RCA of RC Story

Lights out Alice!

The top voices in my head that keep looping::

1. Why me?
2. What's wrong with me? 
3. Am I broken and will I forever be broken?
4. Is it all borne out of loneliness or do I really feel something for a person? Will I ever be able to distinguish correctly while being in the situation?

RCA brings me to the following understanding (with the obvious disclaimer that it might change at any time:

1. I was afraid and ashamed. Ashamed of being so wrong about the actions of a person. Afraid that I caused harm to the person. I was ashamed that I mistook acts of kindness for something more which ended up causing more harm to the person.

Update 21.08.25:

Our paths had to cross again yesterday. Given the professional setting, obviously I had to act non-chalant. 

But it hurts me. 

It hurts me to see that all the memories we shared amounted to nothing. 

It hurts me to see that two people who once got so close that they knew what the other person would think next can now be sharing the same space but have an invisible void between them.

I can see she needed a friend. It hurts me everytime that I assumed otherwise and hurt her. I know I can't apologise to her anymore, but God, how I wish I could get another chance to say sorry for the hurt I have caused and I could find a way to make it all go away.

We were really good friends. We used to have a blast. Sometimes I think I am chasing that feeling of belonging. Other times I agree that it was too good to last and it ended when it had to. I just want to find a way to ensure that the space that we share is not suffocating.

I want my brain to understand. 

It ended. So what? 

She caused a lot of hurt...so what? 

Forgive her...to be fair, I never blamed her but rather myself for misreading it all.

I should go back to being friends...what my data suggests that it would be easy for her but pretty difficult for me...I wish I was stronger than this but I don't think I am.

She needs a friend. She has lost trust. I need to reestablish that. Is this something I am doing for her or myself? Is this the right thing to do? I look around the office and most people don't have true friends so why do I feel the need to "fix" this? Or am I just trying to "fix" it or trying to end this chapter in a way where the other person "owes" me, a MO that I have repeated previously.

Oh boy, am I a mess right now!

Lights out Alice!

Never taunt fate. Never make the claim that I will face the pain when it comes because when it came, oh boy!

It hit me like a train. It reminded me that I had gotten too comfortable. It reminded me that I gave too much of myself to make room for the person who didn't reciprocate at the same level.

I am a mess right now. I am not okay. It sucks that I have been here before and I thought this time I could deal with it better, but this time, in a long list of previous such occurences, is way worse. 

Circumstances wise, this time I still have to go back and see that person every other day. We still share some similar circles

Mostly because I had gotten too complacent and thought I could brute force it. Mostly because I forgot my tools and thought I could just "get over it". 

Mostly because I kept hanging on and replaying it in my head when I should have forced myself to stop.

Mostly because I broke my routines, things that keep me sane, to make time for the other and now that the person is gone, I am a broken mess who is finding it difficult to get back to feeling okay in any remote sense of the world.

Why am I lingering and why is this time way more difficult?

Context: The pattern repeated itself. Gotten close. Next thing I know, it is all over. In an instant. Poof.

I keep replaying it, wanting to believe that she hurt me and went away like it never meant a thing. Every 10 minutes I keep replaying all the good times we shared, all the fun we had frollicking around and how this time, I had more breadcrumbs of affection than ever before.

What I quietly put aside is that there was never any feeling of a romantic angle to it from her end, just platonic and the fact that their wiring forces them to go above and beyond in making the other person comfortable. 

What I quietly try to supress is that I was the one that went for that embrace, that misread the situation and thought that she was coming back and that there was some affection there. 

What also infuriates me is that I didn't get to say sorry. I didn't get to hear the other side. That person just chose to shut me out and gloss over the incident without a debrief on it. Just abandon without closure. While I also ask myself what closure I was looking for when there is clearly zero interest. I think I was looking for her to clearly delineate where I crossed lines. I was looking for her to admit that I wasn't entirely wrong about her feelings.

I think I was simply looking to soothe my ego that I wasn't wrong about her interest in me. I was. She was never interested in me. I was forcing it and she did the things she did out of courtesy and the kind person she is.

I think I simply hated being wrong.

I know I am confusing loneliness with attraction.

I know I am making the situation worse for myself by clinging onto it.

I have realized I have anxious attachment pattern, I get attached too quickly, do too much for them and then hurt myself too much in the process.

I am broken. I am in a million pieces right now. All my tools have been dismantled. I don't even have the energy to bring myself to fake a smile. I have no projects to help me keep myself on track. I have a job where I am not respected and it is a so-so situation. I am isolating myself from any kind of social interaction. I am sorry for worrying my parents as they can see I am lost and hurting but they can do very little to help me.

Higher powers and Alice, I don't know if I will ever make it back from here or is there a deeper pit that I will fall into soon. I hope I survive because I don't think I have the power in me to fall further.

RC update - 24.07.25 Part 4 - The End

This is the end. Written. Clarified for the last time. Goodbyes told.

It hurt so much. I couldn't figure it out as to why it was messing with my head so much. Why I looping so bad. Why I was hurting so bad and forcing her to give me another chance or begging her to reconsider. I get she would have been a great person, I get she has no reason to settle for a person like me but I couldn't put my finger on why I kept trying to go back.

Till I found the reason why. I was embarassed. Embarassed on being rejected. Embarassed to think I was not good enough. That I would never be good enough for her regardless of whatever I did. I felt that if only I could correct that particular flaw in me or show that side in me that I was hiding I could be good enough. That she would change her mind. That I would not be rejected again.

I was embarassed at the thought of being laughed at. Again. By a group of people. This fear showed up in holding on long after I should have let go. I was afraid that since it is someone I have to see again, whenever we cross paths, it would be a judgement of some sorts, a reminder of my failure, of not being good enough for her. Simply put, anxiety fueled by insecurities that I have still not accepted in myself, primary among them being not tall enough (been rejected by quite a few over this and it is now a PTSD). I was afraid that whenever she would judge a person for not being good enough, I would be the benchmark for that list and that the laugh on the person being judged would first imply the delusion I was under thinking I was good enough for her.

Is it the people pleaser in me?

Is it the fact that I crave acceptance?

Is it the fact that I haven't felt this understood in a long time?

Or is it simply that I never had a gf? That I feel rejected?

I was afraid. 

Afraid of being laughed at by everybody. 

Afraid of being the butt of the jokes. 

Afraid of hurting someone I cared about.

But mostly afraid of being laughed at for thinking I could be a good fit for her.

This led to spiralling anxiety. What if she told others and they would laugh as well? What if she became uncomfortable because of me and had to leave jobs? What if I made her mistrust people and draw her walls up higher?

How would I survive office? How I survive common outings? Could this ever become normal?

What if I could not face her? What if I had to take work from home and what if this affected my work?

This led to me thinking I could never stop hurting. That this would only get worse. 

That I had compromised on building my own future and habits so much that I could never get back on the wagon. 

That I could never rebuild myself. 

That I wasted my time. 

I thought I had forgotten how to live with myself.

 I thought I needed to fill my time with more things. 

I thought silence would be deafening. 

I thought I needed more Projects. More Passion. More Purpose. 

I tried that for a while. I tried surrounding myself with more people and more work. More activites and hobbies. Trying new things. Driving to new and far off places. Sadly, it had the inverse effect. Any fleeting moment of silence would make me freefall. All I could think about is her and how to get her to accept me. How I can change to meet her wherever she was and at whatever level of friendship she would accept me at, even if it was friendzoned. That way at least I could get to be around her.

That was pretty stupid of me. I was becoming clingy and afraid to let go.

I was aware of this behavioural pattern, but didn't know it had become this bad. She put an end to it.

As long as I do not go back to begging for attention from her and control that urge to text her, hopefully I will make it through. I know bad days will be there and I will relapse, but I hope I do not relapse into talking to her again.

It's going to be a bad day today (RC Part 3)

Lights out Alice!

It is only 8am but the feeling has kicked in that today is going to be a bad day. Delayed processing means that I don't feel the pain on the day it happens (beyond a certain extent) and am able to block it out. Today is the fourth day since the incident and now that withdrawal has kicked in, the pain comes flooding back in along with any and all associated bad thoughts, all made worse by insecurities looping in my head:

"I will never be good enough", "I am too short", "Why would anyone waste their time with me", "I am far too complicated", "I am not a fun person to hang out with", "I am too serious all the time", "I am full of shite and big talk and have never done anything of substance"

When these days happen, it is just a constant downward spiral. Group discussions trigger me, every little comment sends me into the abyss. I can be sitting with family but just looping in my head. Realizing how I have always been made fun of, been ostracized, never felt like I belong or that my opinions are valued. To be fair, this is normal of any family and of any youngest child, but on these days, the minor grievances lead to death by a thousand cuts.

Update: The next day

As usual, I claim that I know how to handle pain and then when the pain actually comes, It feels like it is ripping across you and it humbles you to the point where you reassess your claims all while knowing very well that it is just a matter of getting through it and coming out on the other side. I had felt this kind of loneliness in a crowd once before when we travelled to Sikkim in our management trainee group. There were over a dozen of us, but none of them were friends with me and none of them bothered to get real (although it was my fault for pushing people away).

Throughout this Udaipur trip, because there was an external party deciding the places to visit, it sort of felt like a downstream flow of water in a river, in which one has no control other than the gravitational pull downstream. However, I am happy that there were moments where I did stop to stare at the beauty that surrounds, especially in the mundane.

I have absolutely no interest in opulence, a minor interest in architecture and the rest of my interest in split between nature and driving. However, I have a set protocol (let's not talk about why I am like this) on how to explore a new city. I want to walk.  Not the tall buildings or the fancy malls or the high society restaurants. I want to walk the narrow streets. I want to walk the residential areas. I want the makeshift roadside tea stalls. Not because I

Best thing I have read today

Cancer wards tell a consistent story: Regret belongs to those who remained loyal to expectations rather than to themselves.

I guess I am grateful

 Lights out Alice!

In the RC story, there have been some developments that I wanted to apprise you of. The person, as my initial hypothesis had concluded, is a pretty good person. More than that, they believe in taking care of the ones that take care. They put in the effort. Obviously, expecting people to be at the level that I had put them on is wrong because they might not have anything towards me in the first place and that's alright.

However, the reason I needed to note this down is that there was something special that transpired last Saturday night when we went on an impromptu trip to India gate. She let her walls down and showed trust. She was going through something in the background and yet chose to forget about it and let me distract her. I know we operate using the same playbook and hence I am aware that it is a choice to let people or things distract you because if we want, we can be stuck inside our head and let nothing come in between. 

If I know anything about that person, I know how big a deal that is and I have to take into account the herculean task this was on her end to let her walls down to the person who has been nothing but a burden to her. 

I always come off as needy, anxious and insecure, mostly because I am, but if I could do something to change my ways, I would always like to remind myself to come back to this fact that there are awesome people like RC in this world who did treat me right, who held space for my myriad tantrums, who reassured my overthinking brain, who made space for my explanations, who listened without judgement.

I know I cannot get her to stay. People like her deserve so much better than the trash I am. But I have to acknowledge the fact that she was one of the few people who actually saw me and heard me and I did not have to put up a mask or talk in a way she would understand. No, it doesn't take away the need to communicate what we are actually feeling and thinking, but it made it less of an effort and more of a choice that I was willing to make.

I guess I am a liar

I was thinking of going on a bicycle ride and pushing long distances. Not the kinda thing one would immediately think of doing in this Delhi heat but immediately my justification came to me that it would make for a great story. 

I keep forgetting my principles. I know that if something is done for the sake of telling others, one might as well not do it. This generation of social media has taken over us to the point wherein if one does not shout out every detail of their world to the world it does not exist (one that does not care, might I add).

I am just being a liar and a storyteller in that case right? Doing it for somebody else or to brag or to sound cool just negates the very point of doing it. I had adhered to the principle previously. 

On the contrary, isn't it okay if I am trying to be the person that I consider cool? To do the things that would inspire me and not just be cool in the conventional sense of the word? Am I pretending if I am genuinely excited by these things?

What is it about being Vulnerable?

I can take a joke. Or I thought I did...I can roast and be roasted back...or I thought I did.

In most cases, I am never really pertubed by what people say about me or my quirks. 

However, these past few months when I was swooing over a person, every roast that they made felt like it was the end of the world. It made me question my worth, my existence and shattered me in a million pieces and scattered my mind in a million directions. 

Why did I get hurt by this? Why is that person saying such mean things to me? Why are they being so mean? If they are roasting me do they think I am important or do they feel to the same extent that I do about them?

I have made this mistake before with SB and extroverts in general, where little attention, which for extroverts is not a big deal, makes me feel too many things, mostly unwarranted and definitely unreciprocated.

I can and have been running all the permutations in my head, trying to catch signs of where there was any affection shown and where I wasn't wrong in my assumption. The truth is, I was wrong.

The shitty part is that I didn't mean to break their trust, but I did. I know they will be more guarded than ever and I apologize to the overlords out there for causing this.

What I also have realized is that I am pretty bad at this. I am wired for overthinking and overassuming whereas people do not operate at that level and it scares them off. I am and will forever be NOT GOOD ENOUGH. I am not sorry about liking somebody but I am sorry that I wasn't strong enough to keep it to myself because they were not at the same page.

On the flip side though, I would also like to question if I am allowed to feel bad about myself? If I am, then I would like to add if I could have been let down better? Could their have been some grace show instead of making me feel like the shittiest piece of shitter on this planet who only had an ulterior motive all this time? 

Obviously I can have feelings for a person, emotions are generally not in our control, but if I was being bratty about it or giving my emotional baggage to someone else to handle then I would be wrong. However, I just confessed my feelings while also being understanding enough to say that I know they don't feel the same and I am there to figure out how how to best deal with it. 

I didn't ask them to deal with me but I am getting upset that they didn't care enough to actually think about how I may be feeling? Goes on to show their side in a way. It could simply be that they might be overwhelmed and not know how to deal with it. Or that I spoke too much and they thought I had figured it out all by myself and it is pointless to try and explain.

I do talk too much. I don't have shit figured out. I am just as much of a mess as the next person, if not more. I am broken. I need a purpose that drives me and a creative outlet that occupies me. I need to sort my shit out first and then worry about who I let in. I made a mistake in letting people in. I should not have...

Thoughts when I am spiralling

There is rejection and then there is whatever happened to me or keeps happening to me (this is now the second time it has happened)

In this RC chapter, I have to call out one of my key behavioural patterns that I have figured out. When I am expecting reciprocation (mind you, it is all in my head, and I had no real data to back it up) I have ANXIOUS ATTACHMENT patterns This was bad. I was unable to regulate my emotions properly and my moods did depend on the other person and their behaviour at that point, which obviously they weren't trying to be deliberate about. I am flagging this as pretty bad because it would have definitely muddied my data and ability to read the situation. This reeks of desperation. Time and space will most likely tell me that it was un-wise of me to be so naive.

Although, I would also like to counter it by saying that I knew the consequences and I knew it was a long shot and even a no shot, but I chose to take it. Courage or desperation? I will never know!

All I know is that my actions have hurt a person that I really cared about because I betrayed their trust and ended up losing a friend in the process. The devil's advocate in me does ask if I could ever just be friends with her because I saw her differently and I would like to say no, but I also have SB data and currently whatever happens, I know for a fact that I am not going back there.

I know I have to pay up for the hurt I have caused and I am ready to do that, but for the life of me, if I could find a way to make it better or repair the hurt I have caused, I would do it. I want to stand up and take charge but I have little control over how it goes. I have to pull back and wait for the other person because the ball is in their court and unless they allow me, I have lost all the rights to initiate a conversation. I don't have anyone to talk to about this and I don't know how to solve this. A safe space is what everyone deserves and I don't know how to help create one anymore.

Shit. I really went and outdid it this time. Should have kept my mouth shut. But I still don't believe that I should have kept it shut. I still believe in telling it. Those 30 seconds...were they courageous or stupid?

Musings of the day

Musings:

You know what I will accept? The fact that it wasn't enough for the sigmoid function to give the output as 1. But don't you stand there and tell me that it was a flat 0. It sounds desperate and it probably is, but how can I be so wrong all the time? How can my parameters for evaluation and assessment be so far off that it has always been misunderstood or misconstrued?

I know curation of a personality that will perfectly fit with the expectation of the other person is a normal and expected trait of an ADHD but was it really all that it was? Did I fail to see through this pretense? Not even a glimmer of lapse on this front? Or it could very well be that I only saw the portions that would fit in line with my expectations.

What I still don't get is people's expectation of similarity. No, obviously two different humans cannot have the same point of view or have all their interests align. Even if it did, is it even the right metric for evaluation? Wouldn't I want the other person to hold themselves to a standard that I would aspire towards? Wouldn't  I want the other person to have the potential for growth and ability to have open-mindedness over sharing the same interests. Actually, now that I write it, both do matter, but surely they can't be such detractors in case of a mismatch?

I can't guarantee the future, but how does one show that one is willing to see it through? Through thick and thin? The hard part, to stay and figure it out? I don't know what other ways can I prove my diligence and the very fact that I am thinking of projecting it makes me feel like a fraud who is faking it. These things are ingrained in a person's psyche and in the end it is a matter of reading people and trusting them.

WHY ARE WE SO AFRAID OF TRUST? Why are we so afraid of taking a decision and living through the consequences?