DISILLUSIONMENT

 October 10th, 2025

Today was another taxing day. I spiraled a few times (in my own silence, of course).

After work, I went to the gym, after the gym I realized I've been seriously slacking when it comes to my health, and thought I should recommit to doing better, for my own sake, not in hopes of any particular outcome, but just because I couldn't bear to start regaining weight amidst everything I have on my plate right now. So after that, I came home, cleaned my room, and then decided to go for a little walk. 

The walk ended up being nearly 2 hrs and 4 miles later I get home. It was freezing. I was hoping to clear my head and soothe the ache in my chest about all that I don't have, and i think I distracted myself for a bit, but the second I walked through the door, the crushing feelings of hopelessness and grief came back.

During my walk, I found myself dissociating and really daydreaming. In my head, my perfect world, I was somebody. I had a cute apartment to myself, people cared about me and looked at me with warmth and genuine regard, I had friends, people liked me, I had a partner who would take me on dates and cared about my feelings, I had a job at an art gallery, and wore cool clothes. In my daydream, I wasn't alone or lonely - I was happy. 

I felt like somebody, which is so the antithesis of how I feel when I leave that world to enter this one. 

All day today, I tried to fight the disappointment I've been feeling over [redacted]. Over seeing the warmth and acceptance he so seamlessly granted my friend, in contrast to the coldness and..let's face it - total indifference he showed me. It felt like a really cruel twist of fate that someone I've admired so much for the past six months would go out this way. It's not at all jealousy I feel, but a very familiar feeling of being let down. He didn't promise me anything, but I'd hoped deep down in my heart that there would be space for me in his. I guess not. 

Additionally, I kept being reminded of work, and how easily discarded I seem to be there. It made me ask myself if I was just easily discardable as person. If I mattered, even on an anatomical level. 

In the past, to cope with the stress of being in highly pressurized environments and not feeling accepted, seen, understood in them, I would focus really hard on what it would feel like to be in places where I felt the opposite. In recent years, I've learned to channel that into work for myself. By improving myself, I would feel like I had some control over my life. I would convince myself that all I needed to do was tweak myself for the results I wanted and surely they would come. I subconsciously came to believe that life was as simple as editing what you currently were to get what you'd always wanted. 

Being told when I was younger that the reason why guys never liked me was because I was just fat..and ugly. For the entirety of my adolescence all I wanted to be was skinny and pretty. At twenty four, I am by no means a skinny person, but I am a fraction of what I used to be (literally) and I'm realizing it didn't stop a man I deeply admired and liked from outright ignoring me and jumping over to my friend instead. 

I'll listen to old songs I used to cry to at the heartbreaks I faced as a teen and I realize..nothing much has changed. Literally. I think that's where the hopelessness is coming from - realizing how little control I have over the external. 

Lately, one thing I keep having to remind myself is that affection, care, love - these are not things that you merit. Despite putting blood, sweat, and tears into my work, it hasn't made me more liked or respected. In fact, I don't really think anyone cares. In other sectors of my life, I haven't ever felt lonelier. I wish it weren't so, but I think a part of me still wants to believe that if I strategize more, approach it from a different angle - tweak my approach, that I can yield better results. This part of me so desperately wants a happy ending at the end of that hopeless road that's been my life so far. I think that side of me remains deeply terrified that it's fully out of our control and this may just be my permanent life experience. I may leave this earth the way I felt during my time on it: misunderstood, overlooked, unseen, and quite frankly, unloved.

That my early experiences will not look different from my current and future ones. That contrary to what I've told myself to make living more bearable - that my childhood experiences haven't been for a reason, but just baggage that I'll never get to shed and forced to live with forever. 

I can't make sense of that, I don't want to make sense of what. 

I haven't done anything wrong, so why is it that these things stick to me? 

- vetiveroil