back! and just as screwed up as ever!

I am back! I think for now I am going to use this blog more for destressing than for posting about stuff that interests me, because I’m busy. But we’ll see. I am learning some interesting stuff these days so maybe I’ll write about it. And maybe I’ll finally continue some of those stories from before.

so what is bothering me now? lots of things. lets start with the most pressing one. My roommate. So, all of my roommates are reasonably cool dudes. But one of them has a single extremely annoying habit. He likes to listen to loud pop music and sing along. The Chinese pop music isn’t too bad, although he listens to the same songs again and again. The American pop music is just terrible, though. It’s the kind of stuff my sister listened to when she was in middle school. I don’t think he listens to it because he thinks it’s good music. I think he’s trying to know a wide body of pop music so that he can sing when he goes out and attract girls. I don’t care what his music preferences are or what his girl-attracting strategies are, but he’s really loud, and he doesn’t like to close his door. So it’s highly annoying.

On a completely unrelated note, after 5 or 6 years of intermittent depression, I finally decided to go talk to a professional. I saw a psychologist at the campus medical center. Of course she was interested in stuff like my parents’ divorce and my family’s religion issues and suchlike. Perhaps it’s true that these things subconsciously affect me, but I didn’t particularly feel relieved to have talked about that stuff with someone, and at least consciously it doesn’t seem to me that that ancient history is what’s causing my problems. Anyway, I now have an appointment to see a psychiatrist, so maybe I’ll actually get to try some meds. Woot! I’m excited to experiment with my brain. And I’ll meet the psychologist again next week; she seems interested in talking about my behavior and attitudes and I’m hoping to discuss with her the balance between pushing myself to achieve and not pushing myself so hard as to destroy my self-esteem and create a lot of stress. In any case I think none of this is going to hurt me, and there’s some chance it might help.

Meanwhile, girls are still confusing. Let’s consider Situation WTF. Four girls are involved in Situation WTF. I’ll refer to them as A, B, C and D. Girl A lives far away from me. I only know her via the internet. A couple of years ago in my “internet girlfriend” phase, I talked to her a lot and we considered ourselves to be lovers. Then she started acting crazy and I cut off all contact with her, and after a long time we talked again and she sort of convinced me to talk to her again. She really did love me, in a way I never imagined before. I think she understands love in a way I can’t, and especially since we started talking again she has helped me understand what’s important in a relationship. However I am still averse to long-distance relationships, especially ones that didn’t originate “naturally”, and I feel that I don’t know her very well as I still have never met her.

Girl B is a fellow student. She is married. She is also a wonderful person and no matter how much I try to stop thinking about her “that way”, I can’t. It doesn’t help that we’re friends and she likes to talk to me and play cards with me.

Girl C is a fellow student also. I asked her out some time ago and she said no (actually twice, a year apart), and subsequently reaffirmed her lack of interest. So I finally convinced myself that we were just friends (like I wish I could with Girl B). Then Girl C decided to admit that she actually is interested in dating me! So, what am I supposed to do then? I don’t know why I don’t feel romantically about her anymore, but I just don’t. And it sucks because she’s a great friend and I don’t even know why I don’t want to be her lover, let alone explain to her.

Girl D is also a fellow student. She likes to flirt with me and I have been flirting back. I really have no idea what she intends. She often talks about her numerous boyfriends and claims to have a boyfriend in France right now. So, I have the impression that she’s just playing a game with me. Even if not, I don’t really know if I would want to be in a relationship with her. She’s definitely smart and interesting and she’s also kind of cute, but she’s not very nice. The main reason I like Girl B so much is that she’s so nice.

So yeah, this is the WTF situation. Girl A and Girl C both have serious psychological problems and also like me. I don’t like either of them back. I like Girl B but she’s married. The situation with Girl D is unclear. And I still complain that I can’t get girls. Of course, it’s probably true in the sense that I could not go out and find a girl at a bar or club and get her to be interested in me. So far, girls have only expressed romantic interest in me after I have spent enough time talking to them about their fucked up problems. But I don’t want to have a relationship in which the romance is based on my listening to the girl’s problems. Seriously. Why can’t I have a “normal” relationship? But I don’t know what “normal” is. I don’t know what I want from a relationship. Maybe what I can give is being a good listener and being helpful and generous and kind. That’s the only thing I’m good at anyway. And that’s not a very sexy set of attributes. But if I manage to know a girl for long enough then sometimes she notices this and some girls actually like that. And then if there is to be a relationship I have to have a reason also. Why do girls like me for what I do? I make them feel better when they are feeling bad I guess. How do I know if a girl does that for me? Girl B does that for me. Maybe that’s why I like her. Am I not giving the other girls the opportunity? I definitely gave Girl A the opportunity and she doesn’t. I don’t feel like Girl C would either. And for Girl D, one of the reasons that our relationship is confusing to me is that it isn’t really like that. We don’t talk about serious things. We don’t even really do much together. We just flirt. So that’s why I suspect it’s really just a game anyway. But I mean, she’s cute, so if I had a chance to make out with her I probably would do it.

Well this is stupid. I just wrote a ton of words and it’s mostly weird rambling. I think the problem is really with me. I don’t understand my own emotions. I have a hard time recognizing what emotion I’m even feeling, or when I am feeling emotional. I wonder if this is connected to my other psychological problems, and to what extent this stuff is physiological. I mean, what if it’s really just that I don’t produce enough serotonin? To what extent is that affected by my conscious choice of thoughts? When I tell myself “it sucked that you didn’t do any work today, you lazy ass, you need to work harder tomorrow to make up for it,” does that actually put downward pressure on the amount of serotonin in my brain? It seems odd, but possible. How do I continue to motivate myself to do all of my work without thinking negative things like that? Effective motivation is a combination of positive and negative reinforcement. Maybe I should create a structured system of rewards and punishments so I can better adjust the balance between positive and negative feedback…

So, yeah, back to relationships. I feel lonely all the time. I want to talk to Girl B more but I don’t want to treat her like a girlfriend when she isn’t. I hate to put all of my problems on her anyway. Basically, I don’t like talking to my friends about my problems because (a) I feel uncomfortable if they know about my weakness and (b) (the more significant one, often) I don’t want to be a burden to them, especially since I know how busy they are. And I know some of my friends do not like discussing “serious” topics whatsoever, and would feel very uncomfortable if I brought up this kind of stuff with them. Hopefully the psychologist will be someone for me to talk to.

I really just don’t understand why I can’t be happier. Why is it hard to be happy? Why is it hard for me to influence my emotions? I don’t know. I’m going to sleep. I have a lot of studying to do tomorrow. This week has sucked.