Let me put it this way: nobody skipped classes when the teachers knew how to actually explain and teach and didn’t just shovel decontextualised information down our gullets for us to rote and then regurgitate on paper. Yes, we’ve had plenty of Trumps…

Edit: as for your last addition, yep. The context was not the issue, the issue is that I forgot that not everyone went through the Romanian educational system.

First thing which popped into my mind. That kind of experience taught me that sometimes solidarity is more important than anything else.

Thank you for trying with me, honestly. Feels as though they’ve already won, but I don’t have it in me to end it, so to speak. At least, not from what I’ve seen so far.

I have no idea what I’ll do, and I’m so tired of spite…

Anyway, hope you’ll have better days than mine, thank you once again!

Y’know, I think I may actually be done with everything. I’ve been trying to find a place for myself for over thirty years, almost since the moment I was born, and nothing I’ve ever done has ever been enough for the people around me.

This is absolutely no different, just that I’ve lost any patience and energy I still had to go through this shit. In fact, I’ve moved cities to try to start fresh, yet all that’s happened is that I’ve had to detach myself from my best friend because he’s settling into being a racist and a transphobe.

I am tired and I can’t get any rest anymore. I go to sleep exhausted, I wake up exhausted, and trudge through this shit exhausted. I just can’t do it anymore. I think I simply don’t have the mental fortitude to deal with this shit anymore, to try to build something only to have someone else come into my life and criticise or destroy it. I’m done. I’ll just wait for the end.

I’m exhausted. At this point, the best I can do is stay out of the way.

Imperfect as it may be, I still want to try to at least not be too much of a bother for others… Don’t think I’m beating myself up about it, I just see it for what it is and am planning around my imperfections.

As for said belief, the one thing which is certain is that people can react in unpredictable ways, I’m just preparing contingencies. I’ve had people blow up in my face for much less and people I’ve wronged severely but didn’t much care.

And, believe me, it’s not an obsession. I’m well past that age, I’ve been around for three of her relationships so far, that’s not an issue. I’m generally not a jealous person and have accepted the situation as-is. As long as she’s happy, I’m happy. If not, I’m there for her. That’s all there is to it. She already knows I’ve had at least a thing for her, thought it fair for her to know where I stand so she can react however she’d see fit. This happened a considerable amount of time before the sex bit, too. We just kept on keeping on.

Edit: to add, I’m not holding out hope, or anything. I’m minding my own path as she does hers. If we can occasionally meet up and walk together for a bit, that’s good enough.

I’m ad-libbing my ass off at this point, there is no script. There is just myself and the knowledge that I have no place in the world as it is now, nor do I want a place in this circus of hatred and fear.

Thank you for your reply, and, to tell you the truth, that’s exactly what landed me here.

I’ve genuinely been working on myself for over a decade now. I’ve explored the darkest depths of my mind, scaled the peaks of any hint of ambition I could find in me, and I have the answer to the question of “who am I.” I know it’s hard to believe, but I really am there. I know my values, I know my principles, I know what I want and what I don’t want. For some reason, nobody seems to want to accept this about me, but it is what it is. I just stopped responding when faced with it. Whatever, not the point.

The point is exactly as I’ve said, I’ve become so concrete in my own perception of myself, so clearly defined as Me to myself, that I’ve come to understand that I have nothing to want from the world as I’ve come to know it, as it has presented itself to me thus far. I am filled with hate as a response to the hate permeating the world nowadays - I hate the hate, and the bigger the hate, the stronger my hate toward it. I am filled with anger because it is a response to the profound, the abhorrent injustice which has (yet fucking again!) reached critical mass across this whole rock.

And, yes, I don’t have any hope for things anymore. I don’t see us changing course any time soon (or, at least, not in however many years I have left) enough for me to want to dig my roots into things. It feels like every other time when I’ve tried to have unjustifiable amounts of patience with people who only wanted to spread their shit around, hoping that one day maybe they’ll see that I love them and that there is no need to stab me preemptively, or to try to control me, or simply to take their frustrations out on me.

I don’t want to be Sisyphus and just smile at the pointlessness. Hell, that’s a dumb comparison in my opinion, as Sisyphus’s rock deal absolutely had a point: it was punishment from the gods, the point in it was to make Sisyphus suffer. And I’m sick and tired of suffering at the hands of this bullshit… I’m sick and tired of seeing everyone else suffer, too. I can feel the pain of the world and it makes me angry. And I’m tired. And I’m done.

Did and done with it. I worked so much on myself only to have reached a point where I no longer fit in.

Edit: and, honestly, I don’t think I want to anymore. What’s the point of fixing up the place when everyone’ll just drag their mud all over it once the doors are open, y’know?

Edit 2: to add, I’m just repeating myself at this point. Meditation works because there’s no concrete thought to be had at this point, it’s just angry screaming. Journaling feels like copy/pasting yesterday’s entry, over and over and over again. And my trains of thought have all reached the depot.

There’s always that one person who just wants to ruin it for everyone else. Reminds me of some people I knew back in high-school, that kind of person who, when the entire class convenes to skip classes together, insists on staying behind to lick some teacher boots.

We can lick the paint!

We’re just ants on someone else’s Monopoly board…

Oh, I didn’t mean the content, I meant the purpose of it. In my experience, it wasn’t just about testing the interviewees, it implies having to ‘sell’ the company as well, to give the interviewees reasons to want to be hired. That’s the bit which generated the guilt.

Having to hold interviews was the worst part of the job, by far… Brings about a certain kind of guilt, to sit there and try to sell battery acid as ice-cold lemonade.

Well, to be fair, the whole thing has become a sick joke, although nobody’s laughing anymore…

The freest speech of all!

If this joke emitted radiation, it would be measured in kiloDads per second.

Well, now it’s the GTA Online of social media - a lawless expanse full of hateful middle-aged children who often cheat and pay to get ahead.

Agreed, and it wasn’t that type of situation, it was as I’ve described, they were trying to “teach me a lesson,” as it were.

To be clear, I don’t push decisions on my peers every time, there simply are times when I have no preference. Plus, like… I was at theirs, we were chatting, I didn’t feel the need to change the activity, they, instead, tried to force me to do so, after patiently explaining to them that I was fine with things as they were. After which the yelling started.

There’s a difference between being easy-going and being a damp towel…

Edit: plus, in all honesty, what you’re describing sounds more like a dynamic mismatch, in which case the best direction (imho) is reevaluating and adjusting expectations accordingly. People can be however they want to be, and it’s up to us to decide whether or not we want to accept and continue interactions.

That’s when you slap the “one per date” card on the table;)