I was going to write a post here when I felt more hurt but then I just didn’t release it. Instead, I took my own advice about ambivalence, then decided it wasn’t worth responding in that state. Part of the motivation for posting would’ve been having a fairly good suspicion that the person it concerned would be reading it, but it didn’t actually seem like a good idea to continue the cycle of wanting to be seen by them. It became quite obviously not worth the ambivalence I would repeatedly create for myself. Unless something changed completely about the way we interact, there was no way that the emotional cycle would ever change. But, now that I’ve distanced myself a bit (and because it’s been a while since I’ve posted), here’s what I was going to post with some other background that I journaled about and some edits for clarity’s sake.
Here I was seeing what I would even write if I were to add a short update to that situation:
Update concerning the Lovely Longing situation:
She did message me back and told me that she didn’t really know how to respond before and that she had bad experiences with a guy online and doesn’t want to privately message dudes anymore, but she’s fine with responding to comments and such.
(My guess is she wanted to reassure me that I hadn’t done too much and scared her away like I thought I might’ve and I appreciated that and things proceeded as they did before.)
I still adore her and feel conflicted about continuing to interact with her with my feelings being this way. Mostly, this is because when we interact there’s part of me that still wishes that fact could change or that there’s a chance that any of these feelings could be mutual. But there’s no sign of that, really, at least not anything that I could reasonably interpret as romantic interest.
(And there are occasionally things that feel like I could unreasonably interpret but I dismiss them because they feel like stretches and hopium lol)
I strongly suspect that she’s reading this blog and that was partially what motivated her to respond (aside from, after not commenting for a while, my showing concern for her over a video title of hers that ended up being a fictional, ASMR-type POV title). I figure that view spike is either her or someone I recently became mutuals with on Twitter because my Substack views increased by quite a bit and it would say that a single user was the majority of the viewership.
(It’s also of note that during my silent period I stopped commenting and liking on any platform that would show my likes to her. I wanted to stop the “being noticed” cycle, so this meant I would like basically every video of hers on Youtube as I did before but not like or comment on anything that gave her a “me” notification on Instagram or Quora.)
If it is her reading stuff here, maybe it’s just out of curiosity. Maybe it’s because it’s rare that you see anyone talking about you while you’re not present or are unlikely to witness what they say, so you get a clearer, more candid picture of how you’re affecting them and how you’re perceived by them.
I don’t feel like it would be entirely honest of me to pretend as though I don’t suspect this because I would be coming from a place where I’m essentially, hypothetically, speaking directly to her about her if I write about her here and she might be assuming that I’m writing without this suspicion at all. Either way, I would rather have that be transparent just in case.
Still, I guess I also like the idea that I can write something she might see and there’s no pressure on her, implicitly, to respond in some way. And, if I write about her here, it can serve that purpose, if nothing else.
I did not end up doing much of the above but I was still commenting on her posts throughout this time and there were just polite interactions similar to before, so it seemed fine. Things proceeded like usual. She ended up following me on Instagram I guess just to send that DM (she still never interacts with any of my posts lol). For some reason, after I followed her on here, she also followed me and then unfollowed maybe on the same day. My assumption there was that she didn’t want me to know how much she can see, or has seen, of these posts because the views still increased.
I noticed my Big Five post got 30+ views (more than my usual 1-15 or less, so, funnily, my short, sort of throwaway Big Five post that I promoted nowhere at all is one of my most viewed now). I assumed those views were almost entirely her and that assumption was given a bit more weight when she decided to post her own Big Five results on here, knowing I followed her, and we had another fine interaction about that topic.
It wasn’t until I left a more effusively enthusiastic comment on one of her older videos that she stopped responding to comments completely. And, shortly after, unfollowed on Instagram. I really didn’t know what to make of that (other than maybe “need more distance from you” or “just unfollowing accounts I’m not gonna look at, really”) but it hurt. Here’s that bit from the journal and the other post I would’ve released. What’s apparent to me reading both now is just how tightly my attention had contracted around this person and the little hopes that were repeatedly rising and crashing because of it.
(Edit after posting: Figured I should include this first bit of journaling to show more of how the loop goes.)
First Bit:
Well what’s actually happening right now?
I have romantic feelings toward this person. They don’t seem to have any for me.
She’s not interested in chatting privately with guys online. I am a guy online that would like to chat privately with her.
I have feelings toward her and feel charmed by her just being, but I have no clue whether we’re compatible or whether we would have any sort of real-time chemistry or could be good friends in the way that I think being good lovers requires.
I feel as though I’m pushing myself toward her in a way that hurts. Like my hope is hurting me.
And wow I just had a bunch of thoughts that are making me cry now
I want to read to her until she falls asleep next to me.
I want to care for her like a delicate flower even if she doesn’t need me to.
I want to make her life easier in ways she might not even notice.
I want to keep finding ways to make her smile.
I want to see what happens when we’re together, what we bring out of each other.
And I want this to be more than a fantasy in my head lol
I want to know her and not the brief glimpses that form my impression of her.
But, forgetting lovers, we’re not even friends lol and I feel as though interacting with her with the hope that we could be more isn’t in the spirit of respecting her desire to not be involved with guys online anymore or particularly good for moving on.
Second Bit:
I feel hurt. She unfollowed me again. This makes for the third time she’s followed, then unfollowed me. First on Quora, then on Substack, now on Instagram. But, oddly enough, I suspect that she’s been reading my posts here for months. I don’t normally get this much viewership on any single post like I have lately. I don’t know what to make of it. In fact, I don’t want to make anything of it. That’s just what’s happening. Right now, I just feel hurt. She’s been ignoring my comments lately, too, so I just feel like something changed that I’m not privy to, but that I do feel affected by. So I’m in a place where I don’t know if I’m bothering her or if one of my posts bothered her and she decided not to respond anymore. I just have no clue, really, and this doesn’t really seem like something I should be concerning myself with in the first place. More importantly, the reason this hurts is because I’m mentally looking for signs that I’m closer or further away from her in some emotional sense. I have unrequited feelings toward her and it’s not serving me well to keep interacting with her with this being our dynamic. There’s no sign at all that it has any chance of changing and it wouldn’t make sense to wait around and see if it will. Really I have to take my feelings a bit more seriously and actually act on them.
The Post I Didn’t Post:
Hearing the Searing
It feels like I’ve been searing my heart in a skillet with my ambivalence toward someone, and it’s likely best for me drop it completely. Basically, I should take my own advice about ambivalence not being good enough.
It’s not just general ambivalence that I’m concerned with, though. What also matters is the character of the ambivalence. If my ambivalence is a product of uncertainty about whether I’ll experience embarrassment, failure, or fear, it’s usually worth overcoming by testing the waters.
If my ambivalence is an intuition telling me I’m engaging in, or recreating, a situation I’ll only ever be half-hearted about if it remains the same (and it likely will), then it’s preferable for that cycle to end somehow, whether that’s through removing myself from it or changing how I engage with it. Telling the difference is what repetition, and the pain of it, helps with when the way forward isn’t as clear.
The pain illuminates where I was hoping for something to be different or where I had desires that were never going to be fulfilled. It can eventually cut through any delusion that I could or would prefer to persist in those patterns. It makes it easier to hear and smell that oil sizzling, that flesh burning, charring. And, once both sides of the heart are seared enough, it really is best to turn that stovetop off, let its heat die.
(And, right now, what this means is that, when I notice I’m moving toward sitting around ruminating about this, I instead just chill with my brother and do something largely unrelated to, or more active than, writing/journaling lol)