I won't lie, it does get frustrating that even after a nice relaxing day I end up a little sad and kind of unable to fall asleep due to reasons.

Part of me thinks I should get back into something competitive, but at the same time I don't know if my psyche can handle losing enough to get to a level where I can be competitive.  I've always been the type who refused to do a lot of things unless I was good at them.  Which is why I never played a lot of video games in front of people.  RPGs I didn't mind so much, as long as people were not backseat gaming on me.  But I was always self-conscious about how I played, since frankly...I would say I'm okay at best for most of the things I play.  Let's be really honest.  Brawl was the only thing I got semi-good at, but when I saw what actual tournament people play like I kind of didn't really want to do that anymore.  I've been like that for a while...I wasn't like that as a kid, and then when I got older and people started commenting on my gender, things got...upsetting.  Any time I would play against a random guy and he lost, he would bemoan the fact that he lost to a chick.  And then when I lost, I would many times get the "ha, women can't play video games!"  Straight up - and I think I have told this story but I will do so again just because - the first time I ever played the Halo series was in high school.  Honestly, it might have been one of the first times I ever held an Xbox controller.  FPS was not my genre of choice, and so I couldn't adapt to it easily.  I was playing with friends; a guy who played it all the time, and two other girls who didn't play video games at all.  So while I was better than they were, I was still leagues behind my guy friend.  And at one point he said, "well guys are just better at video games than girls."  I looked at him, because although guys are usually the top players, they also have a better chance at becoming that, since they far outweigh women in competitive play, from my understanding.

But hearing that was disheartening to me as a gamer.  I became very "well if I'm not good then these guys will judge my entire gender to be bad at this and therefore I must be good if I ever want to play in public with people."

Which is why Brawl became my go-to game for when I was hanging out with people.  Because I thought I was decent.

And then I met the ex and that all kind of went downhill eventually.

But I guess that was everything with me and him.  I would start off okay, even though he was better than me, and then I would just get more and more discouraged.  Because it seemed like he was better at everything.  Video games, any kind of sports (one day we were playing racquetball and I sucked so hard that I left so he could play with his friend and I just cried...because I thought he would judge me and that I couldn't even compete against him in that and therefore I wasn't good enough and etc., etc.), any kind of mathematics problems.  Honestly, even when I read his fucking writing I thought it was better than mine.

Though this sort of progression isn't abnormal for me.  I guess it was just more intense because it was my partner and whatnot and I wanted to be fun enough for him, which in my mind, included being competitive enough in some of these areas.  Sincerely, I thought about playing fighting games but I knew I wouldn't ever be that good, and I also thought it would be me encroaching on his territory and everything.  Plus, like everything I try to become really good at...I knew I'd get bored.  I would get to a level that was decent, but would never try to get past the next threshold of being confident enough to compete in an actual tournament (not the ones at school because those were different), mostly because the game would lose my attention.

It was the same thing with sports.  During soccer season, once October hit I pretty much was done.  I still loved playing in games, but overall...going to practices and everything was just boring to me.  It was almost a nuisance at that point.  I think the only thing I didn't really get tired of was Mock Trial.  Really, that was my passion in high school.

Heh, honestly, I don't think I'd be able to do it now.  I'd have too much anxiety during the proceedings and everything.  How did this happen to me?  Like I've said in a previous entry, if I had the chance to apologize to my younger self for what I have become, I would.  Instead of dreaming big about the future, I often wonder if I will be able to find strength to make it to the future, and if so, what that shit is going to do to me.  Really, I am far more pessimistic about my future than I was in high school.

...How did I get on this.  Seriously.

And then when I see my older sisters being all cutesy with their husbands I waver between just not wanting to see that and also being really fucking jealous.  Then of course I just think that I really would like a punk dude who loved animals and cute things and playing games and cuddling and calming me down when I'm freaking out over grad school and being supportive and cuddling when I am sad and wanting to watch movies and cook things together and dance in the hallway for no reason whatsoever and have deep conversations with and all that stupid fucking shit.

Then of course, I laugh, because that guy in my mind would never want to deal with the emotional baggage that comes with me wherever I go.

...Seriously why can't I be happy with one-night stands.  Why.  I am so fucking jealous of people for whom that is satisfying.