2018 in review

I have been well- this blog is not defunct. I am busy working on my personal projects, and haven’t written anything mental health related in a long time. If anyone has any ideas on what to write next, you can contact me at andrewyuen935@gmail.com

I spent my year wondering where I went wrong with other people- it seemed like the connections I had with friends seemed so tenuous. I often felt the sense of being left behind and being taken for granted. Obligations towards one another, as friends, are tenuous things- I felt that other people had no place for me in their lives.

I was ghosted in succession by two people that I thought I was close to, an event that has made me reevaluate the way I look at relationships. It made me keenly aware of how transactional things are- I was a thing that outlived it’s purpose, and now that I had no place in the lives of certain people, it felt like my feelings didn’t matter anymore.

For a long time it left me reeling and it felt unbearable to look inward, to constantly replay if there was something else I could have done. I didn’t want to ruminate on this too deeply, and I learnt again, as I have, the value of long periods of solitude.

With it came a certain sense of guilt that I wasn’t appreciating my own life, my family or the many privileges that I have that many people do not posses. I have the opportunity to pursue my own projects, something that not many of us get to do.

Of course, all this is difficult to write about. For me, the nature of this blog is that it isn’t just a personal update of my life and my problems, I come into writing with the objective of providing some coda or some strategy that I have learnt that others can apply, or perhaps even a sense of shared solitude that someone who has similar problems might feel from reading the things here.

I will admit that there’s a hidden sense of vindictiveness too in thinking about the nature of these friendships. I spent a lot of time looking at social media, resenting those who I felt have taken my friendship for granted, and I felt increasingly angry, even disgusted. (I don’t think I have to tell you how insincere social media is) There are many things, some of which are hateful in nature that I wish to say which I feel are at odds with what I want this blog to be.

So, what is the takeaway then from all of this? I don’t know. I really don’t. I think this post, besides informing you that this blog is still alive, is ultimately for me cathartic and necessary. I would like to think that there is forgiveness in my heart for those I feel vindictive about, but even then the cynical truth, perhaps, is that those people aren’t asking for forgiveness in the first place. Perhaps if there is something that I have learnt, in my time of solitude, is that there is much to be grateful for: family, music, good food- all things that not everyone has had. And in my time of healing, there have been tiny little human surprises- new friendships, a sense that I’m not completely doomed to having tenuous relationships that are cyclical in nature. There is both much to look at and much to cherish, and beyond that, an uncertainty that day by day, appears much less hostile.

A.