Blog Entry: Aprile 9th, 2025

If you can't tell by the artwork, I'm drowning.

I'm drowning in life, in school, in familial obligations, under the weight of expectations. The hardest part of it all, is that I'm not even under the most amount of stress I've had in my life. I've had harder time periods before, when everything has actually been going crazy. This time around, it seems it's just my mental health that's driving me to the brink. it seems to be tied to my period too because i swear, it's cyclical. the week before my period starts i start to get suicidal ideation which is like, freaky for someone who's not suicidal! its like my brain goes "oh drive off this bridge!" and i have to "...wtf was that..."

i don't really want to be a debbie downer but like. im so done with school. i can actually not get anything done. my motivation? at an all time low. i sometimes can't even change without turning music on because like i am just so exhausted emotionally. i've legit had panic attacks over a couple classes because i'm so overwhelmed by them. it's like my chest gets tight and my brain is swimming and there's this everpersistent looming sense of dread. tis great :D /sarcastic

i think i've had depression since i was 13. im like 90% sure i have adhd. and apparently im developing anxiety which is delightful. i just... i want to get these ugly emotions out somewhere, just release them already and wake up to a new world where i'm not so tired, so drained, so incapable of doing the things i need to do. it takes me so much more internal effort than my peers just to be where they are and it wasn't always this way.i've been stressed out ever since august and i keep realizing and forgetting that, which only adds to that problem. the stress of just being up to date on the news is certainly not relieving the mental stress i've been under either... i've lost sight of who i really am and that's what's affecting me the most. who am i if i'm not an athlete? who am i if i'm not a student? i just don't know and because i'm scared of it all, i can't take those questions. i had such big aspirations in the beginning of the year but it seems like it's all gone down the drain. anywyas onto the friend drama

the friend drama

so a good chunk of this was written on different dates, so thats why some things appear out of chronological order

okay so i have this friend, who may or may not be a good friend for me. to really understand the situation, we have to go back to two years. we originally met in this supplementary tutoring session that was made available to us for a chem class we were taking. we were not in the same lab/section but she recognized me because we live in the same neighborhood and i've been consistently running in my neighborhood for like 7ish years at this point? mind, this was the first time we met and we also found out we went to the same church and that we both hated this one guy that taught the baptism classes in our church. (for good reason, he's a very sexist, rude and overall deceitful man who often shares things people shared to him in confidence/in a confession.)

anyways we stood around chatting with each other for like a solid 2 hours, but i will admit she is much more domineering in a conversation than myself, even though i can definitely be a chatty kathy as well. perhaps this was the first warning sign i ignored... we saw each other a few more times that semester and decided to try to take the next class of this chem series together. our schedules ended up aligning and so we took general chemistry 2 together. she was much better at chemistry than me, even though i'm not like that bad, mostly because she went to a better high school than i did and had already covered these topics previously.

for the first half of the semester, it was cool and all, no problems. except slight um, quirks, started to really rub me wrong. as my mom put it, "she has the personality of a knife". she would be very condescending at times, never said anything outright but it always felt like she was making it clear that she had a much tougher life than me, that I didn't work as hard as her. it always felt like she was trying to prove something, that she was better than me, wiser than me, even though I'm technically a year older than her. Kvetching about something to her resulted in her giving unasked advice about things that I didn't really want advice about, I just wanted to complain. But y'know, I was struggling in that class because the professor was a bad teacher so I sucked it up. Once the semester was over, I'd only see her every so often.

I saw her once over winter break, when we both were at the youth caroling event. Spring break did not have much contact between us other than a sporadic text or two because we were taking different classes and I was very much busy being a student-athlete during the competitive season. However, once the season and semester ended, I remembered that she was apart of the young adult choir in my church and decided to join. She was not apart of the choir over the summer, which was a bit daunting since I was joining a new group of people without knowing anyone! It was a bit lonely at first, but there were some nice people who were friendly and kept inviting me to their after-choir ice cream hangouts so that was great. I wasn't really close to anyone but I'd say I was friendly with most people, except like two girls.

One of those girls, would flip flop between being warm and cold, and I would soon realize it would depend on the other girl, her friend. I really wanted to be friends with this second girl because she graduated with a similar degree to mine and was working into getting into the same type of grad program I wanted to go to, so I thought: we must have so much in common! it would be great just to get her advice on academic things because she's already gone through them! Yeah, no, not to be. Maybe I was bit too overly friendly, but eh, I don't care at this point. That girl was just very standoffish towards me and rarely initiated conversation with me first, while clearly acting very different around her friends, after two months of us sitting next to each other because we were both sopranos. Based on what I've seen of this person and things I've heard about her, she is just a cold person who doesn't care about others and uses them to get what she wants. I can't force someone to be friends with me and I eventually stopped putting in the same amount of effort when trying to befriend her, which she noticed and eyed me weirdly for a week. I wasn't rude, just didn't say as much to her because I figured, she didn't want to be friendly with me.

Anyways, summer passes and I'm slowly getting integrated into choir when my friend, who were are going to call D from now on, returns from her vacation and brings her friend S back with her. Since clearly, I have spent like 5 months with D in lab, I'm clearly much closer to her than other people in the group because I just don't know them that well. I get to know S and we become friends as well.

In the beginning, it was not that bad. We'd see each other twice a week for choir, maybe sometimes at church, and occasionally we'd go out for In-n-out after choir. Nothing too crazy. However, D, with her force of a personality, immediately brings beef with the two girls previously mentioned, the other two sopranos. For reference, the rest of the sopranos consists of D, S and me, with another girl ocassionally attending. I, having been here for two months without her, didn't have beef with them but there certainly was some tension between me and the other two. This is one of the first red flags I ignored. Another is the fact D telling me that she brought one of the sopranos (the shyer one) into the choir and gave her friends but then this girl decided to ditch her. (Yeah, I wonder why... ) The beef consists mostly of them snarking back n forth and then complaining to friends when the other sings off-key, with occassional elbow jabbing.

(Sidenote: Back when D and I had chem together, she would constantly talk about this one guy in choir whom she bantered and the two teased each other with insults. I joined choir and never met him... I honestly doubt he existed.)

Continuing on, semester was hard because of like depression and knee and all that jazz, so I honestly do not think so hard about this because I'm in my fugue state and at least, I have someone to talk to twice a week and who occasionally invites me out to go places. Things don't become so blaringly obvious past December.

Okay, so once Christmas has passed, D, S and I decided to weekly Saturday brunch because we all live in the same neighborhood and by that, I mean I can walk to their houses within 5 minutes. This is where D latches on much more. S begins to pull away from the friend group (I do not blame her). And past New Years, D begins to call me frequently. Like I said, I'm chatty but this girl is whole nother level. Most of the time, I cannot get a word in edgewise. It's not so bad when I'm on my commute but sometimes she calls me and I'm trying to do homework, and I'll like hint that I need to put the phone down and she'll say "yeah yeah, one sec" or "well, it cant be that hard to focus on two things". Her calls begin to eat up my time. Mind, I call her fairly rarely, only when I need to confirm something with her like what to wear for an event or if we wanted to go to X for brunch.

So I'm talking with this girl near every day, and once again her quirks are starting to rub off on me. After a lot of thinking, I think that deep down she has a lot of insecurity and anger that influences her actions. Like, sometimes I swear, she's mad at people for simply having it better than her. This girl ranted at me for 20 minutes about how FAFSA was unfair and how all students should disclose whether they paid for their tuition or if FAFSA covered it, because she never got any and she had to pay so much for her UC school and did you know she negotiated a lower tuition for herself! Girl.... the reason you don't any/much FAFSA is because your parents make bank. You went to private school... Most people in the Slavic community do not make that sort of money, we're truckers and tradesmen and clerks n stuff. For real, sometimes I truly doubt if she has any sort of empathy towards people because she was constantly judging people (most recently a 16 yr old boy who chased a birthday girl around with a slice of cake to throw at her which she made it sound like the worst faux pas ever).

Another brief tangent, she's so controlling of her siblings. She treats her 18 yr old brother like he's some sort of idiot and didn't want her 10 yr old sister watching Iron Man, saying that she should watch the live action Cinderella. Like as a 10 yr old, I was way more interested in super hero battles than princesses, no offense! She's also made multiple remarks about how she'd smack her siblings if they dared act a certain way... damn, I was blind.

So anyways, she comes back in the New Year and becomes co-director with another dude, because our old one left due to taking on full time school and a job. And at first, it seems good. Yes, she's nervous about conducting but that's normal. For the majority of her first month, I was out with a horrible bout of the flu but she'd call 3-5 times a week and vent about that, like how horrible the other two sopranos were, how S was not showing up for choir, etc. I didn't take all of this at face value but I just let her vent because I figured she needed it.

Anyways, I come back to choir and guuuuuuurl. The learning curve for her to be a conductor has barely started. She's very quiet when counting us in, is like overly strict for whatever reason and counts people in weirdly and then says "Well I'm classically trained". Present me wants to say that it doesn't matter if she's classically trained if other people are not and do not understand where to step in. Ugh! And then she starts complaining about other choir conductor, who's also fairly new. He's got his faults but he's much more friendly and lax than she is. Like, she was singing his praises just a week ago?

Gah! There's like a million other things already but this is long enough already so I'll just jump to where I had the blinder peeled off, where I was not just annoyed her traits but realized just how hateful and condescending she is towards me. We were supposed to go to San Francisco for a day trip two weeks ago but both her and my car ended up breaking down, and the other girls didnt want to drive (valid), so we ended up having brunch at a local burger place. I asked in the group chat if anyone wanted to grab brunch and if they did, there was this good local burger place. No one replied by midnight so I assumed no one wanted to go, right?

Wrong! Three of them showed up to the restaurant at noon and called me going, where are you? Uh, asleep? So anyways I rush there because I do love that burger joint and we chat, D, S, another girl and I. And in the convo there were some things that annoyed me, her dominating the convo, offering unsolicited advice to one of the girls when she kvetched about clumpy mascara, etc. But yknow, this is just what friendship is like? Yeah theres some bad parts to her, but she also reaches out to me and is active and invites me places (something i struggle with a lot). And then, we go onto a topic which I despise talking about in my community: politics. Look, most of them are not well educated and if they are, they're very close minded and deep in the MAGA hell. Which I do not agree with but I've learnt to bite my tongue, especially because I know that D will not be swayed or convinced when she believes she's firmly in the right.

And then she goes onto even more riskier waters: Ukraine. Mind, she knows I'm Ukrainian, she's half Ukrainian herself and so are some of the other girls. And she parrots the blind rhetoric Vance and Trump gave that Ukraine isn't grateful enough, that Ukraine would be dead without US aid, that they're the ones who provided the most aid (which most of came in old tanks and planes :) so not all of it is monetary) and I said "the EU provided more actually," and she just "no, i did my research." and she just keeps going on and on with her lies.

and im just done. you know that i have family living there. that i am ukrainian. and then you complain about the ukrainian refugees, show little to no compassion to people, belittle other people and myself, complain constantly, talk over and are just over all, a really bitter person who only thinks of herself?

i'd like to say im going to stop being friends with her but thats much more difficult than it looks like right now. i like choir, i love to sing and i missed choir when i stopped ( i used to be apart of another choir in my teens). but i cannot be the same type of friend now nor be as close. there's a reason why people pull away from her, why everyone treats her at a distance and i think the only reason i fell for her trap was because i didn't see how she treated others back in chem. if we met in church, i probably would've steered clear of her too.

anyways. thats my vent.

update:

so i saw D (toxic neighbor friend) today because we were both invited to the same birthday party. i would say i was still friendly to her but today i just refused to be sucked into her conversation vortex where she just keeps you in a convo the entire time and will only let it end when she wants to talk to other people.

anyways so i talked to some other people and generally had a good time, other than being incredibly aware of how D was using her conversation vortex on this other girl but eh, what can i do.

so for these past 2 weeks, ive slowly beginning to doubt what D has been saying because somethings just straight up do not add up. like previously, she mentioned that there was this one guy in choir that she joked with all the time but i did not observe. i think that the guy she mentioned is still in choir, he does have a goofier personality but no interactions with her that matched with her previous stories. plus the fact, she said she likes running too **BUT** i have never seen her on a run and ive been running in this neighborhood for 7 years. she claims that she likes running in the morning in the summer, which is a time i do not like run. i have done morning runs but admittedly not preferred so i shouldve seen her at least once... like i know other people in this neighborhood who like to occassionally run ? the math aint mathing

then, today she mentions to this girl that she loves using the pools at her uni, twice she mentions that she loves swimming to other people, but not to me. mind, this girl knows i love swim, is one of my favorite hobbies, used to be a swimmer, etc. and now its like... she's claiming to love swimming but if she did, wouldn't she mention it in convo with me? ask for advice or something? thats something i do with other runners or triathletes, so it seems strange she wouldnt bring this up in convo with me ?

so now im starting to think shes either a liar or exaggerates everything greatly. because it seems like she picks "hobbies" up or does stuff that people are talking about to make herself seem better ? more interesting? i honestly dont know why someone would want to do this other than insecurity

yet another update:

i deadass don't know what to do with this girl... i've entrenched myself too much in this friend group :/ but tbh, i can't really afford to deal with it rn because i need to get my academic life together and get fit... so that will be for another blog post i guess

Art pictured above is Downfall by Max Klinger, downloaded from Unsplash from Art Institute of Chicago.