A month ago, I made a post looking for friends on this subreddit. Since then, I have spent quite a bit of time contemplating how I want to write a follow-up post. The human experience is complex, and honestly I could write a 100+ page narrative on just my interactions with people from this subreddit alone over the past month.
I will not write a 100+ page narrative here. Instead, I want to express my gratitude. I’m sure every single one of you reading this has said/done bad or even horrible things at one time or another, as have I, but since I reached out a month ago, I have been met with a lot of vulnerability and camaraderie. Every person that I’m still talking to has been making consistent effort to be transparent, share their emotions, and respect me as an equal. I’ve met up with multiple people from this subreddit in real life, some of them on an ongoing basis, and things are going well. At first we had deep conversations involving a lot of story-telling, often spanning hours. Now that we have established trust, we have moved on to finding fun activities with bits of “real talk” still peppered in as necessary. Any activity is fine, as long as it’s not causing harm, and I am doing it with them.
I also appreciate the haters. My main defense mechanism when I’m feeling insecure is to be an arrogant, condescending prick. “Of course they don’t like me, they’re too stupid to see what I see.” That attitude has never won me any friends. However, in my previous post, where I made an effort to be open/honest/vulnerable and not talk down to anyone, I still got downvoted into the ground. It stung because I am an extremely sensitive person and I was feeling more than a little exposed/insecure at the time. It’s trivial for people to downvote me on Reddit. It’s harder for them to write a comment criticizing me, because that gives me an opening to understand them and pick them apart in return. It would be harder yet for them to criticize me in-person, especially around people who know them, because then it becomes even more clear if their criticism is well-intended or if they are being a hypocrite. Other people’s respect for them would be on the line, and therefore they would be forced to be on their best behavior. I think lack of accountability is the core reason the internet is toxic, not because people are becoming inherently “worse” or something. That’s why my Reddit username is my actual name: it pressures me to respect my audience and when I do so, I win the hearts of more people. Haters motivate me to write better because clearly I’m not communicating myself well enough if they don’t like me. On a somewhat related note, I want the people who gave me paragraphs of advice to know that their advice is infinitely less valuable to me than they are.
The majority of people who reached out to me from my earlier post were women. Some just gave me low-effort advice and talked down to me. Some were kind to me but had their own lives to return to. Some opened up honestly about why they hate men. In the end, I got what I wanted: more perspective on dating to calibrate my approach to obtaining a healthy relationship. I wouldn’t say I learned anything new so much as I got more trustworthy statistics than I can get from internet echo chambers. I also met one girl in particular who is extremely special to me. She is open, humble, communicates exceptionally well, and lifts me up when I’m down. I keep sullying her image in my mind with prejudices but she subverts my expectations every single time. She is my purpose right now, and I want to make her happy.
EDIT: I also want to have sex with the aforementioned girl, and there is nothing wrong with that. I have been forthcoming with her regarding me wanting a “relationship” with her, and we communicate a lot, but I have not said “I want to fuck you” to her face as I assume that much is implied when I tell her how much I’m into her, but perhaps I am lying to myself. I think I would very much appreciate being told “I want to fuck you” by a girl, so it seems likely that such an expression would be an ego boost for women as well. As far as this Reddit post goes, the entire point is for me to be completely honest and human in front of an audience. By omitting certain parts of myself because I’m embarrassed/ashamed of them (because of how people have treated me in the past), I am betraying myself and everyone who would’ve related to the things I omitted. Hence, I am sorry.
While I am expressing gratitude, I want to be careful not to alienate those of you who are feeling isolated, unwanted, or otherwise lost. Just yesterday, I was feeling like a kid again, like I had finally broken free of everything weighing me down and a wonderful future awaited. I smiled at the sky and welcomed the warm rain as it came crashing down. I enjoyed it while it lasted. But then the doubts, insecurities, fear, hatred, and finally despair slowly came crawling back in as the daylight ran out. An hour later, I held my head in my hands and sobbed. I cry because the only other option in those moments is anger and I don’t want to ruin the good things in my life anymore. Crying turns those miserable moments into opportunities to connect with other people on a deeper level, but only if I am willing to show them that side of myself, and only if they are willing to accept me. I am very fortunate in that regard. I want you to know that I will accept you even if no one else will. I know people sometimes say things like that lightly, only to break their promise when it’s finally tested, but I really mean it. I’ve had a lot of concerned/confused people urge me not to put my phone number on Reddit and meet up with random people from the internet, because they are worried I’ll get hurt by “bad” people. What they don’t understand is that we are all bad. I’ve spent the majority of my life watching, first in confusion and then in resentment, as everyone around me routinely hurt other people, animals (as in cruelty/neglect, not killing), the environment we depend on, and themselves, all while conforming to social norms and not raising any eyebrows or exhibiting any self-awareness or remorse. I convinced myself I was above it all for a long time, but in reality I was just an overzealous, hypocritical, vicious, and insecure human. I was also afraid that if accepted such a negative assessment of myself, I would use it as an excuse to stoop to everyone else’s level: “I’m human, not my fault I do bad things.” I am relieved to say that is not the case: I feel just as responsible for my own actions as I did before, and I am more willing to change them. If I can’t appreciate your circumstances and love you as an equal, that makes me a bad person, unworthy of your love.
Last but not least, I’d like to apologize to the handful of people who made themselves available to me but who I have not yet made the journey to meet. I have all (I hope?) of them in a checklist so I don’t forget. I’m sure they are perfectly fine without me—I just want to match their effort.
I hope you all find what you are looking for. Thank you for existing.