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spaceshipkat · 4 years

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Hi kat sorry for bothering you but do you think it's possible for unattractive women to find love? like I'm 25 and while i've been kissed/been on dates, i've never had a real relationship, all my crushes have been unrequited and my worst shame is that I'm still a virgin. I truly believe that it's all because of the way I look. I have thin brown hair and a widow's peak, acne scars and am overweight by about twenty pounds. Every new years I feel the same existential dread bc I know 1/2

I'm going to have to suffer another year of being horribly single. I hate looking at myself in the mirror and I constantly feel jealous of any pretty girl I see. All my friends are conventionally attractive and have boyfriends/fiances and my family always jokes about my singleness/how I'm the "ugly duckling". I have a really good life otherwise and I know I'm ungrateful, but I really want romantic love and to be seen as pretty, even by one person. Am I stupid and shallow? 2/2

hi anon! first, i’m so glad my blog is a safe place for you 💖 it’s taken me a couple days to get to this bc i wanted to make sure i had enough headspace to give you a good answer, but i’ve been thinking of you since your ask first came in! (i always read asks the moment i notice i’ve received one, though it can take me a little while to get to them.) and it’s not a bother at all 💖 like i said, i’m glad my blog is a safe place for you, and that i can be here for a booster.

so lemme start with the idea of virginity: remember that it’s a societal construct, one in which people are shamed for still being a virgin and shamed for not being a virgin, but there’s absolutely nothing wrong with having sex and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with not having sex. it’s unfair that society makes us feel like failures either way, but it only does so in order to continue to control us and our actions. having sex doesn’t make you better or worse, nor does it mean you’re missing out on something simply bc you haven’t had sex yet. there’s so much more to life than just that, and it’s why i’ve been focusing so much on setting up my life the past few years over being in a relationship: to me, it’s more important to figure myself out, to make a future i’m happy for, than to try to fit into a box that society demands of me or to rush into something i’m not ready for.

it’s certainly not easy, i’m not going to lie: most of the people i went to high school with are now engaged, married, or have children, while i’m still living at home to save for grad school and to focus on my writing. i’ve often said that age 25 would be the age i’d be okay with getting married, and although i’m now 25 i’m still single but i’m glad i didn’t rush into anything bc i would not have been in the right headspace. i needed to give myself time to grow up, to find a way to balance my mental health with my career goals. i often tell my brother, who’s 28, that it’s good he’s still single (he wanted to be married with a couple kids by now) bc he wouldn’t have been in the right headspace for starting a family in his early- to mid-20s. i keep reminding him that it’s unfair society demands 20-somethings have their lives figured out when we’ve only been alive for two decades. there’s so much to learn and experience, so don’t put a deadline on it.

anyway, to get back on track, you’re not stupid and shallow at all for wanting someone to look at you the way you hope. but i think it’s also important that we accept ourselves first. i’ve noticed that as i’ve gotten older i’ve begun to have fewer fucks to give over my appearance. i just got tired of feeling badly about myself, of not finding confidence in myself no matter the flaws i see on my person (flaws that, by and large, aren’t seen by anyone else bc people don’t look at us for flaws--well, people who are worth knowing don’t!), and i’ve noticed that the confidence i feel translates to an aura that’s inviting (as my little sister would say) and draws people to you. it can be difficult to do so when you’re not happy with your appearance, but you can still be confident, still dress the way you like, the way that makes you feel good about yourself, and roll back your shoulders, raise your chin, and be confident. when i was younger, i was often self-conscious about how i liked to dress, but now i’m happy in it, find confidence with my eyeliner (which i jokingly call my battle armor), and continue to get my undercut buzzed bc i like how it looks, like how it makes me look and feel.

i’m not sure if you saw it, but Charlize Theron was talking about how she adopted the “Queen” style of confidence when she was acting in Snow White and the Huntsman: she stood tall and rolled back her shoulders, thought “murder,” and walked. here’s a vid, if you wanna see :) and i think that holds true for just everyday life. find that confidence and use it, and you’ll find that people will be drawn to you, merely bc you exude a personality, a behavior, that’s intriguing. i often find that being body positive on here, the fact that i can help people see beyond what society force-feeds us, does wonders, too, in my confidence and outlook on myself. you offer positivity and you’ll receive positivity in return, bc you reap what you sow.

so to try to conclude this ramble, try not to look at the new year in the viewpoint of “i’ll remain single forever” (this is hard to do, believe me! it’s been a while since i’ve dated anyone and i worry i’ll never find The One, but i’m also aware that where i live is hardly a well of opportunities. that’s why i find it important to look around, to travel, to find out who else exists in other parts of the country and even the world, to not limit myself to where i happen to live, to never settle) but “i may be single now, but it will happen when i’m ready”. you give out positivity, you put a bit more confidence in your outlook on the upcoming year and what you hope to achieve in it, and that positivity will, day by day, little by little, help you to roll back your shoulders, raise your chin, and walk confidently while thinking “murder.”

i tell myself and my brother all the time that it is never good to settle. don’t settle for something bc you worry nothing better will come your way. as i often say, i would rather remain single than be in a relationship that doesn’t fulfill me, that doesn’t have the makeup of epic love stories we see in fiction, that doesn’t make me realize this is what i’ve been waiting for my whole life and how could i have been so silly as to think it would never come to me. there’s nothing wrong with waiting for the best life has to offer, even if society judges us for doing so.

and to society i say:

i hope i’ve helped! i believe in you, and i know good things will come your way 💖

#ask #anonymous #long post #body positivity #romance #romance advice #relationship advice #positivity #on the matter of love #friendly reminder #i'm not sure what else to tag #ask to tag #please lemme know if there's anymore i should add!#kat rambles #sex positivity

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thisnerdsadventures · 3 years

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a summer to remember

hello friends, i definitely just abandoned this whole blog, now didn't i

well i am happy to report that i am still alive, and am thriving!

Here's a rundown of everything that has been going on:

[inserting a readmore because this is long af]

May

So in May, I was definitely just all over the place because I was 1) trying to finish a paper published in a conference!! it literally drove me insane. anyways, then i had to go and finish a 78 page thesis, which involved a really convoluted timeline because i had to finish it ~ a week before the actual deadline so my PI could read it over, but then i had to finish it a few days before THAT so my PhD supervisors could read it over, which meant that i had like one (1) week to write like. all of it.

Luckily I had most of the first half already written, during whatever shitshow April was (April was a lot of coding for the paper, and then not having time to write my thesis). But THEN i had to organize all the data from my own personal experiments, make figures, and draft the entire results section. AND i had like two final reports to do for my class, so my last weeks of academia looked like....

Of course, the day before my thesis was due, I pulled an all nighter, because, of course. What other way would I ever end my academic career. Submitted it though, and I graduated! [LINK TO MY THESIS]

Also! I got vaccinated and felt like death for a whole day, but then my friend came over and we ate fried chicken and watched this show called Miraculous, which is a kids show from France, but for some reason is actually hilarious and really entertaining. Then I felt better, so I proceeded to work on my thesis.

Also, I guess I should talk a little bit about the class I took this semester, which was an industrial organization economics class. We looked at things like how different markets are organized, why they are that way, what market concentration means, how mergers affect competition, and what kind of effect that may impose on consumers. For the final case study (which, I will say, I wrote like 2000 words in a single day, so . applause for me), I looked at the Nvidia-ARM merger and how that may or may not affect competition in the GPU market, the CPU market, and the mobile chip market. I think my analysis was a little bit more surface level, which was fine for me, since I'm by no means an economics expert or even remotely should have any expectations at all, but I read a lot and learned a lot and that's the goal!

So yes, my brief excursion into the field of economics was overall positive, I feel like I learned a lot and now I can read financial articles about the tech industry and not be completely lost, which, again, was the goal.

But yes, May was a lot of work, and once it wrapped up, I got to spend a lot of time with friends post-vaccination! After the 1 or 2 week mark after my second dose, I started going back to the gym, especially to play basketball with folks, which I had missed a lot. I spent a lot of time at my old dorm just hanging out, and got to have a cute salmon dinner over at my other friend's place. And we made cheesecake too.

June (MA->NY->MA->CA)

I finally went to visit my best friend in New York. I hadn't seen her in > 400 days, so it was really a very anticipated event, except we saw each other across the crosswalk, but then the light took like five minutes to turn green, so it was really anticlimactic. Anyways, we ended up bumming around New York and Long Island for a week, and it was nice to spend some time with her after such a long gap.

We spent a day at a vineyard and I fell asleep so

After getting back to Boston, my mom came back from Taiwan to help me move out of my apartment. It was a lot of finding people to sell things to, sweating because it was very hot that week, and praying everything would work out (it did). I also got to have a few final meals with various friends and my mom and I got to take one last lark down the Infinite, which I was really grateful for because it was the first time visitors got to go inside campus in over a year.

Also got into my school's MBA program! Yes i applied to a deferred program (which is like you get into a program, but you don't have to go for 2-5 years, as a way of getting in right after undergrad/grad school, but then accumulating some work experience first). It was hilarious, I was literally shopping in my campus store for a new sweatshirt and I got a phone call from the admissions office saying I got in. My mom had been pushing me to apply to grad programs, and I didn't tell her about it because I didn't know if I would actually follow through. But I got to surprise her with the news, and she was so happy she did the whole "calling all the relatives" thing again.

After flying home, I told myself I'd read more and exercise more, which I have been doing. I got a membership at Planet Fitness, which has been really good for me (going 3x a week), and I've made my way through at least 5 books this summer so far. My holds list at my local library is literally insane. (For recs, I recently read Normal People, which I absolutely devoured, and In the Dream House, which hit really hard for me.)

This summer was also really about reconnecting with high school friends. All three of us were unemployed, with plans to come in the fall, so we were all free to hang out all the time. We started out at the local library planning out a road trip, and we worked out a few times together, and a few coffee dates too. We took a fun day trip down to LA one day, and we visited Malibu, went to the Getty, hit up some local food places in the city. Driving down the PCH with Taylor Swift blaring and the windows down on a hot June day, just hits so different. There is nothing like it.

My friend's birthday was in June, so we put together a little video for her and bought some jewelry, and had a Zoom call to celebrate. Then I got BBQ with some friends and sat in the parking lot eating ice cream until 11 at night just trading stories from our pasts. It felt like the perfect summer life, just staying out until whenever, grabbing food wherever we wanted, with friends I had had for literally a whole decade.

It was already a really good summer, but then July. July was crazy.

July (CA -> MI -> CA -> NV -> CA -> WA -> OR -> CA)

So one Sunday morning, I woke up to a text

Actually, I'm going to do a separate post on the whole Michigan trip because that sh** was on another level of spontaneous, impulsive, crazy life stuff. But anyways, so July started off with a trip to Michigan to visit my friends, and then I came back for the 4th, had 36 hours of rest before my high school friends and I went on a road trip.

This road trip was a little ambitious. We hit spots all up California, from hiking in Sequoia Nat'l Park to Kings Canyon, driving up to Sacramento and visiting art museums, and then going up to Tahoe but staying in Nevada, going kayaking and hiking and sitting on the beach for hours. It was reallllllly hot, but luckily I don't think it ever broke 90 degrees. The views were beautiful, especially at Kings Canyon. The drive in, you're surrounded by huge rock walls, with a thin river rushing by next to you. The hike itself literally feels like you're in nature, like the trail is somewhat defined but not paved, there are no sounds of traffic, the path isn't heavily trafficked so we were the only ones there for the most part. We even saw a deer and washed our faces in the river. Throughout the whole thing, we climbed into so many waterfalls, trying not to slip on rocks.

I hadn't been to Sacramento in over a decade, but it was a cute day trip. There isn't a ton to do there, but it was a nice reprieve from the constant driving and nature. We visited the Leland Stanford Mansion, the Crocker Art Museum, and Old Town Sacramento. A good chance to get a nice coffee, a sit-down meal, and some air conditioning. At Tahoe, we went kayaking on Pope Beach, with the clearest water I have ever seen, followed up by a hike up to a beautiful view of the Lake.

On our way back, we stopped at a lot of interesting places, like small towns like Lee Vining, where we found an Upside Down House; Manzanar, the site of an old Japanese internment camp during the WWII era (which also hit hard); and Randsburg, a literal living ghost town. Overall, getting to travel with my friends finally was so fun, they were so much fun to be around for five days, and getting to explore so much of California was so fun - even though I'd been here for so long, I never knew these places existed.

So I came back and had around 48 hours to recover before my mom and I took a trip up to the Pacific Northwest!

I've always wanted to visit Seattle, and figured I'd hit Portland on the way too. We originally wanted to go to Hawaii but it got so expensive by the middle of the summer, so we decided to stay a little closer to home (probs the better decision bc I was already so tired by this point).

Seattle! Got to visit Pike Place Market many times, grab some coffee at the original Starbucks, see Mt. Rainier, and grab food with three friends! Also went to Bainbridge Island for a day which was SO cute - got to do an olive oil/balsamic vinegar tasting, which sounds so extra, but is actually really unexpectedly fun. At Starbs, I did a cold brew flight, which resulted in a rough night of tossing and turning for me, but I think it was worth it. Other things included the Pinball Museum, Space Needle, and Chihuly Glass Museum!

So I lowkey really wanted to visit Portland because I wanted to achieve a long-lasting dream of seeing an NWSL game in person. So I went to the Thorns Pride game!!

The Thorns fanbase is actually insane, I cannot express to you, like there's this whole fan section that actually did synchronized cheers and routines and was actually ROARING when they scored the entire game. I swear the audience was actually watching them at points instead of the match. Overall, the stadium was going crazy, like I thought I was at a tied Celtics-Bucks game with how loud it was in there. Also I swear, Ali Krieger made eye contact with me and waved.

In addition to that, Portland also has a huge rose garden, a nice Japanese tea garden, a lot of good donut stores and a huge bookstore, so all very up my alley. We also took a day trip to see Mt. Hood and more waterfalls!!

That's a summary of the SEA - PDX trip. Once I got home, my high school friends and I did not waste any time on reuniting to hang out - we went and played ball, grabbed lunch, and then coffee, and then did the same exact thing like two days later and watched a bunch of TikToks, and then spent a whole day at the beach to send my good friend off to medical school in Arizona. They somehow convinced me to go in the water and I got body checked by a wave.

Saw this sculpture on the beach and teared up a little

So proud of my friends for making it to med school, I am so excited to see them at their white coat ceremonies and beyond, I swear I will cry at every step of the way I'm so happy for them. Now that July is pretty much over, most of my fun summer plans are too, and I finally get a chance to catch my breath from that busy busy month. Spending a lot of time watching the Olympics and trying to muster up the motivation to start a fulltime job in < 1 month!!

Overall, I feel like I've been having a really solid summer given the year that was the covid year. I had a Lot of fun, literally probably two summers worth of fun consolidated into one. I think in the beginning of the year, I really wanted this summer to be good, and I didn't have a lot of set plans for the summer, even by the end of May. But somehow, things came together, like Really together, and I had the best summer of my life in this summer 2021. On top of that, I'm reading more than I have since probably middle school, I feel the most in shape that I ever have, I can DRIVE NOW. Only thing that would've made it better was if I got to go back to Taiwan to visit the fam, but unfortunately I can't go back because of strict travel restrictions there and they had a COVID outbreak too :/ I still got around 3.5 weeks of summer to go, so we'll see how the rest goes :)

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vulcains · 7 years

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hey razz

(2/?) in high school i always thought it was bc i was from a conservative area and none of the guys were ppl i'd be interested anyway, or that i just wasn't ready for a bf yet, but now i'm at a liberal college (& i'm halfway done) and i'm still afraid of every boy who shows interest. but then, every time a girl shows interest i'm not afraid. like i'm afraid in terms of me not being experienced, but i still feel like it could be something i might be happy with pursuing. (con't)

(3/?) anyway, i mean obviously you can't tell me how to identify, but lately i've been thinking all of my attraction to men/all of my desire to be attractive to men might just be compulsory. but i'm also afraid to start calling myself a lesbian bc what if one day i DO find a guy im interested in dating -- like tbh i'm still holding out for that to happen bc i feel like being gay is so much more complicated and it's not something i ever want to tell my parents (con't)

(4/4) but also, the older i get and the more times i get scared when a guy makes a move, the more i think maybe that's just how it's gonna be forever. i just feel like i'd be much more comfortable with a girl, or at least if i was with a girl first and figured out the ropes i might be more comfortable with a guy later. idk this was a lot of rambling lol. this might be more of a vent than something you can actually give advice on, but thanks for listening anyway xoxo

5/5 also i feel like if i tried to talk to my mom abt this she'd immediately be like "what about harry styles and jason from the 5th grade" so like, idk how i'm gonna come out to her lmao

honey :(

i don’t really know where to start, but you don’t have to be with men. ever. like, that’s not a lesbian thing - if you’re straight or bi, you still don’t have to be with men. you don’t have to nurture your attraction until it blossoms into real desire. if you’re not into it, don’t force it because it’s what you think you should be doing.

i know there’s all these societal pressures and deadlines as to when you should be doing what, but just take your time. and especially for lgbt people, it’s really common to start all that much later than straight people.

anyway ur question i think was whether i was attracted to men? sure! i have dated and slept with a few men. i did it cos they were handsome and most were good friends, and i just thought it was what i was meant to do lmao. increasingly i started to question why i was doing it when it made me miserable and when i felt like i wasn’t really getting anything out of it? except anxiety. i didn’t really think i was a lesbian, but i’d been reading a lot and this sounds weird but i’d been fantasising about ~lesbian life~ and how nice that would be. so one day i had met someone new and it came up and i said i was a lesbian, just to try it out u know, but it was like this huge weight lifted and idk. it just felt right.

sometimes labels aren’t important and sometimes they are! lesbian was right for me because it let be label everything i was feeling and doubting and scared of. but i think it can be just as helpful to ignore all that and just do what feels right for you at the time. take a page from those obnoxious celebrities who are like “idk i don’t care about labels.” and if you decide you’re a lesbian and later fall in love with a man and ID as bi, that’s fine. there’s nothing wrong with changing and growing and learning more about yourself. same as there’s nothing wrong with bi girls who decide they’re actually gay, u know?

#Anonymous

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