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I Like My Hood Better

Hey friends and fiends.

It may be the best or nicest statement, and definitely is not productive to my current situation, but I am realizing that (for now) its true:

I like my hood better.

I recently made the big move out of my family’s home and into my own apartment in the city, along with my roommate with Childhood Friend.

It’s been something that he and I have been talking about for forever, and very intensely trying to plan when we both graduated college, and has finally come to fruition. It’s been terrifying and exciting, and it’s only our 2nd week in the apartment, so we are obviously still getting used to it.

He works in the city so his commute to work is non-existent, whereas I still work in our home town so my drive has doubled (but still, 20-30mins doesn’t bother me much).

Because I work in our hometown, I have more of an excuse to still do some driving around there— and I have to say, I just feel so much more comfortable driving there than in the city. Which I know is a statement without much weight, because again, it’s only our 2nd week.

It’s just that I have such a love/hate relationship with driving, and having to drive through congested streets with lots of lights, odd intersections and impatient & speeding drivers is a lot for me to deal with and process when trying to get used to a new area, or even just trying to get some fucking food after work so I can go home and relax for a second.

I took a half day from work today and did some errands around my hometown and it was so nice to be a belt o drive down familiar roads, where I don’t have to question whether I’m in the right lane, or anything.

I hope I get more comfortable in the city soon.

It really is a pretty area, it’s just so much to process for me.

Hope everything is goin’ well for you out there, whether you’ve had a big change recently or just killing it on your familiar roads.

Always Optimistic

Living My Daymare

Sitting in my car, watching the minutes tick closer to when I need to actually go into work, as I listen to sad songs about girls and break-ups when my last relationship was close to a year ago.

Realizing a year can go by in the span of week and feel yesterday. Faster than I’ve ever noticed it go by, and I have a feeling it’ll only go faster.

Wanting to write a novel more, but can only stumble over words with these last 4 minutes left.

I work at a place that feels like it is infecting my heart and lungs with tar from all the hate and dysfunction.

It’s actually making me more cynical, which is bad because I was already pretty cynical.

Anyway, time to clock in.

Glad I still have my log in. Nice to be back.

I’m having a really fucking hard time right now.

Not a necessary or flattering thing to exclaim, but oops here I am

I have just been sitting for the past hour or so, pacing inside my head, feeling the pit in my chest grow.

Being alone sucks. Feeling lonely sucks. Feeling like you don’t know who to/ who you can talk to sucks.

Being a hopeless romantic & being hopelessly alone for a long time is a fucking fatal combination.

Sorry for the uninspired title. My usual M.O. would bring some more class. I considered making this a quote, but the formate didn’t fit right.

Despite my disposition, I feel it’s important to end with the usual

Dont stop fighting the tide, motherfuckers.

-Always[tryingtobe]Optimistic

[I Think] I Am Infatuated with Toxicity

It’s a slowly-developed awareness, born from situation & situation, relationship & relationship, heartbreak after heartache.

It’s a very recent joke too, with my friend, where I say that I ought to have him just choose the women I date because I seem utterly incapable of picking them myself. What’s scariest about it all is what just hit me tonight though.. the thought that I only ever get that butterflies, holding my breath, fuzzy-headed feeling with the types of people that either do me wrong or that inevitably will. I mean, that has got to be one of the worst Kryptonites ever.

I have no evidence to falsify my own findings, and it’s really kind of putting me down.. G was so long ago, but I can faintly remember some serious daddy-issues-esque intensity in the attachment department. And there was of course the ending: finding her lip locked with another guy while we were supposed to just be on a “break.” I learned what that meant the hard way.

H wasn’t a huge staple, but I guess that kind of fits into the narrative of this post, huh. It did end mutually, out of loss of interest. She later told me I was literally going to go to hell, for not believing that fuckin birds were going to fall out of the sky just because the Bible said so. Cracked me up.

C was a big one. Manipulative and cutting. Took me for a damn ride. Had a shouting match or two with my dad, which was horrific. She hated rules in general.

After a several year dry spell, I found K. She, for a year, could never separate me from her ex, and that made her scared of me and would lie and act odd with me —which, I still to this day say that he deserves to be behind bars or traced in chalk. I don’t pray, but if I did, I’d pray he doesn’t run into me one day. I’d hate to have to go to jail.

Besides the point though; I always find myself in sticky situations that I eventually get infatuated with, making them only stickier. This is becoming kind of a pronounced flaw in me, and it’s really scaring me.

I love Love. I love being able to woo someone, and to be able to hold them close and feel comfortable with them. But I don’t seem to do it right, because it’s always with someone who also has some sort of way to stress me the fuck out or piss me the fuck off. And I won’t ever realize it or get fed up with it until it’s been a year (as my last to Xs will show).

There’s a new one, that I nearly daily debate in my head whether she is just another one of my own traps. She makes my heart flutter, and when she and I were very briefly actually “talking” (it’s a long story), she was in my head, on repeat. All I could think about was just holding her.

But (of course there is a but) she is suuuuper flippant and will suck out of a conversation on a dime. I am pretty sure this kind of behavior comes from doubting her self-worth, but all it does is push herself away from me.

It’s familiar.

She also is very blunt, which I actually respect, but I feel it cut conversations down sometimes like a machete through tall brush.

Familiar.

I think you can see the dilemma..

Despite my ability to list the pros and cons, anytime I think I have it figured out, I catch myself slip when I’m around her.

The icing on the cake (which is also sort of Red Flag Numero Uno) is that whenever I would show interest, she was like a bank safe. Locked up tight. Would barely budge.

But when I would concede defeat and say we should be friends, she is all of the sudden so interested in me. Then I’d be in, and she wouldn’t want to date, so again I politely would back out. Again, she is all in.

Now, she and I are basically supposed to be friends now, and we don’t text a lot. But when we do, it’s usually her randomly texting me about something, and the conversation goes on, and several times now she will bring up when we would talk. Talk Talk. And I would just try to be as neutral as possible. Then, many times something about the conversation or how I text (we are universes apart as far as structure and function... I don’t understand it) she would just be like “bye forever” and end it.

I just... I don’t ever know what I’m doing.

I don’t know what to do.

I wonder if writing this out will help me.

I wonder if writing this out will change anything.

I hope it does.

Keep fighting for the right answer. It’s out there somewhere.

-Always Optimistic

Me rn

The Frayed Wires of Head & Heart

Hey Strangers.

As per usual, I forget where I left off, but let’s hit some key points:

And from there I’ve just been more or less, a mess. It seriously feels like I have sparking wires sticking out of my head.

It’s dumb, but I feel almost affection-deficient or something. I’ve been trying to decide and separate how much of this feeling is contributed from possibly being impatient [for a relationship that doesn’t suck] and how much is coming from just being depressive or sad.

I fight really hard to stay on a straight line, and not waver to the closest possible person. I know it’s not something I would want for the long run, and it’s not actually beneficial, but I feel like some days I feel like ripe shit and nothing would make me happier than to expend all my energy wooing a girl.

If that isn’t the dumbest Hopeless Romantic shit you’ve ever heard, I don’t know what could top it.

I’m entering my last semester in college, and I have a small growing fear that I will just be alone, or possibly worse, I’m cursed to only find and date toxic women.

In any case, it’s kind of terrifying and I feel like I have static in my head.

It also probably doesn’t help that I’ve been home for a week now, which is really hard for me because I don’t feel that I fit in this Paper House thy live in whatsoever. I’m certain I’ve written about that. The past couple days I have had a consistently lingering headache throughout the day as I run around with them.

I don’t know what to do for myself..

I plan on staying on campus after I go for New Years Eve, but I don’t know how to make myself feel better.

Oh well..

Stay strong people. Don’t let shit get you down— it always gets better.

-Always Optimistic

Me

And Oh Yeah, It's Fucking Back

So, this is a couple weeks off, but I figured I would catalog this while I'm in the mood to post shit: Can't remember if I've talked about this (how many times have I said that at the beginning of a post) but way back when I was littler, I would have a problem with my brain running through all possible bad outcomes for a certain situation, i.e. Driving at night= every single possible cause of a little jerk of the wheel to send us tumbling. And more often than not, one would stand out and replay and the more I wanted to get away from it, the more stuck on it I'd get. Because it's like pointing at something big and scary and yelling "I want to get away from THAT!" Only to make the whole situation that much worse. So, a couple years ago I had gotten to a point where I was able to suppress or ignore it to where it was basically not a problem anymore. But, most recently.. It's come back, for some reason. And it's really fucking irritating. It's like living with demons. I don't understand why my overactive brain has to haunt me like this, but it doesn't seem to get tired of it. I just continue to devolve as a person-- at least, that's how it feels. Stay sane, people. Keep breathing. -Always Optimistic

Witty Quips Quickly Passing By

On the drive back from picking my brother up from a friend's, with my mom at the wheel, we something hard to comprehend: A small, slightly nasty-looking house with a small driveway and a car parked almost to the edge of street. In the space between the front of the car and the house itself, a family sat at what appeared to be some lawn furniture make into a dining table. Lawn chairs, a table with a whole in the center for an umbrella or whatever-- you get the picture. The characters in the chairs become interesting still, while not being entirely surprising when you take into account the oddities already listed. Besides a rough-looking grandma in (while only caught at a glance) what was surely one of those nasty pink jumpsuits, there was a shirtless dad figure with an equally shirtless child in his arms, and he was leaning toward the table with his cigarette nearly dropping ash onto his plate, which caused me to say aloud: "Let's all play the game, Entrée or Ashtray" I got a good laugh out of my mom before my very dry-humor-state-of-mind realized how funny it really was. I guess I can still come up with gems when I'm stressed and exhausted to near insanity. Find the funny bits in the bullshit, -Always Optimistic

The Kidd & the Fully Fucked Friday

Hey Strangers. Just checkin' in with a chip on my shoulder, as per usual. I found out today that I can't get enough aid n' shit to go to the school I've been going to for this semester, so that's fuckin' awesome. Right when I spent all summer trying to figure out where I could even live and being moved around to different dorms and eventually being dropped into the most expensive (and of course the nicest) dorm on campus.. I had even bought into the idea of how fucking perfect it would be to live there, because I would actually have my own room and I just got this computer that is really nice and I'd be able to do my art n shit and do what the fuck ever, and all of the sudden--- oops. Fuck me, I guess. So now it sounds like I'm stuck in this house that doesn't even feel like my house, and sleep in a room that really even isn't mine and that the bed I lay my head on becomes a temporary storage space for bullshit on the daily. I don't have a space for myself, anywhere. Frank Ocean's new shit dropped at the right time, thank fucking god. Motherfucker been jukin' us too long. He better be quick with the second version, too. But anyway, yeah.. I'm alive. I've been really kickin' myself because I used to really go out of my way to take pictures and make them look nice and take pride in it, and I used to write and post a lot and really be involved in this site, and I used to doodle a lot and crank some stuff out, and I don't do any of that shit. I feel like I was better back then. I'm trying to get back to that. I used to want to post on here a lot, but I'd always stop myself eventually because you can image search with an image, and if I put my art on my actual social media, I'd basically out my identity. Which again, is fucking retarded that I take that so seriously. But the alias shit gives me that odd confidence to just breathe and be the me the think I am, rather than the one I feel like people expect out of me. I dunno. Be chill, my peeps. Take it all in stride, and fuck all the bullshit. Keep it Solo (Frank Ocean makin' me feel some type of way) -Always Optimistic

Hello, My Name is TRO

Everyone: “hi TRO”

Ok, bad AA meeting joke, I know.. I have been continually unable to make myself revisit Tumblr or post on here, for whatever reason. You could say that my life has gotten better to where o don’t feel the need to post, but you’d be lying. And I don’t feel like my presence is/should be just an outlet to whine about stuff. It’s a certain level of thinking, and it just so happens that that level of thinking generally comes out when I get depressive. But my life isn’t all bad, by any stretch of the imagination (there’s that Optimist in The Reluctant Optimist)

I actually have a girlfriend now, for the first time in 3 years, so that’s cool. And she’s is one of the nicest people I’ve had the pleasure to be around, so that’s definitely a plus.

I’m still going to school, so that’s a thing.

I’m 21 now, which I think I may have posted about.

And I’m still in this Paper House, which I’m almost positive I posted about.

I’ve been painting school halls and rooms n’ shit for the school district this summer, so that’s been interesting. But one of the fucking retards I work with hit my driver side door and mirror with the passenger door, so now I have a dent in my very nice Cadillac that my grandfather gave to me before he passed. It took every atom in my body not to kill this kid with my words– it was strange, because I felt the power or ability to wield guilt like a sword. I feel that’s some supervillian’s ability: infect someone with all the guilt in their life, paralyzingly them or something. It was kind of a scary feeling, but I wasn’t really able to do that in the situation because the other two co-workers (the three of them are all 19) were right there, and in friendly with them so I didn’t feel like it would be okay or cool or appropriate to tear this guy a new asshole in front of them. Plus, that was my first “car accident” so I was totally thrown off as far as what to do. I reacted surprised and showed I was frustrated and couldn’t believe what just happened, but kind of brushed it off since I saw I couldn’t do anything about it right then. Apparently there’s this whole side of it that can get very legal and technical because of work n’ shit, which is fucking fantastic for an overactive brain like mine. So, yay.

–Oh, also: [don’t remember if I’ve talked about this before because I’m awful at being consistent, but] I used to have this thing where, when I’m anxious about something or just in general, by brain will begin to analyze and formulate every possible bad scenario for a particular situation and they’ll all just shoot through my head unrelentingly. It was a pretty big problem for several years when I was much younger, but I got to a point where I could tuck it back in my brain and I wouldn’t have to deal with it.. Well, recently it’s somehow come back up and really effecting me. Like, there was a moment where I started doing it again, but I could shake it, or it was happening but I wasn’t emotionally effected or bogged down by it, but now it’s pretty significant.. So I’m not sure how to tuck it away again.

I fee like I’m devolving.

–Speaking of evolution, I have been playing a shit-ton of Pokemon Go and am lvl20. This game was made for 20-somethings and older like me, who played the games and watched the show and had the cards as a kid. Plus, it has had a BEAUTIFUL effect on society.

Yes, people have been wrecking and been mugged and all kinds of shit, but that’s bad and stupid people being bad and stupid. That’ll happen is McDonald’s announces 100 free boxes of McRibs available for 24hours. Motherfuckers would kill and steal for that.

But Pokemon Go, especially in my personal experience, has made -hopefully a lasting- positive change in society. Although people are walking around staring at their phones maybe now more than ever, they are also (again, hopefully) being more aware of their surroundings, and talking to strangers and laughing and having fun and walking MILES for a damn video game! Lol It’s fantastic. I’ve loved the interactions I’ve had. I even went into a Starbucks with some friends and the guy who was the barista was talking about Pokemon Go (which he called PoGo, which I guess is the trendy way of saying it) and they had drinks to represent the three teams, and as we were talking to him about the game I said I needed to get a water at some point, and he says “I’ll do you one better” and makes us free Team Valor drinks! Lol [ #TeamValor #TeamHarmony ] “Since you guys have entertained me, here are some drinks” is what he said as he handed them to us.

I have also had random fragmented conversations with strangers just walking around, and it’s been fantastic.

I’m not sure how this went from kind of sappy and whiny to being almost inspirational lol But this has been my life since I dropped off of here.

For fear of this post already being waaaay too fucking long and random for the average reader, I will conclude this by saying I wish you all the best. Keep looking for the good, and what makes you smile. Sometimes the best things take some time to get to, and that’s not a bad thing. Maybe hopefully I can be more consistent in my posting? Can’t make promises.

Enjoy yourselves out there

-Reluctantly Optimistic

So Lost, Yet So Far

"I've been workin' like I've never been I struggle every day but I just can't let the devil in And if I knew back then what I know right now What I know right now I'd be better than I've ever been, better than I've ever been" This is the hook to Logic's song "Never Been". I am currently in one of my art classes (where I'm learning Adobe After Effects for the first time, and it's kinda cool and kind of the most frustrating thing ever) and I am listening to Logic, and that song comes on. For whatever reason, that hook at the end just clicked for me and I almost cried: It made me think about all that I've been through, and all the scars and baggage I lug around, and what I hold to be what makes me ME, and how I feel like I fight so hard to stay sane and happy and feel okay as much as possible... "Can't let the devil in..." I'm not even religious, like at all, but it hit me... "...if I knew back then what I know right now..." I thought about all the waaaaay deep shit I used to think about as a kid, and what I would tell my younger self.. I feel like I would hug him, for like a looonnngg time. A hug to apologize for all the things I've done in my life that he hasn't even done yet, and all the pain and frustration.. But I don't think I would tell him to do anything different. Only to stay strong when it's rough. What I've endured makes me the me that I am now. I don't know what I would be like if I hadn't done what I have done in my life. Oh well... Back to class. Forgive yourself. Smile in the mirror. -Always Optimistic

This American Life

Small Actions led to Big Decisions

I found this in my drafts from winter break.. Oops lol Since I was little, I've always been perplexed at the little lies and twists that my dad puts in stories that he tells. The more I overheard him doing it, that more I was confused. He speaks so strongly about not lying and being honest, but there are moments where he doesn't practice what he preaches. Which I suppose is every parent. It's just odd to sit and reflect on what has made me the way I am. When I was very young, I learned about the power of lies and I saw in myself the ability to really use it to my advantage. But I saw that telling the truth was better and more fair to the people around me. I'm not trying to paint myself on a high horse or anything-- I've lied just like any other person. But I'd like to think that I hold myself to be more honest than not. Which is probably why I have a tendency to overshare. I don't really know what the point of this was going to be. I just feel like I ought to document whenever I notice something like this, as I am hopelessly lost in my search for who I am and how to cope with things. Yay. I've been on winter break from school for that past couple days, and I haven't been scheduled to work either, so my days have been pretty chill. It's been pretty nice. Look for the calm, and hold onto it. -Always Optimistic