You know what, if there's one thing I learned in 2022, it's that gratitude for what you actually have is going to carry you through the hardest times. Better than any fantasy. I'm grateful for my writing skills. At least you became educated enough to have skills. You can further develop it. You have the aptitude. One thing I noticed: You are actually good at it. Especially when you take it seriously. Believe it constantly and it will become truer than it already is. Okay, listen to more happy music instead. You're better off being a positive person. --- I believe I've reached a new low. I'm fantasizing about a celebrity courting me. Well, at least he's Vico Sotto. I'm using a false image of this seemingly perfect person to displace any shred of affection left for the Man. I know it's wrong, but it's working. I no longer think about the Man with such intense sexual longing. Vico Sotto is actually HVM. A real unicorn. How can he exist? I don't know. But at least this somewhat helps me get over the Man. What I'm actually doing is listen to Bad Suns songs while setting the scene of this purely romantic (but let's be honest, some polite sexual scenes because romance isn't purely platonic) tryst. It all takes me far away from the toxicity and sadness and negativity and tension of emo music. For this fantasy, it's all positive and chivalrous. None of that pseudo-romantic "I gotta have you right now" or "I'll die if I don't have you" or "let's share our sadness together" type of bonds. This is how relationships should be in this fantasy, where both man and woman are completely aware of the sin that so easily entangles, and both remain lucid and guard each other's purity. Like really romantic fantasies, which distract me from sin. Like him giving me a book that hits all the right spots. And me wondering how on earth he managed to do that. Or him just kissing my forehead after I tell him it's okay to kiss me on the cheek. Come to think of it, why are all (or almost all) of my previous fantasies with guys and crushes never romantic? It's like there's a male brain inside me. It's always sex or making out or kissing heavily. Why? What had happened to me so that I prefer physical intimacy over emotional ones? Even though the kind of abuse I got, if there was any that I really think impacted how I developed, was the emotional neglect kind. Is this some kind of escape? Did I never learn how to connect with people in that way because I was stunted emotionally? I don't recall ever being validated or affirmed emotionally when I was a child. I don't think I ever felt loved in that way. Perhaps this is why I'm obsessed with sex. It's the only thing I know because it's the only thing that has ever made me feel something, starting from early childhood when I'd get stirrings from these pornographic movies and fantasies and maladaptive daydreaming about various guys. It's the only thing that I've ever actually actualized ever since I discovered masturbation at 16, which ruined my life. I used to be a high achiever before that. Look what happened to me since then. In college, I was a wreck trying to find that kind of physical release once masturbation lost its novelty and being locked out of that social experience because I had no social skills or magnetic appeal. It was all the devil's plan. I can't believe I'm 24 and wasted so much time trying to fill that hole. My life is one big joke. It's not completely hopeless though. At least you're not a middle-aged person just figuring this out. Perhaps a sex drive is useful. Another reason why you should stop masturbating. I noticed that you tend to become really demotivated and lethargic when you've given in to your urges. When you haven't satisfied yourself in that way, you become more motivated to do whatever it is your doing, because it's like your brain intuitively thinks and accepts that whatever you're prioritizing at the moment other than orgasming yourself to death is going to get you sex later, with just extra steps, so you're in that productive zone without satisfying yourself. God did design us in a way to have sex drives, "base desires" that are only covered up by layer upon layer of abstraction, like go get educated, why, to get a job, why, to provide for spouse (or find a spouse), why, to get sex, why, to reproduce. It's like somewhere along the line people have managed to lose sight of the fact that the main reason why humans have all these abstractions like preening and posturing and fighting and cooperating in a community is to keep the DNA from dying out, or to survive, and to win genetically by producing, reproducing. What better way to motivate this than with something that feels so much like cocaine? Like orgasms, sexual touch, bonding, oxytocin, etc. --- Working theory: Men can be raised not to be so visually oriented or obsessed with sex if they are socialized to be emotionally whole people and affirmed and validated in their childhood. This has to start earlier in childhood. I'm not saying raise men as women. Just that maybe my experience being accidentally raised as a "man" who is obsessed with sex and so visually oriented instead of being emotionally oriented means that there is something in the way men are raised to be unfeeling, as if they are any less deserving or desiring of affection or touch, that makes them so attuned more to the physical intimacy aspect of relationships (because it's more attainable and is the one they can most easily experience and have fulfilment with, because of masturbation). I'm not saying sex drives don't exist in women. It's just that I've noticed I'm much more likely to be sexually jealous, sort of how a man would, than be jealous of emotional affairs. I don't know why. Maybe some part of me thinks emotional intimacy is less important because of, again, how I was raised or how I developed. Of course this is just one half of the theory. The other is always the existence of porn. Too much exposure to porn, even to people who are emotionally well-adjusted, will no doubt ruin brains that are most likely not immune to addiction. Especially those who have inherited addiction-prone brains. There was a study I read that not all people get addicted to gambling, or only some end up becoming addicted, while some play occasionally or "recreationally," which is still not good, as it's sinful. It's like a high-functioning addiction instead of a low-functioning one, which they can "manage." --- I feel so uncomfortable that I have a fetish. Or kink. Maybe fetish, if you count me fetishizing an entire breed of men who look like the Man. I can't even be attracted to other men now because this stupid obsession has gone too far to that point where I'm unable to be attracted sexually to other people. This is a travesty and I hate his guts and the people who made this addiction worse. --- Lol think of it this way. It should anger you just as much as you should feel grateful. You indirectly benefited from somebody else taking advantage of being attractive—your own mother—when she was able to attract your dad into marrying her. Your dad has resources, money. The future inheritance of land and other businesses. You're considered financially well-off because somebody thought your mother was fuckable. Even though you're not sexually attractive yourself. Lol. If you were born to your, let's say, aunt (not saying which, but maybe either your single Auntie Venus, or single Ae Bebot, who both could not keep a man for some reason (the former because she did not give her virginity to an American or foreigner, and the latter because she got cheated on with a nurse)), if you were predestined to come from either of their matrilineal lines, then you wouldn't even be born. They would've attracted men with less resources, because we all know men who are richer have more choices, or have their pick of women. They get to choose which beautiful girl to court. My aunts, if they were less picky, would've settled for poorer men, and if you were born in those unions, you wouldn't only have the misfortune of being born unattractive or sexually unappealing, you would also be unable to help your situation that much, since you wouldn't be able to get money to improve your appearance to attract rich men yourself. I sound like such a conspiracy theorist or an incel who has swallowed the black hole pill. But what I'm saying may have some truth. Men will always choose beauty. It's in their biology. Women will be socialized to prioritize men who have resources, as long as their attractiveness allows for it, or what they can "buy" with their beauty, because they need to have a provider for their children. Men want beauty because it's fertility they're after. All for reproduction, which is, again, not the main priority anymore. It's all lost in a sea of chasing after and basking in the process of acquiring the goal.