TW: mentions of possible drinking addiction

12/07/2026

     Since my last post, I have finished writing final exams, got final exams' results, graduated, got a job and turned 18.

     A plethora of milestones I could go on and on about, for it seems like this is the year I start trying to take an active role in my own life. I'm trying to shed the narrator label I've attached to myself with a staple gun a long time ago, pretending that was the title I was fine with. It's not the desire for change that motivates me, but the fear of death, which grows with each passing day, week, month. I fear death will catch me by surprise. I fear not finishing a book, so every moment not devoted to it is a waste of the brief time I have to possess the consciousness to compose intricate stories, the numb fingers to hover over the keyboard, the bloodshot eyes to attentively observe the white laptop screen, hoping that something will finally emerge from the digital abyss without my intervention. I'm trying to even the life I created within myself with the one I got to leave my heritage in, in which, apart from creation, I must find space for personal experiences. Being a writer by passion means deluding yourself into thinking you can balance those two things. You can't, there will always be some inequality.

     I ugly cried through half of my 18th birthday party. Two people mixed up and drank too much alcohol, one fell asleep shortly after opening presents, and only the fourth one was still in the mood to party and kept up with me in the shots. I attach too much symbolism to events and cling too tightly to expectations, but all I wanted was to celebrate longer, and the party essentially ended around 2:00 a.m. because 3/4 of the guests had gone to bed, and before that, two of them spent more time on private conversations in the bathroom than with me. It wasn't about me being the center of attention as the birthday girl, I wanted them to have fun with me. Since they spent so much time alone in the small 1x2m bathroom, it was clearly more fun there. Sometimes I feel pathetic about how much I crave someone's presence. Okay, well, I feel pathetic about almost everything about myself. The only things that saved for me the memory of my 18th birthday was the fact that all of my friends' 18th birthdays were kind of shitty (one person from the friendgroup got sick and couldn't go on the long planned cabin trip, a sulky temper of someone's mother ruined the after-party cleanup, someone's birthday wasn't even supposed to happen, at another one a whole bunch of people were supposed to stay overnight, but in the end, I think only one person stayed), and I cling to every shared experience that brings us closer together, and the fact that crying for so long, drunk, sitting against the bathroom wall while your friend actively returns all the shots down the toilet can be romanticized in a twisted way, has the feel of a niche indie coming-of-age film. Such a level of misery that you don't even remember the extreme distressing charge of the emotions, only that they were extreme. And extremes are always better than none at all. I'm the antonym of stoicism, I need to feel it all to keep going. I run on wrath, passion, sorrow and love.

★★★

     I've been trying to write this entry for the past three weeks, I come back only when I feel something that I really need to get out of my chest. I feel lost. In the last six months, I've done more things outside my comfort zone than in my entire life, afraid of wasting even more time than I did during my teenage years. I thought I'd started to manage my anxiety, that I'd managed to muffle it and thus be able to experience what I've experienced since the beginning of this year: going to a cabin with friends, having many deep conversations about things I wouldn't normally dare mention, dancing to music in front of strangers, wear more expressive makeup. I finally started collecting memories; I felt like I was just now starting to live. But the ugly truth is, to achieve that state of detachment, where I'm not as self-concious about my every move and word, I have to drink. I count on a beer or two, or even a cheapest wine every time I see my friends. At the back of my mind, during functions, I'm always hoping someone will suggest a drink. It's not even about needing alcohol to have a good time. I crave honest conversations and an absence of the need to mask myself, and I can't do that without loosening my tongue with substances. This need for unfiltered honesty took its toll on me the day before yesterday. If I were sober, I wouldn't have pressed for the truth. I learned something I had suspected for a long time, but should never have heard from anyone other than the person it concerns. I was fed up with this huge secret that everyone in the group knew except me, and when I got confirmation that the secret was about me, I wanted to hear the rest. I shouldn't have. It's not that I heard it, because I didn't really heard much more than I already knew; my mistake was pushing for the confirmation. It could have been left unsaid, I could have pretended I wasn't sure, didn't know, that I never knew, and then he would have taken it to his grave, because that's how he is. Her telling me complicates everything. Well, not actually saying it, but we both knew we are thinking about the same thing, "If you're embarassed to say it outloud, you already know what that is". She broke the secret because of me. I know the secret and I won't do anything about it. I hope it's outdated now; the thought of any confrontation about it terrifies me. But the fact that I know increases the chances of a confrontation. I don't know how I'd react if he ever actually confessed. Two years ago I was in desperate need of closeness. Later I realized that it wasn't actually what I wanted, just the closest thing available, and I stopped whatever I was doing. The last thing I want to do is hurt him. I don't want him to stop believing in relationships based on truth and to get trust issues because of me. I should have never enter his life, I have made more damage than good. He probably wouldn't agree, I think he looks at me through false lenses of hope, he *wants* to see me in good light. I don't know why, I can only assume.

     That friend that broke the secret once assured me that he would never hate me, and she put a heavy, suggestive accent on "never", and even then I knew what it meant. It terrifies me. I don't know how things are now, maybe he emotionally distanced himself from me but still texts me because theres no other person to text. But nonetheless I still feel his heart in my hands. I really, really don't want to hold it, I'm not in any means qualified to be so responsible for someone else's feelings. I feel blood slipping through my fingers, dripping down my arms. Every one of my close relationships ended horribly. All of the past bridges were burned. I feel like I'm cursed, like every person that gets close to me suffers fatal consequences. I don't want to hurt anyone, I never mean it, but it happens anyway, they trust me too much and I panic and slip on the blood covering the floor and the heart falls out of my hands. I try to be careful but I always somehow manage to fuck things up. I already promised him once that I would make sure none of his secrets were revealed after it happened once because of the same friend. And I didn't reveal any, but I made someone else do. I should just respect that if it's not meant for my ears, it should remain so, even if he never has the courage to tell me himself. I once dreamed that he had lost all affection for me. His resentment is one of my greatest fears, because up until now, he's forgiven me so much, told me so much, trusted me so much. For him to give up on me would be a sign that I've screwed things up as badly as possible.

     I mourn what the relationship between our entire friendgroup could have been like if everything had turned out differently, if we had matured and learned to talk sooner. I'm losing hope that things will ever go back to what they used to be before all of that bullshit happened. Secrets and reproaches accumulate with every conversation and meeting. I wish I could tell him that I know, that I could get this out of my chest and ask for yet another chance to start over as friends. I think I accidentally make things worse because I might be the only one in the group that still doesn't want to let go. I don't know who to talk to about it. I don't know what should I do. Two of my friends gave up on trying to fix the situation, and the third, him... I don't know what he thinks or wants. I want him to be happy, whatever it would mean. But I feel like I can't give it to him. It's bad when I give up and it's bad when I try to do something. I would ask him if that whole situation wasn't mainly about him. I wish I had the courage to talk to him like I used to. I wish we were still best friends. I wish he met someone else instead of me.

     Yesterday, while I was hungover and heavily nauseous, I was going through the photos on my phone. I scrolled back to when my friend told me that he had confessed this secret to her. Around Christmas, circla two years ago. I tried to look at myself through his eyes, to see what there was to like. She said it must have been really serious since he couldn't keep it to himself. Then I realized how different I am now from who I was then, how differently I behave, especially around him, so I doubt he even recognizes me anymore. I feign confidence, which I still don't possess a shred of. I'm even more desperate about my appearance, even though I continue to neglect my body. I humiliate myself after drinking, and I drink at almost every hangout. Two days ago, that was over the top. I'm ashamed, even though the only likely witnesses were my friend and my brother, but I'm still afraid someone recorded it from the window and will post it on Facebook, and I'll become one of those people I once felt aversion to. I've finally gotten one foot out of my head and I don't want to go back there for anything, to spend my life saying no and hiding in my room again, with no stories to tell, but on the other hand, I'm losing the balance between "an anecdote-rich, spontaneous life free of constant shame" and straight up humiliating myself and desperately trying to romanticize it out of fear of remorse. I don't know if I'm finally on the right path. Maybe I'm making terrible, dumb mistakes that I'll regret in the future. Or maybe this hesitation, inevitable, will pass, and I'll feel alive again, the way I've felt since the beginning of this year. Maybe this is what it's like to be 18.

     Okay, coming back after a few minutes, I talked to that friend I was with two days ago and I feel a little bit less anxious. That's probably the consequence of living incredibly privately and then suddeny trying to get rid of that lifestyle - considering every embarassing, irresponsible fuck-up an ultimate moral failure. Not to say that it was fine to behave like that in public, where someone could see us, but I'll try not to beat myself up for it. Not the first and probably not the last dumb thing I'll do. I still feel awful about the conversation though, because this one was morally shitty, and it can affect someone. I really hope it won't.

I wish my writing was more positive, but I don't feel the urge to write when I'm in high spirits. One of the things that's probably keeping me from getting better is the fear of losing a part of myself because I've been depressed for so long that it has become ingrained in me and perhaps taken root forever. Sometimes I don't want to get better at all. It's familiar and somehow comforting staying miserable. I've been romanticizing it for so long to survive that now it seems more pleasant than actually becoming a mentally healthy person. For some absurd reason I fear that I would become uninteresting.

But I do have nice things to say, too. I passed my final exams with more than satisfying results. Everything above 80%, except for math that I passed with a 68% score. Before May I was sure that I wouldn't even get the necessary 30%. Most of my free time I have been working on the Micheal The Distortion's cosplay that I plan to go in on fantasy fair in August. I didn't expect myself to actually decide on cosplaying him, since it requires a wig, but I got one for 100 PLN and I will try to make it curly. My friend re-dyed my hair at a sleepover, so now I have fresh red on my head, and we plan on cutting layers to make it more interesting, since I'm tweaking to do something with it, but I don't want to chop them completely off (I feel more like myself with hair above my shoulders, but it's more comfortable to wear and looks better long, so I refrain from impusively grabbing the scissors). Every now and then I go back to the miniature room for my lps and spend the whole day sewing accessories and gluing together tiny furniture. I have trouble with working on my book. I think it mainly has to do with me frying all of my braincells by doomscrolling tiktok for hours. I want to completely get rid of it, but FOMO and the need to be chronically online holds me back. I have to find a way to use it less often and still know what's happening in the communities.

     I've been thinking about my gender identity lately. My biggest struggle with queerness for a few years was figuring out my orientation (zero experience in relationships other than crushes wasn't helping). Eventually, I settled on bisexuality (still not sure if pansexuality wouldn't fit more, but it depends entirely on the definition you attach to those terms) and the asexual spectrum, which I won't go into much detail about for obvious reasons. I decided that if I felt something was changing, I'd simply update the information as needed. I know that if you're unsure, you don't have to define yourself, but I guess it's human nature to have an inner need to label yourself. Naming something makes it less confusing sometimes.

     But I think I perceive gender identity differently. When I was about 12, I wondered if I was nonbinary. I wrote a "cameo" for me and two of my friends for my book. I described myself from the narrator's perspective as a "gender unidentified kid." While making myself in dress-up games on picrew, I used to sometimes add for a moment NB flag in the background or as a little pin, to see how it feels like to settle down on that label. I remember actually planning on telling my mom (glad that I didn't, six years later and I'm still not out to her or my dad about the fact that there's a possibility I'm going to bring a girl home someday, so I can't even imagine explaining them that I also don't feel entirely like a girl). At some point I abandoned gender-related considerations. Now, I don't know if my contemplations were influenced by the times I was growing up during (circa 2020) and the fact that many people then started exploring their gender identity, but for a long time I thought that yes, it was just that.

     But do other girls feel some kind of euphoria from being mistaken for a boy? I was on holidays with my brother and two cousins on a trampoline when that woman said to her child "boys are playing, we can come here later"; I used to take awkward and  incomprehensible to me at that moment pleasure in avoiding using my pronouns in online games' chatrooms to mislead others about my gender. When I'm at work, lifting heavy objects and wearing stereotypically masculine clothes, I feel... somehow attractive? I don't even know if that's the correct name for that feeling, but even two days ago, before going on a bike ride with my friend, when I was trying to unscrew an element from a bike with my bare hands, I got them dirty and scratched my skin, it felt... I don't know how, but it was nice. Like someone could like me in that way.

     I don't have a problem with calling myself a girl, that term feels nice and fitting, it contains the whole strange experience of growing up as, hm, a weird *girl*. You can probably see in my digital footprint that I often refer to myself as "something year old girl" or "a teenage girl", instead of "im something years old" or "a teenager", that word has enormous meaning for me, perhaps because of how often I've used it over the past few years to describe myself. At the same time, my definition of it would differ from most people's, because I also include things beyond the chromosome or what's in my pants. "Girl" as "me" is different for me than "girl" as "some other girl". But I can't stand when someone calls me a woman. I can't imagine ever calling myself a woman, not even when I'm 30. Not because of any negative connotations, it's not internalized misogyny, not this time. Because I do consider womanhood something beautiful and special and worth celebrating, I think that everyone that considers themselves a woman should announce it with their whole chest, with pride. But it's not something that's mine, or something that I'm a part of. Theoritically I should, since I'm an adult and now considered a "woman" by law. I think I'm so comfortable with "girl" because I twisted the meaning so much that it doesn't hold that much... gender binary that forces me to... pick a side? You know, that's the thing, I can't tell if I'm just fed up with gender norms and stereotypes, or if I might actually not be cis. But I feel like I would know if it was just the first option. It's too emotionally charged to want people not be so sure about what gender I am, to sometimes look extremely masculine and other times extremely feminine or most times entirely androgynous. How I perceive myself and want to be perceived fluids, mixes. I wish I could wear a drawn on moustache, added to my daily funky makeup, but my friends would ask questions, like, if it means anything, and I would have to either lie and say no or try to explain that it makes me weirdly euphoric. I know that it doesn't have to make sense even for me, and I don't have to pressure myself for labelling it, but I really WANT to figure that out. It doesn't matter at all, since it wouldn't change a thing, and gender is one of the least important things to me about anyone or me. It's just, I don't know, curiosity and exploring. I changed the pronouns in my bio. To see how it feels to actually accept that I DO want to be refered to as they/them or maybe even he/him, alongside with she/her.

     I'm looking at this whole rambling now and I see that it still doesn't fully convey how I feel. I'll just write down everytime I feel like not-entirely- or not-only-a-girl and then try to draw conclusions.

     This is the first time in a long time that I've thought about my gender for more than five minutes. I kind of feel like that one tweet, especially since I get those random thoughts mainly at work, for some reason, and until now I thought to myself "yeah, no, I'm not unpacking that now". Accepting that I do like a little label for myself would probably be helpful to explore that more, because what's holding me back is some annoying gremlin in my ear whining "you don't need labels, hurr!". Fair, but I want them. Not a need, but a want. For myself and people on the Internet because there's no way in hell I'm telling this my IRL friends. Maybe someday. Definitely not now, in case I'm wrong. I don't know, I'm confused. About pretty much everything. It's weird being 18.