The ending, part 50404...

Lights out Alice!

This is what I wrote when I was asked to go back to being friends and not make things toxic:

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Let me over explain myself (hope you take the time to read it):

Part 1:

 It is okay for it to be not that big a deal for you.

 I know enough time has passed for us to forget the past and restart as "friends"

 I even know for a fact that we both can go back to being friends if we restarted this.

But I cherish our memories. Each and every moment we shared and all the fun things we did together.

I am grateful for every damn moment I got to spend with you.

Again, I have never expected you to feel the same. But this is what I feel. I never forced anything from you. But I have no interest in hiding what I truly feel and live a lie.

What took me all this time to heal was the constant denial from your end. It was you telling me this could never happen while we were slowly getting closer. That drove me to question everything and I spiraled pretty bad. The sheer abruptness of the ending in July and then your constant dismissal as "it wasn't a big deal" messed me up and didn't give me closure. I always believed that it was only me that forced all this and ruined everything. It messed me up big time.

I have been a mess for a while now and only now have I slowly gotten used to life without you as a friend.

Now, if I restart all this, I will have to overwrite the beautiful memories I have of you. I will have to erase everything in the past and pretend to move forward without baggage. I don't think I would ever want to do that. Again, it is not that I can't but these memories are far too cherished for me to forget them. I am happy for what we had and would rather hold on to that happy memory over the new ones.

Part 2:

 There has never been an agenda.

 I have tried my best to not make your workplace toxic by trying to stay away and I am truly sorry for all the trouble I might have caused.

 I know I am holding on to the past and to be fair, this is a choice. I have no expectations of any sort and have closed the book on this, but I would rather just have the good memories and take them with me forever

Part 3:

I do regret all the things we couldn't do together if I hadn't gone and messed it all up:

 All those road trips

 The treks we planned but could never execute

 Aravali bio diversity park

 32nd avenue workshops we planned on going to

 I will remember you everytime I take the turn towards Rajiv Chowk.

 I will always cherish the crazy fun we had in office. Holy shit, I don't think that level of fun is even allowed...pranking each other, teasing each other, listening to each other...every second was me being able to let my walls down and be in the moment with you.

 I will miss us having fun in the car

 The Blue lays packet

 The playlist

 Sahibaan

 The drives to India Gate

What we had was true. The only thing I hated is you dismissing it as something trivial. That part messed me up.

Part 4:

We had our differences.

We had our misunderstandings.

I know I have my insecurities.

I know I overthink, I know I mess up all the time.

But, both of us always knew how the other would feel and took that into account. Both of us always knew when the other was angry and would try to make the other feel better. I know it is partly in both our natures to be able to read the other person but I think this was beautiful.

I don't want anything from you. I am not a desperate person trying to force you to feel what you don't want to or stay in anything that doesn't align with your life's plan...I am always just happy and grateful to have had the time we did and have made my peace with it.

But I always want to keep these memories with me as they are special to me and being friends again would mean forgetting all this.

I could, but this was far too special for me to let go of. For the first time, I felt happiness without having to pretend.

Just clearly writing down everything that is on my mind and why it is hard for me to go back to being friends. Not trauma dumping.

Doing the right thing sucks

Lights out Alice!

I don't know why am I my own biggest limitation. No, it is not anybody else but my own brain, designed to help me, which is the biggest hinderance in my path to leading a better life.

Context: RC reached out if we could go back to being friends again.

On one hand having her around would be pretty cool and really good in the short term but I know that over time I will go back to having feelings and mis-interpreting her actions which would never end well for either of us. Which meant that I had to decline and end things which had already previously ended. This is like ending v_13345_final_v2...

I know there are decisions that I need to take that are right for me, which end up feeling like a kick in the gut. This was definitely one of them. In the time between making up my mind on a decision and communicating it, I must have flip-flopped a million times in my head, trying to weigh the pros and cons of taking a side.

We don't know what the future holds. Maybe being friends again is important for me to heal. Maybe she has finally come to her senses. Maybe it will all work out if I choose this path. All that this does is kill the last bit of hope that had died but got reincarnated with this invitation. However, because this happened, and my reaction to it, it was indication enough that I am still not over it and there is no hope of me being able to forget all this and go back to being "friends". 

I am happy that there was acknolwedgment of the fact that mistakes were made from the other person's end as well. Actually, that makes me extremely bitter. When you have feelings for someone and they treat you like a disposable convenient piece of trash, it hurts worse than being rejected.

What really bothers me and gets my goat is WHY would you want to go back to being friends! I know it might have been just friends and casual for you, but just sweeping all that history under the bus belittles my feelings. It makes me feel small for having them or holding onto them in the first place and that I am not ready to do.

I wish I was a better than this and able to forget everything and pretend that it never happened. I wish I could be the guy who could play the game and not be affected by the outcome. Sadly, I am not one of those people. Agreeing to be friends would have been pretending to be someone I am not. For the life of me, I could not bring myself round to living that lie.

If it isn't meant to be, it really isn't and I shouldn't force it.

Nothing really changes, yet everything does...

Nothing really changes:

I still lack discipline. I still make grand detailed plans with obscene numbers of adaptations to account for everything and anything going wrong. I stil suck at executing them. I leave most things I start midway, if not at the first third. I still get bored of things, even as important as a job and wake up on days planning to obliterate everything and starting from scratch once again. I still am unable to upskill myself properly and online self paced learning is still lava.

I am still lonely. However, I have enough bald spots and grey hairs in me to know better than to chase empty friendships. Not that I did chase them in the past as well, but as one ages, one grows more stubborn and steadfast in their ways and less adaptable to change and new beliefs.

What does change is...well everything. I am no longer the person I was a decade ago when I started this blog. Truth be told, I was more hard working back then and had more passion and burning intent. I had discipline and I had vigour, all of which meant that I kept trying to improve every day. I used to push myself and grow, even though it wasn't obvious at the time.

My parents are getting older. It does sadden me to see an armour plated person like my dad struggling to walk. I have fond memories of trying to keep up with his walking pace as a child, his ability to carry luggage in our travels without needing external help and just being the dependable person everyone turned to. Yes, there were faults and he was short fused (something that I have inherited as well), but he would get things done. Yesterday, he walked with a limp, was unable to put force on one leg and was in visible distress after standing for fifteen minutes. The person that could walk for hours, work for tens of hours and then come home to play or scold two kids and then go to teach tuition classses...

I suck. Jan'26 edition

Later the coffee gets cold...

Shit keeps happening. I keep making things worse. Further, I have again reached boredom at my job because there isn't anything new to learn and even if there is, there isn't enough pressure on me to keep me invested.

I hate that I have too much free time, so much so that I end up doing nothing about it and not engaging in developing myself in all the areas I plan on when I am overwhelmed with too much work. Why does my brain function in this faulty manner?

Why always potential and ideas but ZERO execution? 

Will I always be like this? Will I ever get over this problem? Why do I fall apart so easily? Why does just a few days without engaging work lead to a downward spiral of mental health which then leads to the decision of burning it all down and starting all over again? Can I never build myself without the crutch of academia? Can I never get anything done without external pressure or the world watching/ passing judgment?

Alice, I used to be good and eloquent once upon a time. I used to be able to articulate conscisely and be able to weave a visual story through my words. Then I shifted to Gurgaon and this shithole of mediocrity that everybody keeps raving about. All this place has done is make me settle for average and good enough and bring my level down.

I am sorry I suck Alice!

My SOP understanding as of 28.12.25

1. I need a plan of action to function. I also need margin in this plan to do impulsive things

2. This plan of action cannot have more than:

    A. 1 major to-dos -must complete item

    B. 2 items with grinding level work - where I sit down and focus

    C. 1 new learning item to feel that I am not derelict yet even though that is the case

3. The bigger issue that needs to be solved on a daily basis is dopamine regulation. I am pretty restless and borderline ADHD which means two things happen everyday...everything resets every morning and I have too much energy. My body does not carry forward all the learnings from the previous day. At night I tell myself that I have clear patterns that need to get better at and when morning comes the same things repeat.

Too much energy at the start of the day if not expended leaves me jittery, wanting to do too many things at once and unable to focus on anything. I end wanting to burn it all down, start again and start learning something new altogether.

Hence, the start of the day needs to happen with physical activitiy, intense and straining which helps me expend energy and get myself out my head. The adrenaline helps me regulate my emotions and then sets a better tone for the rest of the day.

Roadtrip...but the feeling is not the same or is it?

Over the weekend, I had a quick trip to Lucknow. Left Friday afternoon and was back by Sunday night. On the way the trip took 11 hours instead of the expected 8 because of dense fog and zero visibility and the speeds going down to 60. On the way back, it was more driving as usual as the trip was over the course of the afternoon.

Why do I do it? Is it because of my inherent liking for all things cars and driving? It is a contributing factor, sure, but I don't think it is the complete answer. Is it because it is difficult and somewhat of a perceived challenge to drive for 8 to 10 hours straight? This is also not the complete reason but an important contributor.

Just my thoughts 15th Dec 2025

I still miss the hell out of you. But the pain is no longer as bad as it used to be. As they correctly say, time and distance heals everything. It ended a long time ago, and more importantly, in her eyes, there was nothing there in the first place anyways, but it took me over six months and multiple bouts of sinking to a dark place and questioning everything to get over her.

It was real on my end, it was true for me and regardless of what might be considered complex, hard to read and not easy going at all, I believe I stayed true and upfront. I am sure she felt she was being true and didn't try to hurt me on purpose. I should also not be hurt as much as I am given how she had already told us that we were "just friends" and that I was just "convenient". However, those words hurt worse than being rejected, because they remind me of how easily I give away so much of myself and how easily people take it for granted.

This is not to say that I do not respect her decision. I also respect the fact that there is no good way of ending things. It is going to be taken incorrectly by the party being rejected anyways, more so by a person who is ADHD and sensitive to rejection and has anxious attachment style. I am the problem, no doubt.

Any person at any time has the right to say no and walk away, but it doesn't really stop it from hurting does it?

I just laugh at my patterns sometimes. Here I am, bored and procrastinating on the work that we need to do, letting my thoughts wander back to the person that called me "convenient" and "just a friend".

It is funny how against all odds, against all the self-talks about how I should get over it, get over whatever it was, I come back and wait for some cosmic event which will get her to reach out and text. All these quotes, these books, these philosophies that I claim to imbibe, I am pretty sure will be down the drain the minute, no no, the second I receive a text from her...I would like to believe that this is exactly why I think it was real, but I will also call out my bullshit and say that it is just my anxious attachment style and rejection refusal which just wants to get to a scenario where I was enough for the other person and that it wasn't just all in my head. The need to be right about what I considered to be mutual feelings, but the other person refused to agree, is what I think also keeps driving this and bugs me.

Just my thoughts 10th Dec 2025

I don't know Alice! Things that we in the past (SB) seem to not affect me so much anymore. There was a time I used to feel so overwhelmed trying to get that person to calm down and trying to contain that situation. I kept looking for an answer, anything that I could do that would help them get out of the loop and diffuse the situation. Now, I was drawn back to the same shit, even though I have been consistently distant, or more so because of it, but this time I was far less bothered. I want to believe this was because I know that it wasn't entirely because of my actions, but the truth is that my actions were wrong, but they needed to happen. I have been wanting to withdraw from this for a long time now, especially seeing how conveniently people have forgotten what they have done in the past and just assuming that it is closed. Yes, it is closed, but I got hurt and I have every right to not be available at the same level anymore. It is not like I have not made this clear to the other person or am stringing them along. Yet, they seem to get offended by my actions. At this point, I don't know what to do but I do know that my stand on this is clear, regardless of how bad a picture that person seems to be drawing of me.

On a similar vein, it has been a while since RC ended as well. Last Friday was the last straw after the last straw. The last straw was the day when I was told I was just "convenient and a timepass".  Last Friday was when RC chose to be indifferent by my absence in a meetup that saw me drop her off and wait for others to arrive, only for them to then continue plans without me 15 minutes before the meetup was about to happen. What bothered me on the RC front was that RC knew that I was nearby waiting for others to wrap up their previous engagement. She was informed of the change of plans and chose to not speak up. I even get the fact that she would have wanted to keep the fact that I dropped her on the down low, but it didn't bother her even a bit to check with me once? Dayum bruh, this is the level of respect I got after doing so much for that person. Obviously, I never did anything with malintent, but that doesn't also mean that it should be taken for granted at this level. However, it confirms a few things...either it was really nothing or that person is a user. I still would like to believe the former  and not the latter as the latter is something that I am assuming since I am too sensitive of their actions.

I miss having that friend....but it is time I call out my bullshite

Lights out Alice!

The last straw has been broken. Although it ended a while ago, it took me a while to come to terms with it and way longer to accept it. When the dust settles and one is not blinded by the desire to do anything to prove their worthiness, we are able to see the truth for what it is and not an opportunity or an area of improvement. Being the analytical person, who is filled with self hate and has serious anxious attachment problems, everything HAS to have a meaning behind it otherwise there is something that I am yet to understand about the situation. Everything has to have a "RIGHT" course of action, something that the feedback in the first instance from a  person will lead me to believe and mould myself to fit into.

Well I was a piece of convenient single use plastic once again

Lights out Alice!

History repeats itself...and how!!

I have once again been told that I was nothing more than just a convenient piece of single use plastic and it was wrong of me to take the countless late night outings "as a hint".

My biggest insecurity and fear has always been that I am reading people wrong and I am stepping in on a place where I was not invited. Obviously this comes from poor nervous system regulation ability curated through the wild childhood I had, complimented by restless, if not ADHD brain.

At this point, this person is now the fourth person in a row to have done this, but since I made the mistake of still showing up when there was help required, I was thanked with the statement, "oh it was nothing serious, I was just having fun..."

I didn't know statements could hurt like that. It is not like I led the person on. I had clarified my interest. It is okay if somebody slips, but to then label it in such a trivial manner as just a fling...after hanging out for months...and then claiming that I took the wrong hint...this does shatter me to bits. Pieces that I have to pick up and rebuild once more. 

Which is fine, but what hurts and what will continue to hurt is how it became my problem of incorrect interpretation and how there was ZERO feelings ever from her end and how I took the wrong hint.

KP, SB, MDS and now RC. Same shit, different ways. Use a person when it is convenient and then throw them in the dustbin and make them feel like worthless garbage.