killjoy

11/22/2025

they say comparison is the death of joy, yet humans are also wired for pattern recognition, so in short i feel guilty a lot

it’s normal to reflect, right? probably, but i feel like i may be doing it too much. i don’t want to be the guy who talks about my ex constantly, though they were my only social contact for the entirety of my teen years, so a lot of my memories are entwined with them. is it wrong to ruminate, to even bring them up to my current partner? i try to minimize it, yet the worry remains.

honestly, most of the comparisons i can make are positive; the only negative that comes to mind is that i’d been talking to my girlfriend two weeks instead of two years before dating, so we don’t know literally everything about each other yet. that will resolve in time, and i’m eager for every moment. all other points of contrast are an improvement.

it’s not a fair comparison. one relationship lasted eight years with a semi-messy breakup that i still have stress dreams over, another has been going for three weeks where our only struggles arose from miscommunication and were resolved via simple conversation. it’s too early to draw any sweeping conclusions, especially when the early days with my ex barely counted as a relationship (i was twelve, we were basically best friends who said “i love you” for the first couple years), yet my pattern-seeking mind makes them anyway.

some of it’s me. i now know i have ocd, so i can implement strategies to combat it and ask for support when needed. i’m coping better with my eating disorder, so there’s no awkward semi-enabling as they turn a blind eye because they know i react poorly to offered help; they can ask if i ate without me taking it as a threat, something likely impossible just a year ago. i’m medicated and, most importantly of all, no longer a teenager, so i’m marginally more stable than i have been historically.

other things are not. my ex had a habit of talking over me, often due to technical mishaps, but a habit nonetheless. sometimes they would circle back, other times they wouldn’t. eventually i stopped trying unless it was very important, and even then it was fifty-fifty on whether i’d drop the subject out of anxiety.

my current partner /likes/ listening to me, whether it’s my essay-length texts or unprompted trauma dumping or incoherent babbling about video games/music/a tumblr post i saw years ago. the last category makes them want to kiss me apparently; not to shut me up, but because they find it attractive when i yap. beyond that, they’re a very attentive listener, asking deeper questions about serious and silly topics alike because they want to understand, not just nodding along until i shut up. i can’t remember the last time anyone’s done that for me, if ever. even when we were in person, i rarely felt like my ex was interested in what i had to say. it’s such a stark contrast that i can hardly put it into words.

we’re more aligned in ways both big and small; we both hate travel (ex was always Doing Things), we use the same emoticons (ex thought :) was passive aggressive for whatever reason), we both plan to stay in [state redacted] and want kids and are really attracted to each other even if actual sex is a bit scary.

the fact that they find me hot might always be mindboggling. i don’t think i’m hideous per se, but i’m certainly not up to conventional standards - if anything, i thought i’d only be seen as desirable if the perceiver thought i was a woman. but they don’t. they see me as i am, small and effeminate and still insistent on manhood regardless, and they like it. they like me. i can’t wrap my head around it, but it’s euphoric.

i feel bad making these comparisons as none of it is really my ex’s fault. they can’t help being asexual or an extrovert (though wanting to live in california might be a personal failing), those are morally neutral traits that they should not be expected to change. at the same time, i am a very introverted person who experiences sexual attraction no matter how much i try to shame myself out of it. i’m not compatible with them. maybe i was when we were younger, but i can’t be now.

last night, i had a mild bout of dissociation. i was laying on my bedroom floor, half-listening to a video essay while trying not to fall asleep too early as i usually do when a sudden sense of “what the fuck” washed over me. i felt detached from everything, mildly confused at the state of my life: one year of college under my belt, no longer purging, all my childhood pets gone, dating someone new instead of the only person i thought could love me. these are mostly positive changes, yet changes all the same. it’s disorienting to think of it all at once even if i’m better off for it, or at least hope i am.

i feel torn between pessimism and optimism. i’m making progress in ways i never have, though it’s all so new and i have no idea if it’ll last. should that even matter? maybe it is temporary. maybe things will get worse later, but isn’t that all the more reason to enjoy it now? i’d like to think that instead of either ruminating or catastrophizing. something to work on, perhaps.

two days in a row of writing, likely because i’m without therapeutic support. don’t get used to it. i’m lacking any sort of thesis with these, but this is basically my journal, so i suppose i don’t need one. my processing still feels incomplete without it though. i hate ambiguity

~april