This must have been really confounding and frustrating to deal with in a partner, especially when they are so unwilling to give back anything for you. At this point I think I just stopped having her over mostly, and just grinded games as much as I could.

And there is no way at all that I communicated myself clearly on this issue, or gave her perspective any credence. It definitely was a pervasive issue for us throughout. I don’t really feel very good summarizing all this, kinda just a broad bloated history without much

Content or introspection. I kinda already thought this stuff a lot, and didn’t add much. I don’t know if there is much to add with what I remember. :/ well this was kinda worthless. Think I’ll continue the thread in new tweet with next thing.

Fucked mental health, and I think gail was kinda just supportive and was mainly concerned with keeping me out of depression/anxiety/ED. Which I could talk to death about how unbalanced and screwed the dynamics of that are, but I’ll try to stay centered around OW.

When I reached GM I started team play and a lot of scrimming and hard grinding. This is when the social influence kinda started to get to me I think. The culture was very very grind focused and demands a lot of time, and I didn’t really talk this over with gail, and I think just

Acted like an asshole when she would talk about how I was never really around and never really wanted to do anything other than ow. There was a lot a lot of tension around our relationship and ow, and I remember it being a very big argued point. She was absolutely supportive of

My accomplishments and was truly happy I had found something I enjoyed, but noticed how unbalanced my life was in order to just play. And honestly it’s not even like I wanted to go pro really. The goals were the ranks themselves for a while and it was just a fun puzzle to crack

Every waking moment was thinking about it, even in class. At the start of our relationship, I would invite gail over and just,,, have her watch me play? How fucking bazaar and why she put up with that idk. I would let her play sometimes but that’s like all we did.

I guess I don’t know how to think or even approach that. I guess I was just so addicted that it was just “this is the thing you do for fun” and nothing else fit the bill. That just feels like too far back in my memory to properly contextualize or understand.

Sometime in there I started grinding the game to improve really hard. Immersing myself in video tutorials, gameplay, and a whole lot of ranked games.I joined a team at one point early, and stagnated for a bit there until it broke up.For the most part though it was a very isolated

Journey. I didn’t really talk with anyone within the OW scene until Muzhoka, and even then it was still pretty solo. I tried out for a team when I hit masters, but it was really scuffed so I decided to wait until GM. Throughout this time I think it was the period of seriously

And embarrassing. I think I just have a lot of emotions tied up in the game, as holdover from my younger experiences growing up with it. Like I still have some bazaar ego around my main account, and it’s really weird. Like more than just comp points, I have the desire to be

GM by the end of the season. Like last season I played much more than 25 games of tank just so I could end GM even though it was an awful meta. Maybe it’s just a proving it to myself thing? But it feels very much social. Li ke I need to continually prove through the number

That I am proficient enough. For respect? Idk, it’s really odd and I don’t think I have anything else like this, and it feels really gross. Maybe it’s bc like interacting with low elo ppl are like :O wow and I wanna keep that up? Maybe just Isaiah? I’m really not sure.

This has been a terribly formatted rant without a conclusion so I think I’m just gonna move on. Part 2 was reflecting on OW and relationships, and I think this memory lens provides a lot of insight. OW was kinda just my life for a while, and I dumped all my time into it.

I think part 1 is easiest to address so I’ll start there. I started playing because it was a new season, and it was a good thing to be busy with to avoid schoolwork. Everyone does placements at the start of the season, and waiting too long makes people disgruntled when you play

With them. So I suppose that’s why I felt pressure to play right away, besides just the novelty of a new season. But why play at all? It’s one of the only games I have that I really enjoy and understand and keep coming back to. But that history is all kinda sunk cost now yknow?

I think I have enough justification to casually play the game, and ranked is just more fun than qp, so casually playing ranked is fine too. But why tryhard on main? I don’t want to go pro or anything, and relearning the meta live while interacting with pro ppl can be daunting

Me doing the work for my markets class all in one burst because it’s basically all I enjoy. This makes learning fun for like two days out of the week and leaves the rest to be dismal and uninspiring to start. I might try spreading it out better this week.

The other major aspect had to do with overwatch starting a new season. I completed the 75 games needed for combined T500 (+10 open queue placements) in a very short period of time, and this was a lot considering I rarely play ranked seriously at all anymore.

I think there’s a lot of interesting stuff to unpack with this. 1. Why play? Why play all at once? Why now? Why stop after 75+10? 2. Understanding of how overwatch impacted my relationships

I think reflecting on the last few days will be good for me and have made me think a lot. So the first thing is that school work motivation has been very lacking, much more severely than before. The cause is a little confusing though. I think it might have something to do with

I miss cuddles and sleepover and texting her without anything to say, just wanting to talk bc it made me feel better. Frustrating lack of that rn.

Basically for the most part I don’t think I was a bad person, just probably bad at filling the primary monogamous partner role she was looking for. And I would have to do the introspection if she went further to characterize me as a bad person throughout.

I guess I’ll never know, and that’s alright, but it would be interesting. Even if she didn’t, I would have to be careful that she wasn’t taking it easy on me, so I think it’s important to be self reflective regardless.

Efforts and opinions. There were a lot of meh things about the relationship that caused a lot of disconnect, but there was also a lot of great things too. Stuff like this makes me worry that she will realize this stuff too and not want anything to do with me, or will look back

Negatively on the relationship. And thats not so much like “oh no I’ll feel bad or won’t be able to get value from her anymore” and more like her opinion and perspective is important to me and I would feel uncomfortable with that characterization of myself.

As in like I would have to do a lot of introspection and work out whether I thought that was accurate. As of right now I don’t think the relationship was all bad, but I do acknowledge many of the bad aspects that were primarily on me.

And that could be either me sort of choosing to do something not great, but mostly just me having a much different personality than her. But the average person could totally handle and be compatible with, but I made it sort of miserable.

She put in lots of effort, it went mostly unappreciated, and I didn’t really give much back. Obv oversimplifying but yeah I don’t think a coincidence. And like often a complaint I had is that we didn’t talk about enough stuff but? She sent things she wanted to talk about,

And they were all things that related to me that I would like. I think it was more severe on Instagram bc I just saw it as something to clear the notifications of, but still that’s pretty shitty.

I’m not under the impression that doing anything more would have saved the relationship, nor would that be desirable. But it is good to keep in mind how much I was missing out on because I was too stubborn or careless. Not to mention it shows a sort of lack of respect for her

Scrolled through Instagram messages she sent me, and... idk. Kinda forgot how well she knew me. And she would also send like political stuff or even philosophy stuff related to me, and I don’t think I ever really engaged. I guess that’s a good metaphor for the relationship.

Part of me wants to do like research on something I care about, but also that sounds like effort and energy that I just don’t have.

I’m always like honest with people when I talk, but idk I haven’t talked with anyone recently thats like challenging. Everyone is just kinda uninteresting. She was fun and challenging and smart, it felt like I wasn’t wasting my time.

Not exactly sure why but I’m missing her lots rn. It’s been about a month and kinda just now am I like, yeah I’d like for her to come over, just to hang out. Tbh tho I might just be bored. School feels really dull and forced. Don’t feel very motivated or interested.

rn) I dont think we'll ever have that closure. which on one hand is like eh so what I have all sorts of relationships without closure, but yknow she was an important part of my life for an important time in my life.

i dont really know what to say, these threads always ramble. i miss her, and i wish relationships in our society weren't treated this way. but like given the context the relationship took place in, and how much it was informed by society, a full break up with big time gap was

necessary and inevitable. the only thing that would really suck is if those social standards played a large part in keeping us from being close after. but i mean its also possibly a good thing thatll force me to get other friends, like it would be maybe pretty boring not to have

any irl friends, but I don't want "bro" friends. queer ppl would prob be good place to go, but at this point i dont rly understnad how making friends works so thatll be weird. Ill be forced to do a lot of things outside my comfort zone now, :/ but also good for me prob

for some reason tho i really wish we could talk about the sex stuff. maybe its just bc i feel guilty and want her to validate me, but i think (or hope) it might be more than that. she was the only other one there, and I think her perspective would be valuable. ideally she would

have thought about it ahead of time, and we could just chat things out. And part of me thinks, so what? if she disagreed with me and thought I was like the worst person in the world, thats her problem. but like i really dont want to be blinded by just having my personal bias

like despite it all being in the past and i wont act like that again, i think it would be nice to break it down and be forced to be confronted with that stuff. and the other thing is i think shes really smart and i respect her opinion when she spends the time on issues

that all being said, I know that closure is kinda just some elusive thing that doesn't really happen and I dont think this fairy tale will ever happen. 2022 will probably have some awkward texts, maybe we'll meet up once, but yeah idk. even if we do remain friends (dont see how

Which makes breakup like even more inevitable, if the relationship im looking for has constant communication on a meta level about whats going on and what we want it to be and processing what is happening, its just super challenging to do that with someone who its not their style

like she def leaned back on the hueristics of dating and how things should be and then worked from there, rather than designing those things for herself. which tbf is super fucking hard and im incredibly privileged to have the time and space to think about that stuff, and its

also just my preference. Our differences definitely became apparent at the end, and I suppose the breakup is for the best, bc i dont think she could deal with any other way. like the category of "boyfriend" provided a lot of utility to her in the same way that gender does, and

those types of categories were rapidly becoming not my style in any way. Im aware that it was too fast and radical and I didn't handle that well, but tbf she didnt really want to talk about it much either. idk the whole thing is messy.

I really wish we could still have a relationship (not like a *relationship* but like a friendship). I really valued talking with her and I miss the intimacy of knowing someone that well and them knowing me that well. I understand that she needs time and ultimately I think its

for the best for our relationship, but its times like these when the relationship anarchy stuff is just so appealing. Like oh this part of our relationship doesn't work anymore? lets communicate and reform how it works. It would be nice to process and look back on things with her