~*~ 2026 | 06 | 10 ~*~
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this time i am going to write about matters of the heart. it is the first time i am going to journal publicly about such things, aside from perhaps the time i mentioned i had an international friend stay with me. we have always has a pretty up & down relationship, there are lots of happy memories of the visit here, but overall it is not really the kind of love that i think regular people would tolerate in their daily lives. there are a lot of high needs & sensitivities on both ends, & i think it is one of love's many miracles that such an unlikely pair ever went as far as we have. at the moment we have fallen out again, & i am pretty sad & out of love about the whole thing, so i want to make this blog post about it to put my feelings on the outside & remind myself that i believe strongly in love amidst all of my dramatic sadness.
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one of the first things i ever used the internet for that influenced my real life was around the time when i was 11 years old. i had a crush on a primary school classmate who i would describe as like a proto-fujoshi kind of girl. she was a year older than me & in her final year. she was into anime & jrpgs & used to make AMVs with her friends & stuff, very early into youtube's life cycle. it was 2006. i think we used to sit at the same table in class? i'm not sure. i believe i might have met her during some kind of "get-to-know-eachother" activity from early on in the year, because that year i had just recently been changed to that school. either way, we talked about naruto & kingdom hearts every day. i don't think i ever really gave a shit about those things, but i was totally bedazzled by the entire social ritual of talking with her about the things she was into. the female side of being a "nerd" was totally new to me, & i recall the first conversation we ever had was about final fantasy 10. it was intriguing to me that the main appeal of the game seemed to be the romantic scenes & depictions of highly idealized male figures for her, rather than the nerdy stats or trying to beat the game. it was funny, but her being more familiar with the game only to appreciate it at a work of romance gave me the impression that she was really really cool. thinking about it now, it's hard not to ruminate on it as a phenomenon of capitalist spectacle & deride the entire thing as a fake childhood fascination that has since passed, but that would not be a very good use of critical theory. spectacular as they may be, i feel the memories reflect a part of my own innocence, & furthermore a part of myself that is romantically innocent & very sociable. anyway, we hung around eachother a lot, both in class & at recess/lunch times, & we would speak at length all the time. msn was a thing back then, so that's when things went online, & that is where things really took off. i was in a few group chats with her + her friends & we would have very basic & cute little conversations about stuff. i would try to keep up being the lone male of the group & occasionally draw attention to myself with some kind of performative display, attempting to be cool according to the vernacular in my head at the time, which usually meant posting pictures of handsome, gothy anime boys with bloodstained bandages & whathaveyou. because i hung around with my cousin a lot at that time, & she had told me that her look was "goth", i thought this made me "goth" & everyone in the small group accepted me as the "goth" member of the group. this is particularly hilarious to me now. there were plenty of ^_^s & -_-s & o.0s from everybody to go around, lots of use of fancy custom emoticon gifs. i used to post emotional heavy metal music i thought matched my mental image of "goth"ness, & in my head i was a complete badass. i felt like i'd pierced the veil & been allowed into a secret society of women's-only anime appreciators. that is why i think of her as somewhat of an early example of a fujoshi in my life, even though i didn't even know what yaoi was yet. i didn't need to be familiar with the norms & rules of idolizing the cultural ephemera to navigate the social experience purely by instinct.
at some point i confessed to one of her friends that i had a crush on her. i was genuinely nervous, & didn't know if i should tell her, lest i ruin the friendship. her friend swore she wouldn't tell, but she said she "thinks" she likes me too, so i came up with a strange plan for some reason. i made a proboards forum that only had like three or four members, two of them being me & my crush. i don't really remember much about the posts on that forum - i don't even remember its name. all i know is that it was a proboards forum, that i selected some kind of silver-coloured theme, & i know there was a thread for posting your own AMVs. i used to cross-post stuff from my deviantart account there - i remember at some point i made a couple of flash movies that were "dedicated" to her, but i think that was after i'd told her i liked her. i think maybe i made a flash movie to do the big reveal? i don't really recall. i think what i do recall is that i spent about half the year just talking irl & chatting on msn, but then made the forum during a school holiday period. school is divided up into quarterly 'terms' in australia, so i think it was the school holidays between terms 3 & 4 that all the forum stuff went down, because i remember thinking i had to tell her how i felt before next year rolled around & she was in high school. either way, she said she liked me back & i was over the moon. i couldn't wait to go back & see her at school knowing we were now some kind of official item.
i think it was actually something more like, we were at the tail end of the final term of the year, & her being a year older than me was set to graduate, but there was like a bluelight disco or some random event being hosted as like a break-up thing for the students. i had spent all of the time apart building up this hugely romanticised image of myself & this girl in some kind of "relationship" that my brain had conjured, & was very satisfied with my efforts in building the proboards forum & couldn't wait to see her irl & experience the effects of all of this change out in the real world. to be honest, i think i was actually kind of aware that i had no idea what to expect, & i think i may remember thinking to myself that she might not match the feelings as intensely in real life, imagining that she might prefer the safety of being behind the keyboard.
when i got to the place, it turned out i was kinda right, because whilst she did indeed recognise & greet me welcomely, & even though her friends did put on airs & call us a couple, i think we were both totally awkward & unsure of what to actually do with all of our intense feelings expressed through keyboard now that we'd found ourselves face to face. there was a palpable resistance between both us. we couldn't really touch or make eye contact - & not really in an autistic way, more of an "oh jeez i can't believe i said all that stuff on the internet when i was in my feelings," sort of way. i don't really remember what we did other than hang around & chill out, maybe we drank soft drinks or something. i think we just kind of stood around eachother awkwardly & taked about stuff, occasionally breaking out into other, non-mutual friend groups before returning to eachother for another check-in. it was a little bit cute i think, at the very least, & there was a gaudy flash photograph taken of us with a disposable camera, to complete the early-2000sness of it all. no idea where that is now.
i'm not sure if i'm remembering this next bit properly, but i think we agreed to something, like that we wouldn't be able to continue after she'd moved onto high school. it very well may not have happened at all; i may be mandela-ing this memory into my brain, but i think we did have a breif & polite conversation about mutually appreciating the time we spent, but moving on. i don't think either of us were emotional or upset about it. honestly, i'm not even really sure what happened. the memory itself is distant & foggy, but there regardless.
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so in a way, just as easily as it came, it was gone & eventually partially forgotten. i don't remember what happened to the forums & stuff i made - i would say i probably ended up deleting it out of a sense of embarrassment or shame. it wasn't the first time i'd "liked" a girl - i think i was doing that since i was very little. i can remember pretty much every time i went out on the playground as a 3 or 4 year old that there were two games i liked to play, & both of them were games of role-play & imagination. one of them was gathering everyone around the playground & agreeing to give everybody a bespoke job & organising a little community of people that make up a "city", but this was often of limited success, because a lot of kids weren't as conscious as i was at that age, much less able to understand a weird society-simulation. the other game i remember i liked to play a lot was just "marrying" girls on the playground. i can remember becoming somewhat smitten by certain girls at such a tiny age, & often for not much or very little of a reason they would occupy princess fantasies in my head. there is a picture-book from my time during three year old kindergarten where i recall i'd had a particularly difficult day.
in kindergarten, as ahead as i was with reading & literacy & speaking & role-play fantasies & such, i was severely limited by intense separation anxiety when away from my mother. it would give me intense freakouts & breakdowns & i would often hide under a table or in a corner or some place where i could at least try to not be seen whilst i was unable to control my emotions. i think on my first day or something like that, my mother gave me a little heart-shaped trinket to "remember" her if i ever felt scared without her, but it'd had the opposite effect & just reminded me that my mother had "abandoned" me & that she was "gone", so naturally, as three year olds do, i freaked out & became quite inconsolale.
i don't remember much of this at all, only that i was acting up very badly, & that i had the heart-locket thing gripped firmly in my two canine teeth on the right hand side, biting down so hard on it that its copper finish was being marred & yielding under the clenching of my stressy jaw. i remember the usual routine of realising i was "alone" without my mother, the fear & emotion building up & becoming uncontrollable, trying to hide somewhere, & i think i put the comfort-object in my mouth because i was extremely orally fixated as a child, so often things would end up in my mouth if i was stressed or bored. anyway, i was found, in my spazzy, stressed-out state by a friendly & profoundly communicative little black girl who asked if i was okay, & what was wrong. i explained to her that i was sad because i wanted my mum, & she went over & explained to the teacher that i was crying because i wanted my mother. i'd had a pretty bad relationship with the teacher that year, often getting in trouble or fighting with her, but she was surprisingly empathetic when she saw just how stressed out i was in my intense little freakout episode. i believe she came down & spoke with me very pragmatically & logically about the entire thing, appealing to my intelligence. she said something like, "i know you just want to meet your mum again, but unfortunately she's not going to be here until later, so until then, you can do whatever you like here - is there something you would like to do? i know you are a very smart boy who is good at reading & writing, would you like to make a storybook? you can give it to your mother as a present for when she gets here in a few hours." it was very comforting & brought me back down to earth - i was allowed to stay on the other side of the room with my friend who had found me there, & we both were given some coloured pencils & paper. i remember momentarily wincing & locking up again because the activity reminded me of my mother, but my friend asked me what's wrong, & i told her "this is something i normally do with my mum, so it's hard not to think about her right now," & so she asked me what sort of stuff i normally do with my mother. at this time, the reason i could read so well was because my mother was actually teaching me how to read using ocarina of time for n64. at this point in time i remember we were up to meeting zelda for the first time, & i explained that to my friend, that we would play a nintendo game together to teach me to learn how to read. she kept asking me questions about the game & seemed genuinely interested in my description of it, & together we made a picture book of that scene in the game of meeting zelda for the first time, but we changed the characters for ourselves. she was very happy she got to be the princess & she took the role very well, & with that my fears were somewhat assuaged, & melted away as i spent the time just working on the book. eventually more people joined the table later on in the day (i think there was the opportunity to do so because there was some free time at the end of the day or something,) & i recall a small group of some girls & the teacher all being very enthralled & interested in my retelling of the game's story, no longer because it was helping me calm down, but because i was able to tell the story in such a detailed & expressive way, & involved everyone as all the different characters. i remember the sight of my mother walking in just as the teacher had punctuated the final step in making the book by stapling it together for us. everyone was very satisfied & happy with the day, & i was a little bit better socialised towards kindergarten from thereout. i still had my problems & troublesome days ahead, but that day being able to be just me & a trusted friend working on what was essentially self-insert ocarina of time fanart as a gift for my own mother was extremely inspiring & promising to me. my mother was extremely moved by the book, & i think the teachers kept her around to explain i'd had an episode that day. i believe my mother still has the book around somewhere, i'm sure i could ask her to dig it out whenever i see her next.
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i can remember a few other times inbetween then (1998) & 2006 where i'd liked girls, & rarely boys. a lot of them aren't clear memories of events that took place, & most of them just reveal to me that i was pretty naive & desperately wanted to like somebody, but i guess there is at least some kind of possible explanation or history there as to my own behaviour. the feelings were always very intense, often one-sided, & i'd say maybe half the time it "worked" & half the time it "backfired". as people got older & older, though, their capacity for experiencing & communicating more complex feelings developed, & so as this coincided with the rise of instant messaging on home computers, there was always a double-sided quality to the game for me, always throwing the veracity of feelings into play. were things more real online or offline? often times an intense offline experience would be followed up by an online confession, which would either spoil by becoming unrealistic fantasy, with one or both parties spinning up a fantasy-image in their head, or by fizzling out into irrelevance, usually by the means of having offline contact becoming impossible, unrealistic or undesirable.
i'm glad i wrote this, because now my leading question is, where did i learn this "game"? does it all just stem from my attachment-issues, was my mother truly the first & foremost love addiction? was she just bipolar, perhaps to an unintentionally or unconsciously "abusive" degree? maybe she "love bombed" me too much. i don't really have a scale of normality for it, but i think i can find out; i think i can know. if i can trace back such memories as this, i will eventually ascertain whatever precluded such emotions & examine how i came to grow from such a foundation. analyzing it makes me happy, because it helps me understand how i can be more in control of my emotions & thinking. at the moment i am pretty scattered & lost for love, & all i really know is that i have a constantly crying & needy child inside of me who won't stfu, so i think most of my actions have been in trying to help protect & nurture that child, who is me before i had a concept of what people's love outside of my own mother & father's was like. i wonder when they got sick of me, i wonder when the first moment i became unceremonious & sundry around them was.
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