18 Comments

heck yeah, QC. love to see you putting something out into the world and this is a heck of a first post. I'm looking forward to whatever you write next ❤️

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Beautiful. Reading this I feel seen.. and I feel I can see myself (who I am and who I was). I love the concision, the flourishes, the bite, and the care in your writing.

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this is all so delightfully expressed that i almost reflexively want to flinch away and stop reading because it resonates so intimately with me that it feels like a stranger is touching me gently directly on the butthole and it feels weird and parasocial and one-sided to receive and not give, to see and not be seen so now i’m a weird little comment on the internet talking about my anus to a stranger Very cool many apologies

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this made me laugh out loud, thank you! i love knowing my writing can have this kind of effect on people 🙏 hope you are having a nice holiday season stranger

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"love is where we belong":

1. wherever it is that we experience belonging, that is love

2. love is a place & we belong there

3. .....maybe something about how all of us need to belong somewhere for it to truly be worthy of the name "love"?

I'm curious how you'd point at the third one

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the second one you've written down itself has two meanings; "we belong there" as in "that's where we're supposed to be" and also "we belong there" as in "that's where we experience belonging"; so the converse of the first one, i guess. you could quibble that it's basically the same as the first one but they feel distinct to me!

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ahh yeah they're different:

1. {experience belonging} => {in love}

2a. we are supposed to be in the place called love

2b. {in love} => {experience belonging}

(where 2a & 2b are your breakdown)

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I don't know why I smiled and my heart filled with compassion after reading this.

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hello, thank you for writing this. it made me extremely sad.

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you're welcome

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How do I stop doing part 4 without going to rat/post-rat summer camp?

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idk man i think it's gonna have to be different for everyone! anyone you know throwing parties? you the type of person who throws parties? any events happening anywhere at all coming up you might be excited about going to?

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Probably (to the last question)? But the only two people I know are either 200 miles away or 2,000 miles away and also I bet I can keep rationalizing up reasons any idea is a bad one as long as we can come up with ideas.

Knowing this does not seem to help, either. Honestly I feel like I've had a version of my current issues to greater or lesser degrees maybe... my whole life? Like, I remember being 14-16, reading HPMOR as it came out, hero-worshipping EY, the whole deal, and I felt like I had a lot of the same problems around procrastination, ugh fields, motivation, etc. as I do now. Been toying with finding a therapist but I have no idea what to look for or expect.

Truthfully I've just been lurking in tpot a lot recently and the root comment was halfway a shitpost; didn't necessarily expect constructive advice.

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jeez. most of the people i know who read HPMoR that young seem to have had a weird experience with it one way or another, sorry to hear that. therapist could work, you could also ask around on twitter about coaching, there are some really good coaches around

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Thanks for writing this. It takes real courage to share our vulnerabilities.

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Great stuff

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I seem to see myself in your writing. I never look at people when talking. In the past months, the only things in my life are reading papers and watching videos and porns. When I was 17, I spent almost the whole year playing a mobile game. Every day what I did was only eating, sleeping and playing games.

Last year I started eating antidepressants. They do help me. Maybe they could also help you.

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Phenomenal writing, incredibly unhelpful ;)

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