had the exact same feelings last night as I debated whether to talk to someone I’ve known for years. Figuratively shaking in my boots (what sort of savage wears shoes indoors? Come on, America) as I went to go knock on the door, though there was some potential for disaster there. Then barely able to express myself, even though I’d already spent more than a month thinking about what I wanted to say, on a pretty regular basis. There’s nothing for me to be afraid of, really, and yet it’s there anyway.
But I manage! I’m doing pretty alright, lots better than I was anyway. Went to see Repo: The Genetic Opera with a couple of people, and against all odds I enjoyed it a lot. However, I’m not going to recommend that you watch it, unless there’s a shadowcast performing alongside. Have you heard of that? I hadn’t, but here it is in a nutshell: they take a movie, mainly Rocky Horror Picture Show and Repo, and then they have people who act out the scenes in front of it. So you take something that would (probably) suck and not be at all interesting to watch by yourself, and suddenly it’s amazing. It’s one of those “the whole is greater than the parts” kinds of thing. The next show isn’t until February, but I’m probably going to force some people to go see it with me… Hopefully they don’t hate it.
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On an unrelated note, as for why I haven’t been all that talkative lately, school’s pretty busy right now. I’ve got a midterm thursday and another friday, both of which I’ve barely studied for so far. Hopefully it’ll be ok! One’s a multiple choice exam for my research methods class, which will probably be super easy. The other is in systems programming, and I may not survive. If I do (and against my better judgement), I’m going to go out for the cognitive science social event (the one and only, unless you count D&D) and maybe make a token effort at drinking. Meanwhile, assuming there are no hardware disasters (and I can’t guarantee that), we’re ready to run a few practice tests for the project I’m interning on! After that, it’s time to start running participants and collecting data, which is pretty exciting actually. We took some press photos for the lab, to use for all the “look what sorts of cool research students are doing here!” things. I think I’ll be allowed to post those, and they turned out fairly well actually. I clean up nice, guys.
Oh, and apparently, interning is a word. Who knew!
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[title courtesy of this XKCD shirt I’ve always liked, but known it would be stupid to actually wear. Also, I wrote this post… nearly two weeks ago, and since I’ve started talking about it with a few close friends it’s gotten a lot better. I’m only just posting it now because I know the rest of the people who will read it are exactly the people I haven’t spoken to enough, and I’m not sure how you’re all going to react. No pity, alright?]
Now that classes have started again and I’m starting to see people I never spoke to last year, I’ve realized something strange. Without noticing it, I’ve developed pretty severe social anxiety. To the point where going to meet up with a bunch of linguistics students was physically difficult for me. Thinking about it hours in advance made me sick to my stomach - that was my first big hint. When I got there, I couldn’t even think of things to say, or was always ten minutes behind the current conversation. It was pretty brutal.
Then I got to thinking about how little things have changed between Brittany and I now that she’s moved in at my mom’s - we see each other physically about as often as we used to speak by text/IM (both of which we’ve mostly stopped doing) when she lived in PEI. And I realized that I’ve been a bit off around her, too, never really knowing what to say and dreading the thought of starting a conversation. And it’s sad to think that one of my closest friends is now my roommate (half the time), and we never hang out, and I say it’s because I don’t want to intrude when I’m really just afraid. And worse is the fact that I’m sitting in the basement, trying to force myself to study, but I wind up being unable to concentrate because I’m just miserable and lonely. And I could just walk upstairs and say “hey, what’s up?” But I don’t. It’s been almost three months, and I haven’t done that once. It’s baffling, honestly, but only when you really think about it. As you can see, it’s taken me this long to notice, so there’s some positive self-deception for you. I’m slightly curious about whether I’m the last person to realize this, and whether I’ve always been like this, but I haven’t had the guts to ask.
It gets worse, though, because then I think about it some more and realize it’s been a couple of years since I started a casual conversation like that at all. Including over IM. Only two or three years if we’re talking zero conversations whatsoever, but then, an epiphany - I’ve been like this since I first got on MSN in 8th grade. With few exceptions, I’ve always waited for other people to start the conversation or only ever started to talk to them when I had something specific to talk about - a funny webcomic, comment about a new game, whatever. Vael and I talk a lot over IM, but nine times out of ten, he starts the conversation, and the rest of the time I have something to show him or ask him about.
[Errata: Vael says he counted and it’s roughly 50/50. But I was mainly thinking about a sort of “hey, what’s up” kind of thing that just leads naturally into a conversation. Plus, a lot of the time you don’t actually have anything to talk to someone about yet, so you don’t have much else to say.]
So suddenly it’s come to light that I’ve never been comfortable starting a casual conversation. You can see how that might be a problem when it comes to getting to know people. It seems like I’ve made most of my friends by accident, considering the number of new friends I made during high school (just Vael) and the number I’ve made since moving to Ottawa (one, a few more depending on how much you lower your criteria for “friends”). Not to mention the piss-poor job I’ve done of keeping the friends I’d already made. And the others I’ve driven away trying to “help” them with all of their problems, because I couldn’t think of anything else to talk about… Or worse, the people I got to know simply because they needed someone to talk to about stuff like that.
I’m working on it, though. Friday before last, I invited someone over for supper just for the sake of having some company. And I’ve felt a lot better since then, because it was a lot like hanging out with people once upon a time. And I’m not deliberately avoiding sitting near people I kind of know in class, though I’d still feel weird going and sitting down next to them. And thinking about just how deep the problems run has made me realize just how little I need to do in order to improve on my previous behaviour. So how’s that for low expectations! Spoke to a human being today, I’m so proud of myself. But, seriously, this is where psych 101 comes in and I realize I’ve had this avoidance learning thing going on for years. And I don’t intend to keep it up. Which is why I’m writing this, instead of posting sad song lyrics, or about how I’ll be FOREVER ALONE T.T, or how much I identify with Socially Awkward Penguin.
I’m not looking for pity, and I’m not going to say “this is just how I am” or look for ways to cope with the symptoms (without actually dealing with the real problem). But hey, I have a cell phone and unlimited texting. If you don’t know it/aren’t in Canada, when my IM status doesn’t say I’m busy, feel free to say hello. I’m not ignoring you, and I don’t hate you either. I just don’t know where to start most of the time. But don’t do it too much! I can’t keep relying on other people to start conversations. I’ll be around, anyway. Plus, if you’ve read this far, I can only assume you’re either very interested in my life, or can’t think of anything more exciting to be doing. To both of those kinds of people, you may as well just say hello - I’ve got tons of contact info on facebook if you’ve got me there, or you can scroll down my ugly tumblr page and find a few options.
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Last summer, when we moved to Ottawa, my mom decided that we should all have our own cell phones. My dad already had his own, so she got a 3-year contract family plan for herself, my brother, and I. Her phone, the main line, cost $35/month + $20/month for countrywide My5 call/text. The other two lines were each $30/month. Total: $115/month. We got the most basic crap phones you could get, because hey, we never needed fancy cell phones before. I started itching for an upgrade after a few months, but the reality was that all I needed to do was making one call per month and send text messages, so anything would do.
BUT THEN DISASTER STRUCK. About a month ago, after being crushed and scratched by 30 kg (66 lb) bags of concrete mix, my phone’s signal quality went down drastically. To the point where I would have no signal anywhere in my house, for days at a time. My mom and brother had identical phones, and when placed beside each other, I would have no signal and they would have a perfect one. This was the excuse I was waiting for! The phone either needed to be repaired/replaced, or I’d get an upgrade. However, I can’t afford a data plan, so I needed to see if I could upgrade the phone without paying for wireless data. When Lifehacker posted about Geekaphone, a site that would suggest the perfect phone for your needs, I made a list and set off for the phone store.
I asked after a handful of phones, and the only way I avoid a data plan would be to buy the phone off-contract for $400+, with the phones at the top of my list being $600. If I got a data plan, I’d get the “with a 2-year contract” price. However, I needed to pay a $35 administration fee for changing phones (offset by a $50 mail-in rebate), and a $120 “early upgrade fee” for not waiting out the contract. But again, this requires me to sign up for a $30/month data plan. I certainly can’t afford a $600 phone, and I definitely can’t afford to spend $700 on a data plan over the next two years. Well, I probably could in the long term, but with no income during the school year, it might be tough. And so, I resigned myself to finding out my options for an out-of-warranty replacement.
Returning home, we dialed up our wireless provider and made our way to a customer service agent. It would cost $20 to replace my phone with an identical model, but for $40 I could get a Samsung A886 (meh), and for $80 I could get a Sony Ericson Xperia X1 (meh-ish). No matter what I got, I’d keep the same contract and not need to shell out for a data plan. To give me time to research the phones, my mom (who is nice and polite pretty much all the time) asked if we could change our plan to match the current offerings. Eventually, we came out of the deal paying $65/month for the main line and $15/month for the two additional lines, with 500 extra monthly daytime minutes and countrywide My5 for all three phones. Total: $95/month, for a better plan. Not bad, and we didn’t even have to yell and scream and talk to customer retention!
I had grudgingly decided to go with the X1, if only for its sliding keyboard. However, since we’d earned a lot of goodwill from the customer service lady, I asked what kind of phone I could get for more than $80. The next step up was the Motorola Quench (known as the Cliq XT in the US) for $130. Officially, it’s stuck at Android 1.5 because there was no way to get 2.1 to perform adequately on the mediocre hardware. But recent updates to CyanogenMod have added support for the phone, so the decision was made: get the Quench, root it the day I get it, and optimize everything for performance. Since I spend most of my time either at home or on campus, I’ll have access to secure-ish WiFi most of the time. Why bother spending $30/month just so I can check Facebook while I’m on the bus?
The only potential downside here is that the phone might just suck so much that nothing runs well on it, but with all the customization options, I’m hoping I can manage. As long as I keep in mind that it doesn’t have gigabytes of RAM, I should be able to run things pretty smoothly… one at a time, anyway.
Until I get a hold of it around Friday, you’re safe from me talking about all the stuff I’m doing with it. But when I get it, expect to be inundated with an absolute nerdfest of Android-love.
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Part 2 of my post from yesterday. If you haven’t read it, this won’t make as much sense. I said that I would write about “how I see love, why I say that Brittany “cheated” on me with an emphasis on the quotation marks, and why I have no problem with it.” Read on if you’re interested, and if not, you probably hate me by now. Sorry!
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NOTE: THIS IS UNEDITED AND MAY BE OFFENSIVE AND/OR POORLY WRITTEN
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Okay, I’ll admit that I still check your tumblrs and although I’m trying to keep a low profile… I really have to reply to this.
I guess this is partly because I don’t like your point of view but mostly because it’s just an interesting subject.—
Hmmm, where should I start?
Well here’s something, it’s pathetic to be selfless.
I mean this and if you don’t already know why, you should by the time I’ve finished explaining myself.You’re losing if you’re being selfless, you’re worse off, you care more than they do, etc.
I’ve never really had a good relationship that involved me being selfless, and by the looks of it, neither have you.A relationship is more like a mutual agreement; you have something to offer them, they have something to offer you. This isn’t love, this is just my definition of a relationship.
Now, if you’re being selfless in a relationship, guess what? You’re losing, you’re with them because you love them, not because of what you can get from them.
You need that person to feel the same way about you for you to be on even ground.A good relationship is a balanced one.
All in moderation.Here’s where it gets complicated.
Love is a fickle and difficult thing, it’s difficult to control and it usually has awful timing. To put it simply, love is a mess.
You don’t want to take love lightly because it’ll bite on you on the arse as soon as you throw it off balance.This is why you can’t be selfless, the most emotionally invested will be the most hurt by the end of it. Selflessness is the path to self destruction.
(I’ll write more on this if you ask me to.)
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This is the part that sickens me. The fact that you could accept being cheated on, the fact that you’d let this shit happen to you.
I really wonder if you have any pride at all, you never seem to show any backbone and that’s one of the reasons why I never particularly made an effort to talk to you.Y’know what? I don’t think I can talk about this subject without getting biased or angry. I guess I’ll write more (if you want to see it) when I can be sensible about it.
The difference here is that you’re looking at relationships as something game theory calls “zero sum” - in order for one person to gain, another person has to lose. Wikipedia’s example is cutting a cake - if one person gets a larger piece, then someone else gets a smaller piece. On the other hand, I see it as a “nonzero sum” situation - essentially a win/win situation. If I say something nice to cheer up a friend, I haven’t lost anything by giving them a bit of happiness. Which sounds dumb because you can’t give happiness but shut up. Anyway, now that I’ve introduced the idea of nonzero sum situations…
What, exactly, do you lose by helping someone? You say that as if it’s a totally obvious conclusion. And caring about someone more than they care about you is only a problem if there’s a massive difference (i.e. they hardly care about you, while you’re under the impression that they are the love of your life) or you think that caring about someone entitles you to get something out of it. The thing is, whether you’re friends or more than that, having a good relationship with someone probably makes your life better. You enjoy talking to them online, or hanging out, or whatever. So you’re getting something out of the deal by default.
Not to mention you aren’t entitled to anything. You don’t “deserve” to have someone love you, or stay in a relationship with you. You earn that. They could leave at any moment, so don’t take them for granted. They probably won’t, but so what? You shouldn’t treat someone badly under the assumption that you can make up for it later.
There’s a fundamental problem here in that you say all of these things as if a relationship has to be zero sum. It doesn’t. I’ve become friends with Vael over the past two years, and not only has it not cost me anything to have great conversations with him, we’re both better off for it. Why would a romantic relationship be any different?
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It needs to be said that love isn’t binary - you’re not 0: in love and then suddenly 1: in love. When you kind of like someone, you definitely shouldn’t place their happiness above your own yet. When you’re starting to love them a little, you should think twice before doing something that would hurt them. Then when you love them a lot, you’re really, truly in love, that’s when you should be selfless. If you’ve come that far, they probably feel the same way. Ideally, they’d treat you equally well.
If it’s a romantic relationship, and you break up, then whoever made that choice probably has good reason for doing so. A lot of the time, the other person probably still cares about them, and is naturally pretty hurt by that. But then, if your feelings for each other were mutual, why would you be breaking up? Of course the person who still cares will be hurt. So I don’t think it’s right to judge the end of a relationship the way you have. Alternatively, you’re judging entire relationships based on how they end, which is equally wrong.
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Two things that should be disgusting to anyone with a heart: basing a relationship on what you can get from someone, and basing a relationship on the need to possess. Granted, we all have acquaintances we only talk to when we need notes for a class we skipped missed, and other small things like that. I’d understand if people have a problem with being used that way - because, yeah, if you’re that person then you’re being used. But I’m not going to get worked up over something like that. Now, if someone only talks to you when they want to borrow large amounts of money, should you be ok with that? No, definitely not. But that’s different from giving someone your notes, or only being asked to hang out in specific situations.
The second, then - the desire to possess. This is supreme selfishness, and it’s something a lot of people wind up in without realizing it. Love isn’t based on the desire to possess someone as an object, for them to be yours, and yours alone. Are you upset that your partner is leaving you because you care about them and think they’d be happier if you were together? Or are you upset because you’ve lost a thing that is yours and it makes you happy, which is what really matters? It’s one thing to be hurt, because something that made you happy is gone. It’s another thing to want it back only because it made you happy. When your happiness makes someone else unhappy, that’s a zero sum situation, and you should generally feel bad about that. If it’s someone you care about (or think you care about), you should feel especially bad about it, and doing so is proof that you care.
So I ask you, what would having pride have done to change my situation? Should I have been proud to possess such a great thing, one that makes me happy all the time? Should I have been proud to have a girlfriend, simply because I did good things for her and her gratitude was confused for love? I’m proud to have done the right thing, even though it hurt. I’m proud that we managed to work things out in the end. I’m proud that I had the strength to pull through it all. I’m proud of the things that I can do, the good fortune I’ve had to lead the life I have, and the relationships I’ve forged along the way.
I have enough of a spine to stand by what I believe, but not so much that I become a massive, bony dick who stands stubbornly by things that are proven wrong, and insults others because they disagree and not because they deserve such unkind words. It would sicken me to see someone act like that, and I could never live with myself if I were to act that way. Luckily, then, those kinds of people tend to be unaware of their true nature. I can only hope that someone would show me the truth, if I became so despicable.
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Part 2 of my post from yesterday. If you haven’t read it, this won’t make as much sense. I said that I would write about “how I see love, why I say that Brittany “cheated” on me with an emphasis on the quotation marks, and why I have no problem with it.” Read on if you’re interested, and if not, you probably hate me by now. Sorry!
I think the ideal form of love is selfless. If you really, truly love someone, then you should want them to be as happy as possible. If being in love requires you to get something out of it, then you don’t love them as much as you think you do. If I had forced Brittany to stay away from this guy, because I really did think that being with her was the only way I could be happy, that wouldn’t have been love. Or, at least, it would have been showing that I loved myself the most, and cared more about my happiness than hers. I let her go because I knew that if it worked out, she would be happier with him than she ever would be with me. We might have been content together, but because she didn’t truly love me, it wouldn’t be a perfect, happily-ever-after kind of thing.
This is mainly a romantic thing, because it’s not like you ever formally agree to spend the rest of your life with your closest friends. Still, when you care about someone a lot, you should be more interested in what you can do for them than what they can do for you. Since they (hopefully) care about you the same way, they’ll take care of you just as selflessly. And everyone wins.
So, as for infidelity specifically, I should start by saying that I wouldn’t ever do something like that to begin with. The fact that I could accept it from my partner doesn’t mean that I condone it. To me, the worst thing about a one-night stand would be if it was kept a secret - that’s a betrayal of trust, which hurts. Who cares about the sex at that point? If they come clean right away and don’t make a habit of it, it’s forgivable. And could you really blame someone if they fell in love with someone else? It sucks, but sometimes people just click. Again, if they keep it a secret and start seeing someone else, that’s intentional and wrong. But it’s love, and if they’d be happier that way, let them go and move on. I do think that we can be monogamous with the right partners, and I’m willing to forgive a lot. And, yeah, I’m tough enough to let someone go so they can be happy. It’s hard to appreciate right away, but I think it’s the best decision to make.
It never really bothered me that much that Brittany was with this other guy, that she had feelings for him, and so on. It was never a secret - she asked for my permission repeatedly, and I gave it every time, with the one condition being that she not do anything behind my back. If she’d done all of this and pretended our relationship was fine until the day that we broke up, I would have been infinitely more hurt. I would have no issues telling people that she cheated on me. If I were to say that now, it would make it seem like I was victimized - when in reality I personally encouraged her to go after this guy. Yeah, we were “officially” together while all of this was going on, but that really doesn’t matter. She didn’t want to hurt me, but at the same time, she was falling in love with this guy and going back to me would have been impossible. I can’t honestly say “no, you should stop yourself from falling in love, and also you should stay in a relationship where you are content rather than search for one where you are truly happy.” Even if someone could do that, why would they? And why would you want them to?
Anyway, now you probably understand better why neither of us is honestly worried about old feelings coming back. The people who were worried about that, they don’t know this stuff - they just know that we dated in the past and now I’m offering her a place to stay. I’m still surprised that I’ve never posted about this before, but now I have and now you know! It’s probably not worth the effort to explain all of this to people so that they can understand why we could live together and not consider being more than friends. But the people who know we were together ought to know why we broke up, and not just that we did.
I mean, man. How did I not write about this before? Still amazed by that.
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I’ve been thinking for the past week about what different people get from reading my tumblr. Random internet strangers probably just read the posts about things they’re interested in. People who know me well will get to know me better. But for people who don’t know me yet, it’s not a perfect window into my life - there are a lot of things that don’t come across all that well in text. I post about the things that interest me, and I post a lot of information about my life, but not so much about more abstract things - what I believe in, what kind of person I am, and so on. There’s not much point in simply telling you those things. because there would be nothing to back it up, and even if you accept that I’m nice because I said so, it wouldn’t really leave much of an impression on you. Trying to show you things like that with words is tough, but I’ll think about it and work on a few drafts to give the internet at large a better idea of who I am.
I started playing Catherine last night, and aside from being a pretty satisfying puzzle game (as long as you don’t get really stuck on a hard part), it’s an absolutely wonderful thing to experience. I’d be surprised if I got more than ten hours out of it, but the value of playing it can’t be measured in time spent playing. The basic gist is that you guide Vincent, a 32 year old underachiever, through the worst week of his life. First, his girlfriend of five years, Katherine, starts talking about marriage. Then he drinks a bit too much and has a one-night stand with a girl named Catherine. What happens from there depends on the player’s decisions, but it’s a really well-crafted experience.
If you absolutely love puzzle games, there’s probably $60 worth of gameplay in there, but everyone else should play the game on easy and act as honestly as possible. It’ll get you thinking about what you would do in a given situation, and about relationships in general. Which is absolutely fantastic, and I’m so glad that this is a “mainstream” video game. I mean, ok, it’s not a AAA blockbuster release, but it’s not some budgetless, vague indie game either. It’s a game that deals with marriage, cheating, responsibility, the nature of relationships… It’s a work of art in every definition of the word.
So I’ve been thinking a lot since I started playing it, and naturally one of the things I’ve been thinking about is infidelity. Apparently, I’ve actually never written about this before, which is surprising because of what happened between Brittany and I. It’s kind of an important detail, which makes it strange that I’ve never mentioned it. It also means I have to write about it now, in order to get into the stuff I want to say. Alright, so, here’s the quick and dirty version. When we were in 9th grade, Brittany got involved with a guy a year younger than her, and she was really serious about him. It ended badly, she did her best to get over it, and then in November of 10th grade we started dating again. In PEI, high school doesn’t start until 10th grade, so when we moved onto high school she didn’t really see the guy until the fall of 11th grade. Before too long, despite having a girlfriend, he started flirting with her. She was wary of him because he proved to be a supreme asshole the first time, but I knew she was drawn to him in a way she’d never been drawn to me, and so I gave her permission to talk to him and braced for impact. Fast forward a few months, and by November things are very serious between them and we finally break up ten days before our anniversary.
I don’t think I need to get into what happened between them after that, but suffice to say that he was actually worse than a supreme asshole. An uber asshole, if you will, the horrible embodiment of all the terrible things women expect from men. Meanwhile, I had encouraged my girlfriend - who I loved dearly, and who was at the time my one source of happiness - to leave me. In the end, her relationship with him made her reevaluate her feelings for me, and there ended the possibility of us getting back together. Understandably, our relationship became strained as things went on, and we spoke less and less often. Eventually it seemed like we couldn’t even manage to carry on a conversation. Considering she was my only close friend, the only person I thought I could share my secrets, doubts, and fears with, this was hard for me. I was incredibly lonely, and of course I spoke occasionally with my friends and family about this stuff, but it was this loneliness that led me to meet Vael and open up to him.
What I realized, over time, was that I missed Brittany as my best friend far more than I missed her as my girlfriend. We went from speaking all day, every day to never speaking at all, and that alone was hard. Not having anyone to talk to about personal stuff was worse. I don’t remember the exact details of what happened, but at some point I must have told her this and asked if we could “just be friends.” Yeah, I said that, and I said it after we’d broken up. Delicious irony, if you can ignore my crying, desperately lonely 16-year-old-self long enough to laugh about it. Of course there were issues to work through, and of course I struggled with my feelings for her. After all that time, I couldn’t just snap my fingers and only think of her as a friend. But in the end, it all worked out, and now we’re friends and she’s living in my mom’s house. It’s been almost a week now, and it hasn’t been at all awkward for me (although I’ve been at my dad’s house this whole time). She doesn’t find it weird being there, and I assume being around me is no different than it was a month ago. Which is to say I haven’t asked about that, but maybe I should.
SO OK NOW WE’RE BACK TO CATHERINE AND THE THINGS IT MADE ME THINK ABOUT. Now I can tell you how I see love, why I say that Brittany “cheated” on me with an emphasis on the quotation marks, and why I have no problem with it. Except that when I say now, I actually mean tomorrow, because this is really long. And the chances of people reading it all probably increase when it’s split up. So, that post will go up tomorrow morning, and I hope you all enjoy it!
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[Alternatively titled: How I Learned to Stop Being Suicidal and Love Life]
A few weeks ago, a friend of mine told me they were feeling suicidal. Don’t worry - things have turned around completely, and this friend is feeling happy for the first time in a long while. Still, it made me think about the way I used to feel when I was suicidal - how I felt when I was 10, and the slightly more refined thoughts I had during junior high and high school. It made me realize how much I’ve grown up, and I thought it was worth sharing. I’ll try to be concise! Sometimes you have to explore a few tangents, but I’ll try to keep them relevant.
I gave a quick history in my Depression post last year, and I touched on my suicidal thoughts as well. One thing I forgot to mention was the feeling that I had nothing to live for. When I was 10, I thought that I was so smart and wanted to do great things - but I knew that the world doesn’t work that way and figured I’d wind up in a crappy office job, living a “normal” life. I was just a kid, you know? The life of an adult, in my mind, consisted solely of their job. It never occurred to me that I could have a normal job, and still do great things.
I wanted to improve the world, though, and since I wouldn’t do it at work, I thought it was impossible. Then I thought I could do it by taking myself out of the picture. When I realized that would only make things worse, I looked for other ways to make the world a better place. I figured that if I could improve at least one thing, no matter how small, I would have lived a worthwhile life. When I met Brittany in junior high, I decided my one thing would be to help her. I figured I could help her with her problems, and then she’d go off and be happy and it would all be thanks to me. I didn’t think that would take too long, and after that, even if I killed myself, I would have made the world a better place. It never quite worked out that way, but I held onto the idea that I could make people’s lives better in some small way and live a good life.
I knew that I couldn’t kill myself if anyone would be left behind to mourn me and blame themselves for my death, so I decided I would have to disappear quietly. The day no one would notice I was dead, I could slip away and that would be that. I figured that I could leave home after high school and gradually lose contact with my family, and then I’d just have to make sure they couldn’t trace my identity after I died. I felt that it was inevitable that everyone in my life would leave me, so when that happened, I’d be free to end it. “Unfortunately” for my tenth grade self, I’ve made new connections and gotten closer to everyone else, more or less foiling this plot.
You know how sometimes you can’t figure out whether something actually happened, or you just had a dream and thought it happened? I get that sometimes, except I can’t remember whether I said something or just thought about saying it. Either way, in high school I once said (or thought I said) that I “wanted to be happy when I grew up.” Which is super dramatic, and sad, and that’s what really made me want to say it. I was also trying to say that it didn’t matter what I “was when I grow up,” in terms of what career I chose - as long as I had enough to survive and something else to make me happy, I’d be ok.
What I realized, thinking about all of this, is that I’ve done it. I grew up. I’m happy with my life, and I’ll still be happy no matter where things go from here. That’s not to say that everything is perfect; I just know that I can deal with and overcome pretty much anything. I’m happy with who I am, and I think I’m a good person. I doubt I’m radically changing the lives of everyone I meet, but I’ve made good friends and I’m helping out whenever I can. Enough to say I’m a net positive influence on the world, at least, which was always the plan. And that’s enough to make me happy!
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Should I apologize for not posting while I’m on vacation? I feel guilty about it anyway, but I’m thinking most people focus on their vacation and don’t post at all. Well, I love you too much to stay away for long. Also, I can’t help but think up tumblr posts when I should be sleeping, and the best cure for that is to actually write one before bed.
If that’s not a significant caveat, I don’t know what is.
Anyway, I have news! News big enough for its own post, even. It’s a big change, technically, but at the same time I’m hoping for a minimal amount of changes to accommodate it. If that makes sense. Ideally, I’ll be able to continue working at the same pace I have been and life will go on as usual, except with an extra person living in my house.
I’ll skip the long story of how we got to this point and summarize: Brittany is moving in at my mom’s place, and she’ll stay there while I’m at my dad’s. I’m giving up my bedroom, but I prefer to sleep on the futon in the basement anyway, so all that’s left is to figure out where I’ll move my “office.” No big deal, although everybody’s worried about us living together, but it’s not as bad as it sounds.
If you’ve been reading my tumblr long enough, you probably know Brittany as my ex-girlfriend. But we broke up two and a half years ago now, and I don’t think our status as an ex-couple (do people say that? makes sense to me) defines our relationship anymore. I mean, yeah, we dated and we broke up - but there’s no tension, no unresolved issues, none of the things you would expect when you’re meeting someone’s ex for the first time. And the more time I spend with her now, the more comfortable I am with the way things are - we’re friends, the same way I’m friends with Vael, Sebastian, or Max.
I’ve been offering to let Brittany stay with us pretty much since we decided to move to Ottawa, mainly because I’ve always thought her family treats her terribly. Her mom has been threatening to kick her out recently, or at least make her pay rent, which is difficult considering how few jobs are available in Summerside. Ottawa, on the other hand, has many more opportunities. So I asked my mom if she could stay with us, because it would be cheaper for her than getting an apartment in Summerside, and she’d have better odds of saving up money for school. Fast-forward to our vacation, and Brittany came out to dinner with us. One of the first things my mom says is “so Brittany, are you coming back to Ottawa with us?” At first she said maybe, and then there was much discussion and working out of details, and now the answer is yes.
I figure I’ll be introducing her as my friend from now on, and that’ll avoid plenty of awkward situations where people misunderstand or assume things. Not like it’ll be a secret that we dated, but if it comes up, I’ll just say she turned me into a newt and then I got better. Or something along those lines. I just want to say that I got better and make it clear that it’s a Monty Python reference.
Anyway, that’s that. There’s not really a whole lot to say aside from re-assuring everyone about the way things are between us now, so there you go. Consider yourself assured!
tl;dr: my ex-girlfriend is going to be my roommate, but it’s not what you think
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