The Vent Thread

[Otohiko]

I'm kind of in the same boat too. Lately it's been sucky because the good friends I made here after moving to a new city where I knew NOBODY, have just relocated :/
I'm hoping when I start taking some classes I'll make some more friends here in town. It's tough making new friends when you're older. It's like dating somebody D:

Why can't it always be kindergarten?
"I like this"
"I like this too, BFFs FOREVER."

xD So true!

I think part of the problem, too, is that so many people are already fixed in their own little cliques or family that they care about, and then seem really disinterested in everyone else. Ironically I actually find it easier to talk to people in their late 30s and 40s than to people my age, they're actually somewhat more at ease in that sense. It seems like late 20s is some sort of cliquesville here .__.

[Emong]

I can't say I'm on the same boat with you guys but I've got some other problems. I did make a whole lot of new friends when I entered the university but somehow it's hard for me to get past the superficial level. I feel like our newly developed friendship is too dependent on student parties and attending the same classes. It won't last forever and I'll need to do something about it.

[Otohiko]

Yup, that's always an issue. For me it's one that sticks out because as a Russian, the "people you get along with and do stuff with" and "people you emotionally identify with and care about" are two completely different categories, with different words for them. It's not that I have anything against the former category, but social life for me is supposed to revolve around the latter.

***

More bad news for me in the meantime. The prof who's been co-supervising me and has set up most of my research connections over the last 3 years, and had been throwing extra jobs and other help my way, has been really sick and not getting better. The "might never be back at the university" sort of sick. That would really suck

Also puts a serious hole in my already-shaky academic progress.

[dj_ultima_the_great]

Mom is taking two weeks of vacation time at the end of this week. For her, this means sitting in front of her computer all day for fourteen days straight waiting for her fake boyfriend to come online, doing literally nothing else in the meantime. She will actually just stare at the screen for hours. She has no friends, and she won't leave the house. She'll just... wait.

It's like somebody took my mother and replaced her with a self-deluded, willfully ignorant lunatic, and so times like these when we'll be spending a lot of time around one another are painfully trying on my temper.

Before anyone asks, yes, I have been pricing apartments. Now that I know about how much money I'll be pulling in on average, I'm confident in working out my budget. After ACen, I'm going to start seriously planning getting out of here.

[Taite]

After all I've been through this past half a year, I really didn't think it could be any worse, but alas, it just got worse.

Unrequited love is a bitch, sure, but when that person you like starts dating the cousin of the man who tried to kill your sister? Yeah... awkward.
I know she's nice, but sometimes I just want to shake her by the shoulders until her entire body just crumbles into little pieces. How can you be so arrogant and selfish, you and your family? Why do you have to ruin everything that's ever been good in my life? Just knowing you share his blood is enough to make me shake with hatred.

And why do you, the only man I've been able to vaguely like in the past 5 years, fall for her? Did you start to like her when you saw how sad she was, and how you couldn't help but pity her? Do you even know the truth of what happened between my sister and your new girlfriend's cousin? Of course you don't, but you'll believe what she says, I know it. And yet I still can't help but like you, and for that, I really hate you.


Thankfully I don't have to see either of their faces on a daily basis, because then I'd just be too sick to vent.

[Emong]

^ Sounds pretty awful and complicated Maybe I give you virtual hugs?

[Pwolf]

Your situation is uniquely shitty to begin with, this definitely doesn't help it :\

[Otohiko]

Dude, Taite, that just sounds like trauma upon trauma. Again, you have my complete sympathies on that, but the sooner you can disengage yourself from having both of those things, the sooner they will stop hurting you. Obviously, as a stranger, I don't know how and if you can, but you just need to.
Unrequited love is something that only works when it ends. It can end well or it can end badly, but ending is infinitely being better than stuck on it. You have to either reformulate the relationship somehow into something that's manageable, healthy, and doesn't hurt you, or you have to disengage and get away from it. Unrequitedness hurts too much to be stuck on it. I know that's easy to say, but if you let it, it'll keep producing real trauma. And that's something not to mess with.

I hope you find some way out of both of those situations. It sounds like you may just need to move someday to get away from it.


And likewise Jen, you need to get away. Sooner is better. I can tell you already know that anyway, but, with your mom... you just can't save someone who doesn't want to be saved. In fact, your support and presence is probably only helping her mess everything up. At this point, I'd be willing to bet that she'd be more likely to snap out of it when you're gone. And in your case, you would just be infinitely better off.

[Taite]

^ Sounds pretty awful and complicated Maybe I give you virtual hugs?

Indeed it is... and of course (: Thank you.

Your situation is uniquely shitty to begin with, this definitely doesn't help it :\

Ha, tell me about it. :/

Dude, Taite, that just sounds like trauma upon trauma. Again, you have my complete sympathies on that, but the sooner you can disengage yourself from having both of those things, the sooner they will stop hurting you. Obviously, as a stranger, I don't know how and if you can, but you just need to.
Unrequited love is something that only works when it ends. It can end well or it can end badly, but ending is infinitely being better than stuck on it. You have to either reformulate the relationship somehow into something that's manageable, healthy, and doesn't hurt you, or you have to disengage and get away from it. Unrequitedness hurts too much to be stuck on it. I know that's easy to say, but if you let it, it'll keep producing real trauma. And that's something not to mess with.

I hope you find some way out of both of those situations. It sounds like you may just need to move someday to get away from it.

Yeah, I've been trying. No way our relationship will end up "manageable"-- I've been trying to end it for over a year, since I know it's best. But like you said, easier said than done.
In the mean time, I'm stuck here, for a couple more dreadful years. Then when I move away, maybe I'll be free. Still, easier said than done.

[Pwolf]

Something I have been thinking about recently but feel like sharing due to the circumstances:

Alfred Tennyson is a jerk. He wrote these famous words:

'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

Which in my opinion is BS but i guess it depends on how you look at it (I'm feeling cynical today).

[Otohiko]

Yeah you are being a cynical bastard scott

Not to be a philosophical jerk myself, but loss is the nature of life and love. If you're not willing to deal with loss, you might as well never get up in the morning. If you're not willing to seek out positives from defeat and rejection, that'll just grind you down in the long run, because if you can't affirm the value of your own feelings - even if they were in vain - then you're going to forefeit whole years of your life while building up more and more unrealistic expectations. That's where healthy fatalism, rather than pure cynicism, is helpful - in the end, you lose everything anyway, and value in life isn't found in trying to desperately hang on to things and people, but in making the best of what you have/had while you can.

Unrequited love is a bitch and it hurts, but you can still take away a lot from it. You just need to stop angry about it and disengage yourself from it first, then you might just end up looking back on it as something very good. Where it becomes a problem isn't loss, but denial. It's where you can't let go of feelings, however hopeless they are, nor can reformulate your relationship with that person into something that's manageable for both parties.

Personally, I'm far more upset that it's now been slightly over a year since my last serious (but hopeless) crush than I am over my failtastic love life that's been composed of nothing but unrequited feelings and lost causes. Cause even those weren't so bad, really, and sure made things interesting while they lasted. I'd rather feel engaged in emotional futility than emotionless cynicism. I find the latter a lot more poisonous, energy-draining and difficult to live with. That's my purely personal take on it, anyway.

Then there is, of course, the issue of trauma. Rejection in love? You bet that can make for some pretty nasty trauma, but that's not something that you can cure with pills, or somehow reverse by going back in time changing things. It's not even something that a sudden success will reverse or erase. It's something that you have to learn to deal with. Yes, by that logic, it might seem like a better idea to avoid it rather than live with it, but you get to a point when it becomes no better than a phobia. Sure you might end up wanting to avoid cars if you ever get into a car accident, but are you really going to be better off never driving in the future? Would you really rather be stuck to things in walking distance from you than get in a vehicle? Does it make all the places you've been to thanks to cars before you had the accident worthless?

I'm not saying at all that it's not a big deal - it is. But you can choose to shut down over it, or learn to live with it. And it's much easier to live with anything when you realize that hey, that had lots of positive aspects to it too, and the wreck that you ended up in doesn't really cancel them out.

[Castor Troy]

Something I have been thinking about recently but feel like sharing due to the circumstances:

Alfred Tennyson is a jerk. He wrote these famous words:

'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

Which in my opinion is BS but i guess it depends on how you look at it (I'm feeling cynical today).

I celebrate 10 years of being single this fall!

[BasharOfTheAges]

Order package. UPS shipping data! Yay! Lots of detailed data about pickup, and shipment through the first 2 facilities... Silence for 6 days. Scheduled for delivery tomorrow - the last day I can get it before I'm away for several days. Specifically need it while I'm away. Panic. Set delivery notification and status update emails. Hour later get an update email... Everything is still the same - update was from 6 days ago. FUUUUUUUUUUUU

[Otohiko]

I celebrate 10 years of being single this fall!

Pff, I celebrate 28 years of being single next week

...

/rageface

[Flint the Dwarf]

Sure you might end up wanting to avoid cars if you ever get into a car accident, but are you really going to be better off never driving in the future? Would you really rather be stuck to things in walking distance from you than get in a vehicle? Does it make all the places you've been to thanks to cars before you had the accident worthless?

To the first question, very possibly. To the second, why not? To the third, no, but it puts everything else into perspective. Your relationship with your more immediate surroundings becomes different.

Having never had a license or having owned a car, I've walked most everywhere all my adult life. I've noticed my attitude toward the city or town in which I live ends up being fundamentally different from those around me. What you do have available to you becomes more essential, less liable to be taken for granted. If you want to compare vehicular transportation to love, because they both help you reach places you couldn't before (cars physically, love emotionally), you consider the alternative. Cars get people places quickly, help them do more in less time. Love focuses and intensifies emotional ties with one person, effectively reaching a higher ground more quickly. Both create a sort of dependency that make it difficult for a person to cope without.

Having loved and lost, I don't know if the convenience of love was worth the crippling afterward. In the last 3 years I haven't even approached the "crush" relationship with another person. I feel cut off and isolated. I interact with people, relate with them and empathize with them, but never really connect. I don't even think self-dependence is necessarily the best path, but the sort of focused purpose of love tends to exclude the scenery of life; meaningful interactions with other people. I think I can live a fulfilling life without that single relationship to which we could ascribe the word "love." I think I can walk, stroll, and saunter through the crowds and not feel alone. But I still feel crippled, like I could do more, and without that one extra thing I'll be missing something crucial.

At least you can get insurance with cars.