10) infatuation, objectifying (?) others, family cruise trip

[edit:] what the fuck am i talking about??? is any of this relevant or just an attempt to cope with emotions?
[edit 2:] i think i'm just bad at handling crushes.

tl;dr i struggle to control my own thoughts and perceptions of people i find attractive; i become infatuated with them as objects of beauty, kind of in a parasocial or weird way, but not necessarily in a sexual way. i didn't think i was that bad until i went on a trip where i was exposed to a lot of people who i was attracted to... a sobering realization that i'm a simple, objectifying, and somewhat disgusting guy.

hello,

i just got home from a 3 night cruise. this blog post will be a diary consisting of feelings i wrote on the cruise and thoughts i'm writing now. for context, i went with some cousins who i usually only see once or twice a year. my parents paid for the cruise and really like cruises because they can drink all they want without worrying about my sister and i. during those three nights i realized that my perception of others is really wack, which i've known for a while, but in a different environment it became a lot more obvious to me.

i saw a lot of people who i thought were... attractive? the more responsible wording would be: i was attracted to a lot of people. i find these people all the time but typically not as frequent as on the cruise.

futile specifics: most of these people had either alt/goth style or a pretty face (although the former tends to guarantee the latter for me). i think the age group i found most attractive was from like 15-20s? and it wasn't like sexual attraction, it was just infatuation with their whole aesthetic / character.

word vomit: i wanted to tell a lot of them that i liked their outfits but there were also people who weren't wearing anything special and i just thought "holy shit they are so pretty." i did not know how to deal with this infatuation. there was this one waitress who was also a dancer, filipino, and a swordfighter, and she was really conversational and super pretty and i was definitely "simping" (or so the kids these days like to say). like, *hard* simping. her name was marian and she was probably like 25 but i wanted to get to know her so bad. like, how is it working and living on the cruise? did she want to be a dancer when she was younger? was it weird learning to be a server? opinions? etc. ...and then there was this girl, probably 14-16, who seemed super anxious about whether or not other people were looking at her but i couldn't stop staring at her and i just really wanted to ask her if she wanted to be friends because we had one thing in common and it was anxiety (and i guess style) but i think i made her uncomfortable because i never had the confidence to say anything whenever we crossed each other and i feel so bad about it because she's probably anxious for some trauma-related reason and i'm just some asshole who thinks he's too good for what might literally be an irl DNI. and then there were definitely like 4 other people who had a sick outfit and well-done hair which is evidently enough to woo me into distress. and some 10/10 guys, which i rarely ever find because i guess my taste in guys is so much narrower for the social settings i'm placed in. so i'm out here obsessing over all these pretty people and i realize i am such a simple fucking dude...

now the question is: why the fuck am i thinking these thing? my feelings are roughly wanting to belong with or to these people, but to the point of infatuation. it's definitely not just plain lust either, it's some 21st century love of aesthetics / beauty standards. kind of like with kpop photocards and that whole marketing scheme. it's based on some obsession with an overall concept of beauty... which is ultimately just a concept. an invention. a set of expectations. probably stemming from sexual attraction and marketing but now evolved into it's own thing. my "taste" in the guilty sense.

i shouldn't be reducing people to that when i look at them. kind of disappointed / digusted what i've become. which is good because now i can start to change?

either way i'm too scared to interact with these people or give due compliments. and what is compliment except me saying: you are an object of beauty. i.e., to the standards of my own preferences. and i don't think anyone really perceives a compliment that way, but it's the reality of what my mind is doing. verdict: i am gross, a voyeur of "beauty", objectifying, emotionally unrestrained and probably trained on too much p**n.

and this has always been kind of an issue for me. but never to a drastic degree, maybe because i'm not attracted to most of the people i see everyday. and when i do find these people i simultaneously have envy and infatuation... i hate these emotions and consequently just avoid the people causing them. i put these feelings in a box and just move on. but when there are so many people i find attractive (i hate hate hate that this is the only description i have for them), like on the cruise, then i forfeit my self-control.

maybe it's a part of being 17 and a guy? like, instinctually, i see pretty humans as *just that* - objects of beauty - and then obsess over wanting them to belong to me and to belong with them. except that notion of exclusivity contradicts the fact that i'm constantly finding new people to... be attracted to?

some stuff i wrote on the cruise:

and when i feel totally dead inside, like when i know that few things really make me happy and that i am without those things, and that i am overwhelmed and overstimulated, all i really want is comfort from someone who belongs to me. not from family because they're distant and only know a small side of me... i want "love" - external, exclusive. friends cannot deliver, they often disappoint, because most of my friends are there for fun, not to get me through my emotional havoc.

so now i'm fucking fantasizing over the idea of marian holding me as i cry over stupid emotions. i fucking hate this. what am i doing? is that a mother figure then? i am "calming myself down" by looking at paintings on the ship. they are serene pieces of life and the outdoors, some still lifes too. this is one of few things i really enjoy on this cruise: they put the most abstract and tranquil works of art at every stairwell and in every hallway. so i am repeatedly walking up and down all 12 floors just to see these paintings. i never really get the opportunity to see art, so this is really nice for me. meanwhile, a party reverberates through the cruise and sometimes people less lonely than myself walk by. i often see the same people, including that one girl with the backpack who i should really stop trying to interact with. i feel so fucking abandoned.

i stood outside. how cold it would be when i drowned. cold and lost and extremely alone. it's sobering to stand on a very fast moving boat and look over into endless sea. if i jumped i would be right there in that water, surrounded by nothing but water and pitch darkness. that scared me into wanting to live... it's close enough to be imagined. i don't want to feel that and i don't want it to end here, but i want to be relieved. not just of these feelings but of everything. it all makes me so sick sometimes. and i know i shouldn't be telling myself i'm sick as an excuse for lousy emotions but i truly feel sick of these things.

now i go to look at more paintings. some are photos. i think they help me from being overstimulated externally by the noise and lights, while internally i drown in myself.

back to the present moment:

i think i've written enough about my poor and unrestrained reaction to "beauty." that was the main feature of the cruise for me... having plain fun with cousins for several hours and then crashing physically and emotionally into loneliness at the end of the night. and obviously that's when i have to be lost in infatuation.

there was a lot more to the cruise then that, so i'll share some more that i wrote while on the trip:

the most obvious feature of this cruise is luxury. seemingly infinite food, constant service, unending upbeat music, and a perpetual series of events and shows.

it is weird being constantly served, even in exchange for money. (shoutout to gede, my room service guy, and marian, that waitress i simped super hard for). i blame this weirdness on the structure and rules of "politeness." i think politeness is a thing which covers up the inequality created by service. it makes it easier to acknowledge the insubservient as "impolite" and consequently socially and morally reprehensible. of course, not all servant-master relationships involve looking down on the other, nor are servers equal to servants at all, but politeness still stands with much of the same rules. it's a weird set of rules to cope with a weird situation. and obviously they in those roles while getting their wages from their customers, so it's not like necessarily an act of charity or anything. it's just weird, to me, that service is a necessary feature of luxury. obviously there's work to be done and if the point is that customers shouldn't have to worry about work, so workers exist. my point is that i'm not used to this structure and that i think it's a weird what we do to create luxury.

i do not like buffets. the concept of the buffet dehumanizes food and reduces it to eating. it becomes a matter of delighting the appetite and not of combating hunger. one feels gross after too much food... the cruise aims to perpetuate appetite. there is, however, some primordial satisfaction, the satisfaction of the feast... but feasts should be rare celebrations, not something to do for three days straight. then again, plenty of people don't get this opportunity often, so i still respect the hustle of a good buffet. i do worry though that so much food ends up being wasted because a) it's impossible to have the right amount of food b) luxury requires the image of bountifulness, even if it is wasteful.

present me writing:

enseñada was a cool place although we didn't get very far on foot. i wish we could've toured longer but i also understand that my parents have little interest in foreign culture. i thought it was really interesting to see how tourism and cruises have affected downtown enseñada. later in the evenings, residents began to come out and hang around so i saw more people my age. mostly spent time walking and sifting through venders on bigger streets. i thought the cars were fun to see and i saw a lot of idaho and california license plates... also my cousins made us go get boba in frickin mexico which i thought was so funny.

lastly, i had a lot of fun with my cousins. i don't see them more than once or twice a year and only recently have i grown to like them. the boys are funny and around my age... the girls are all younger but they're entering high school. they've always been pretty distant from me and it's been difficult trying to talk to them but now i think we're finally getting past that. yay!

welp. that's it from me. i think this might be my longest blog yet because instead of trying to capture abstract feelings i also included personal experiences. hopefully this made some sense, both to you as a reader and to future me.

i hope someday i'll fix the issues i have. i don't really know how to overcome these reactions and feelings, or how to accept them. any advice?

- francis t.

12/16/24