welcome to the view from halfway down.

yes and

hello.

its been a while since i posted here, and ive done a lot of thinking in that time.

ive been reflecting on my previous friendships and relationships, considering how they all come together in the end. how i always feel in it and after it, and what is the behavior that leads me to these points.

one thing that i have noticed is that i always hold on with my nails until the absolute end. people normally just leave the friend/relationship if things arent working out and look somewhere else.

me? i couldnt seem to let go, like ever. it was impossible for me to fathom leaving someone without trying my absolute best to keep it going or fix it. i always tried to see the best in things, even if there was nothing good left anymore.

but i realized that if people arent interested in spending time with you, its a huge disservice towards yourself to try and “convince” them you are worth it.

ill give you an extremely cringe example, so you can see just how bad this impacted me.

this was a moment in of one of my relationships. we were talking about most likely splitting up, as the girl found someone who was more aligned with what she wanted, and i was there holding for dear life, trying to fix things and “reattract” her to me and show her that im “worth it”.

we went to a vacation together for a week, as our “goodbyes”. when we went out one night, she started telling about how they (her and the new guy she found) kissed outside on a bench so passionately and aggressively that someone called the cops. i sat next to her and listened. i heard correctly. i completely understood what she said.

yet i smiled and told her “thats cool”. i sat there like an idiot, absolutely heartbroken, but somehow i still tried my best even after hearing that. there wasnt any space for self respect, the love i had for her consumed all the space, and i couldnt be mad at her at the time.

and i still tried, even after all of that, for weeks and months on end. i could rant on and on about the situation, but in the end i dont hate the girl or anything, and i very much wish that life goes amazing for her.

my traumatic experience aside, if you didnt believe this impacted me very badly, i hope you do now.

i read a few books about relationships since then, and even more about discovering myself. i started working on myself and began going to therapy.

in that pursuit i came across an extremely memorable and life changing principle.

“If its not a FUCK YES, its a no.”

the first time i read that, i thought “no, life is a bit more complicated than that”. but each time i saw it again, it started to make more and more sense.

yesterday, it kind of all clicked into place. i remembered all the dry conversations. i remembered all the wishing that people would want to talk to me more. i remembered planning on what to say or do to make people more engaged in the conversations.

all of this felt lukewarm. its such a great description of it. just lukewarm.

life is supposed to be enjoyed, so are friendships and relationships. i always wanted to surround myself with people who make me feel like im in the right place at the right time. i wanted to feel welcomed and wanted.

i knew all of that, yet i still went and got myself into conversations and relationships that didnt feel right, that felt like a chore, and especially that felt like i have to “prove my worth” to the other party.

now i look back with understanding. this is what i grew up with. i always felt like i have to prove something to either my parents, friends or teachers. i didnt know better. this sadly creeped its way into my adult life without me realizing. i knew something was wrong, but it took some (a lot) time to the actual conclusion.

but why would a person that loves themselves and wants the best for them bother with forcing others to like them? why would you put so much effort into convincing people to care, when they dont care about you in the first place?

why the fuck would you want your life to be lukewarm? just to prove to yourself that you still got it? that you can still force people to like you? isnt that actually kinda lame?

dont pursue lukewarm friendships.
dont pursue lukewarm relationships.
dont pursue lukewarm jobs.
dont pursue lukewarm experiences.

dont pursue a lukewarm life.

if you dont feel excited about a direction in your life, why on earth would you pursue it?
if you dont feel excited about talking to a person, just go and do other things.
if that person doesnt feel excited about talking to you, do them a favor and do other things anyways. they have better things to do and so do you.

make your life be full of things that make you go FUCK YES, instead of eh, i guess?.

give it your all. thats the only way you will feel fulfilled and doubtless.

at last, live your life to the fullest and truest.

lets find out

hiii.

todays post is going to be a little different from all the others.

for the past few weeks, ive been thinking about how i want to structure my life, and more importantly, my mindset. are there things i could improve on the way i think about stuff? if so, what are they?

and i think i actually figured out how to improve it massively.

for as long as i can remember, i always thought about things like “how do i make it work? how do i make this person like me? how do i make the world like me?”. i i i, everything was about me doing something to get some kind of a “reward”. to be liked. to be loved.

and its quite natural, isnt it? at the end of the day, people just want to be loved, so they bend over backwards just to feel that slight bit of interest from people, to feel a little bit of care and love from people they admire.

its the same as when bojack stole the D from the holywoo(d) sign. he didnt do it because he felt that its the right thing to show love to diane, he did it because he wanted to impress her, and to make her fall for him. silly horse.

but the more i thought about it, the more i realized that i dont really enjoy living life this way very much. yes, the attention and love is nice, but i felt like something was missing. that i was just running from one catastrophe to another, that there was always something that will ruin everything just around the corner.

why did i even live life in this way to begin with? honestly, who the fuck knows. maybe my parents didnt love me they way i needed, maybe my first girlfriend hurt me, maybe some friend said something so mean that it traumatized me forever and i dont even know about it. its not important, as to change your mindset in this, you dont have to realize all of the past hurts, and dwelling on them is going to do you more harm than good.

what if you could live life differently?

i didnt enjoy living like i described, so i changed it. i no longer look to be liked, im looking to like.

instead of “how do i make it work?”, i think “how will it work for me?”. instead of “how do i make this person like me?”, i think “how will this person feel for me?”. instead of “how do i make the world like me?”, i think “how will the world make me like it?”.

its such a subtle shift, but it works so well. i no longer focus on what i am supposed to be, what society or people around me want me to be. i want to be what will make me happy. i want to live a life, where the most impressed person by all of this is going to be me. instead of feeling like life is coming at me, im trying to feel that life is coming from me.

this has also transformed my relationships a ton. im no longer sitting on my phone like a crack addict waiting for his hit of new texts and responses. i just live my life, and text with people i like. maybe the texting isnt particularly fun. thats cool. i dont have to carry the conversation to be liked. i want a conversation that is going to make me enjoy it, and if it doesnt, then i can just go and do other things that are more enjoyable.

be beauty. be self caring. stop making yourself a puppet to others. you arent supposed to fill their desires. you are supposed to fill your desires. go on that walk. buy that thing youve been wanting to buy. pick up that hobby youve been putting off. talk to that girl or boy that you admire so much. just fucking live for yourself. make yourself happy. make yourself proud. impress yourself. create things. create art. create meaningful projects that fill you up with joy.

what does live have for us? lets find out. what will the cute girl think about me? lets find out. what will i do in two weeks from now on? you guessed it, lets find out.

and at last, live your life to the fullest and truest.

downer ending

hello.

downer ending has been one of the most life altering episodes of bojack horseman out of all of them. especially the ending.

the episode starts with bojack wanting to prove to diane that he can write a much better memoir than she ever could, so he teams up with todd and sarah lynn, takes some drugs, and gets to writing.

after bojack starts to experience heavy hallucinations, he wakes up at a house right next to a lake, with charlotte, his long lasting fantasy crush. what i mean by fantasy crush is not that the person isnt real, but the fact that he didnt see her for years and just idolized her to an unhealthy degree. he has a kid with her, harper, and lives through a life with her, only to wake up to a phone call that takes him out of all the halucinations, including the peaceful life with charlotte.

why is that important? it shows us that bojack has been dreaming of actual healthy relationships with people he loves, and the drugs just make it come out and take form. hes not a bad person inside, he just wants to be loved purely and wholeheartedly, as everyone does. this is a stark contrast to the way he is the entire show beforehand, a bitter and a “socially impossible to deal with” person.

after his drug trip, he sobers up, and goes to diane to apologize for being mean to her before, because.. reasons. and at the end of the apology, he says one of the most iconic questions in the entire show:

"Diane, I need you to tell me that it's not too late—I, I, I need you to tell me that I'm a good person. I know that I can be selfish and narcissistic and self-destructive, but underneath all that, deep down, I'm a good person and I need you to tell me that I'm good—Diane—tell me, please, Diane, tell me that I'm good—"

for the first time in the show, we start seeing bojacks true colors. somewhere “deep down”, he knows he wants to change, and he knows how terrible he has been to the people in his life. hes not just an asshole that wants to hurt people around him, but an actual caring person too.

but this does not help him whatsoever, because he is unable to help himself. he asks diane, to tell him that he is “good”, because that would make him feel hopeful for the future, as he most likely needs other people to cling onto for his self improvement, a common BPD trait. this, coupled with the fact that diane is his love interest, is absolutely unfortunate. not only is diane not interested in him, already in a relationship, but she also doesnt answer this (crucial to bojack) question.

why am i going into such detail on a single episode of the funny horse man show? because i relate to it more than i want to admit. obviously not the drug part, as i would never do drugs, but i relate to his need of validation. most of my self worth is often built up and kept by my partners and friends, and when they leave or get busy, it crumbles. ive been researching on how to prevent this and how to build myself an actual steady foundation of self worth, but nothing ever clicked.

i recognize that throwing this burden on the people around me is not a good way to create and maintain relationships, as noone really enjoys having to validate the other person all the time, just for that person to not crumble. but at this point, im not sure what to do about this, as ive never learned another way (that works) for this particular issue.

i also recognize that if i continue doing it the same way i was doing it up until now is not gonna yield different results. you get what you put in, and putting in the same thing over and over again is a pretty sure way to just get the same thing over and over.

this is pretty anticlimactic, but ill end this post here, without resolution, as i simply dont have it, and continuing would probably just end up in me rambling in circles.

until next time, live your life to the fullest and truest.

old acquaintance

hiya.

todays post is going to be more of a vent than something constructive, so i hope you dont mind. if you do, feel free to skip to other posts.

when i watched bojack, there was an unbeliavable amount of times that bojack did something so stupid, that it felt really unrealistic at the time. he did so many things wrong, one after each other, most of them being in essence the same, yet, he never saw them and never tried to improve his behavior. silly little horse, i thought.

two years later, and i can confidently say that i have replicated that behavior accurately. ive done a lot of things wrong with many people, most of these just being repetitions of my old mistakes, yet i never fully realized, nor did i try to truly improve from them and change. i have no idea why that is, as the people that i love and that i have around me have expressed their concerns many times, recommended therapy, or outright left because they were too tired of dealing with me.

i call those people old acquaintaces, as they arent (mostly) mad or spiteful at me; they are just uninterested in keeping any close relation with me, after giving it so much energy in the past. i find that totally understandable, even if it hurts.

the reason why i am writing this is because, frankly, i dont have anyone specific to tell this all to, so i figured yapping about my issues on my random website could make it “romantic” or something.

ill cut this short, as i learned that venting is actually a coping mechanism, for the most part; which means that it doesnt fix anything, as coping mechanisms just dont fix problems that make you cope in the first place.

thank you for reading this, and at last, live your life to the fullest and truest.

yesterdayland

heyy.

last few days, ive started doing something that i practically never did. i started focusing most of my energy on my grieve. grieve, to me, is the heart shattering feeling of something coming to an end. be it a relationship, a life episode, an idea of someone you had in mind, or most often, all of the above.

in a big part of my life i was tippy toeing around this topic. feeling something in the back of my mind clawing at my daily mood was typical, but i thought this feeling cant be helped, so i just pushed it even futher back and focused on things to distract myself, new relationships, new hobbies, videos, reels, shorts, whatever i could find to cope.

but inside of my mind, there were unadressed feelings of missing a lot of things and people. for every single relationship that has ended, every door that got closed, i held the door handle, just wishing it could be turned once again, at some point in time. i waited like a dog for its owner; but even the dog has to realize that there is noone coming home after a while.

its very convinient to just ignore those nudges, to just cope one more day without adressing that i feel horrible about something from the past. “it doesnt even make sense that i feel so horrible, people normally move on, so i should just grid my teeth through it and its gonna go away”, i thought to myself. but it never got any better.

so recently, i began to address those feelings and to actually let myself feel them. i sit with myself and think about stuff that has hurt me and that i miss. i think about my past relationships mostly.

im pretty used to holding the “best” imagine of my past partner as i can. it always felt wrong to be mad at them, or to try and make them the be the “bad” person, even though deep inside i know that they are just as confused as i am. this entire process creates another suite of problems, namely me idealizing people and amplifying the level of “i miss them” beyond whats healthy and whats logical. i, in the end, dont end up missing them, but my weird fantasy of what they could be, if they were exactly as i wanted them. and people never end up being that way, for good reasons.

anyways, feeling all the emotions and not seeing them as “annoying” or “useless” seems to be helping a lot. im starting to be understanding and compassionate towards myself, admitting that the stuff that happened to me hurt me a fuck ton. that its not just about me being “sensitive”, even though i may be, but about me actually feeling incredibly hurt in all the bad memories i have. all this time i kept telling myself that it wasnt that bad, when it truly was.

with this mindset, im allowing myself to start to understand what hurt me, to listen to myself without being critical of my past mistakes and most importantly, stop acting like there is nothing happening in my mind that is bothering me longterm. it is difficult in the moment, to relive all those memories, but in the end, i come back with a sense of self compassion and a lot more peace.

so to you, my readers, i very much recommend sitting with yourself, alone, and just admitting that stuff fucking sucked and hurt. it will be difficult at first, a lot of crying may be involved, but you need it. god how i needed it.

after this, youll most likely find out that you had a good reason to feel bad, and maybe that the next memories were highly influenced by your previous ones; in some it was maybe the case that “nothing happened”, but it reminded you of other times that were hurtful, which had tainted the new memory, even when it wasnt necessary. think about that too, im sure youll come to some interesting conclusions.

at last, live your life to the fullest and truest.

the stopped show

hello again.

i spent my time today thinking about a particular topic, which is most often talked about as the principle of if they wanted, they would. its a really interesting idea, and up until recently, i always ended up dismissing it. in my experience, it never applied to me, or so i thought.

we spend our lives doing what we see as the best thing to do. be aware, im not saying its exactly the “best thing to do”, but it is what we think is good for us. in some individuals, this can be pretty close to what is actually good for them, in other individuals, not so much. a lot of us struggle with mental health issues; depression, anxiety, borderline personality disorder, and many others. this “impairment” ends up shifting our internal compass towards things that are very much not good for us. just think of eating disorders or self harming.

but even if that all applies, we still end up doing what our mind thinks is best for us and what will give us the most benefit, utility or pleasure. for some reason, i didnt apply this onto relationships and friendships until now. i, pretty naively, always believed people know what they want. when someone told me, even though they didnt seem interested in talking to me at all, that they would love to talk to me if they had the “time”, i believed that, most of the time.

now comes the principle of if they wanted, they would. the reason why i always dismissed that was because “this doesnt apply to me”, as when i said similar things, i always thought they were true. looking back now, if i truly wanted to do all those things i was talking about, i shouldve just done them.

did i want to talk to someone so badly? i couldve.

did i really want to start that hobby? i couldve.

but i kept on hoping that just thinking about wanting to do something is the same as truly wanting it. it never was. if we truly want to do something, we dont just say it, we go through obstacles to do it, we “create” time to do it, we spend a lot of energy on making it real. we dont wait till tomorrow or until the mood is better or until the stars align. we go and get it.

dont get me wrong, it really sucks when someone keeps telling you how much they want to do something, like talk to you or do some hobby for example, but they never seem to match their words with actions. but, in my opinion, its not done out of harmful intentions. i think that even the people who say these things dont realize that they truly dont want something, and in the end they just want to convince themselves that they do. exactly like i did before.

what i want you to get out of this post is for you to sit down and really try to think about things you find important. things you want to do. things you are currently doing. how well do they match up? if they do, thats great! if not, why do they diverge?

is it because you truly dont have any time at all to act on it?

or is it because you are trying to convince yourself that you want them, even though you want different things?

how will that affect you further down in life?

how will it affect those around you?

until next time, live your life to the fullest and truest.

xerox of a xerox

hi.

after a while of thinking about making my own blog, ive decided to finally do it. i want it to have a form that is both a kind of a public diary and also a private well for me to dump all my emotional baggage and thoughts onto.

the first post, naturally, is named xerox of a xerox. for those who have watched bojack horseman, you know exactly what im talking about, and for those who havent, i strongly advise watching it, as ill refer to it often on this website.

its a pretty accurate depiction of how ive been feeling for quite some time now; as a copy of someone who i looked up to, or someone i adored or loved, or even a copy of a copy, as the title suggests. i can still see shards of other people in my daily behavior; in the way i talk, in the way i act, in the way i feel and show my feelings to others.

sometimes it can feel like im a copy of my past self, most of the time a worse copy of my past self. i remember being a kid and getting excited about every little stupid thing. i was so excited to talk to people. i was so interested that i ended up being annoying towards others. what changed from that time? why am i no longer all that interested in keeping up with other humans? did i copy the wrong people, or did i get scared because people found me to be “too much” and silenced that part of me?

all of the deep talk aside, sometimes, feeling like a xerox of a xerox is okay. we are all, in some sense, copies of others and copies of our previous selves. but its up to us, which people we choose to copy or adore, and its up to us to put our personality and image together from all the collected shards and pieces of them, and its up to us to choose which parts of our previous selves we are going to keep; and which we are going to kill off.