#spring semester is always the worst anyway so after that one season where I barely did it after week 5 I was just like. I’ll just watch idk

[viktoriakomova]

I don’t do fantasy gym due to who I am realistically as a person but I wish I were the kind of b*tch who could muster up the necessary energy and executive function to stay on top of a fun thing with no real consequences like that. I’m living vicariously through all of u

[hayesit]

matt’s 2019 year in review

here it is! and it’s late because i had other/better things to do (and procrastinating), was recovering from hangovers (also procrastinating), and recovering from being sick (procrastinating).

i’ve been doing these year in review posts since 2016, so here is my fourth installment. every year i look back through my google calendar, my camera roll, and my bullet journal as a gratitude exercise and to chart my own development as an adult. 

here is my spotify wrapped 2019!

the beginning of this year was off to a good start: i met two friends that i know through the internet! i met my friend riley when she visited boston (i met her through a mutual friend and through overwatch league twitter) and my friend jimmy that i’ve known for…. 6 or 7 years (?!) through tumblr and designed the logo for me and alex’s late podcast, hardly tea, may she rest in peace. 

i moved dorm rooms in between the fall and spring semester, and once again i was not happy with where i lived. i lived with 4 rando’s that i was placed with and the 5 of us barely even talked with each other. my direct roommate i saw for only two weeks, and for the nights he slept over in the bed (that he was paying room and board for) and had the worst snoring humanly possible that not even earplugs could kill (video below). i hardly slept while he was there and roamed the halls of riverview suites like a ghost due to the anxiety i felt about my lack of sleep (we love a vicious circle)! he disappeared after those two weeks without notice and i lived in fear of him returning for the rest of the semester (which he didn’t), but returned to my normal sleep schedule. 

that semester was my first semester of full-time grad school. i got a poor grade on an assignment that had a note from the professor that said she knew i could do better and it hit me how much different grad school is from undergrad and how much more effort and dedication it requires. after crying in my professor’s office, my work ethic has improved since then, but it’s not anywhere near where i’d like it to be (more on that later). 

now to more positive things for the spring semester: i met some friends that semester both ~on and offline~ that made the semester far more bearable AND i did however truly pop off in every last one of my powerpoint presentations for class. i looooove making powerpoints and just fuckin telling jokes about my research topic and have ppl tell me that they are looking forward to my presentation & that i should teach college classes :)!

me and 4 friends had a social group in which we’d drink and play board games and forget about the board game and drunkenly talk shit called cabam after all our first initials! i always looked forward to that and dug the group chemistry a lot.

during this semester i grew a   “ beard “, otherwise known as i chose not to shave just to  “ see what would happen “ (praythatitfilledin). sorry about that!

the overwatch league was something that i had to look forward to watch every week and i had my experience enhanced through sideshow and avast’s unofficial companion streams, which guaranteed lots of laughs. i have bought tickets to two boston home games in 2020 which i am very excited about! analysts have predicted boston to be in 20th place this year (there are 20 teams) but i’m still excited for the 2020 season anyway!!

i can’t have a year-in-review of 2019 without mentioning game of thrones. due to the show’s final season being undeniably weak, i enjoyed the camaraderie with the other people that watched thrones during those six weeks. i haven’t thought about the show or its universe for quite a while, unfortunately. i truly was quite into the world of westeros, but the weakness of the end of the story cheapened the journey of each of the characters, in a way. such a shame.

while i got my diploma in december 2018, i walked across the stage of umass lowell’s tsongas arena with my bachelor of arts in psychology (and minor in theatre arts). it wasn’t as emotional or triumphant of an experience and just felt weird, considering i had already gotten my diploma and was going to remain in the clutches of rowdy the riverhawk as i am staying for my masters degree in applied behavior analysis/autism studies. i brought a ceramic monkey to graduation. it didn’t have any symbolism, but i just wanted to see if they’d stop me (which they didn’t)

 this summer was better than most summers of mine go, i hung out with alex nearly every weekend, got my very first iphone, and got a data plan. the combination of these three things got me back into playing pokemon go, an unexpectedly fun pastime! went on lots of walks!

my favorite day of summer was going to a lake with alex and our friend gianna, who i grew closer to after meeting her during macbeth last year. fond 2019 memories with gianna include: doing simulation patients with her, watching movies with her and alex, and the halloween party. what a great gd person and a great gd friend! big fan and eternally rooting for her. 

fire emblem: three houses came out on the switch in august and is, without a doubt, my game of the year. there’s truly so much to love about the game: the world, the characters, new changes made to the series, things that were gone but returned, interesting micromanaging, and best of all, how huge my brain feels when playing it. 

i got a 6-week summer job as a paraprofessional at an extended-school-year program for children with developmental disabilities at a preschool in haverhill which taught me a lot of lessons, such as: i hate cleaning shit off of children.

then i had feelings that didn’t make much sense for about a month! whoops!

my full-time job i currently have is working at my old high school as a behavior specialist. i provide consultation and work on programs to lead to more appropriate behavior in students, primarily ones with developmental disabilities. so far it’s been fairly rewarding, some days are more challenging than others, some days are a lot of sitting in meetings, and some days are a lot of running around. some days there is not much to do at all, which has its obvious upsides and downsides. working at the high school isn’t something that i want to do forever, but it’s a good place to start with. i’m definitely learning a lot and there are a lot of benefits to working here. sometimes i can work on my grad school work (which is all online until the 2020 summer semester) which is definitely huge. and my commute is either a 15 minute walk or 3 minutes if my mom drives me! 

a ~complex~ thing about working in my hometown is that it makes the most financial sense to live at home because it’s so close to work. this is my first time living at home full-time since high school and i’m not enjoying that part too much. most weekends i visit alex in lowell, but being stuck at home with no car (going to retake the license test in the spring when the ice melts!) and having to go to bed so early definitely hurts. sure, i have what is likely the lowest amount of expenses i’ll ever have in my life (no car-related payments, no rent, no groceries), but i feel landlocked. i feel like a teenager with minimal freedom, which is in part because my mom doesn’t quite understand yet that i’m a 22 year-old that should have a lot more freedom than i do now. the most i really do on weekdays after work gets out (2:30p) is go to savers with my mom if it’s tuesday (senior citizen day), maybe go for a walk if it’s nice out (which for most of the school year, it isn’t), or be on the computer watching bon appetit videos and playing overwatch, fire emblem, or pokemon, eat a bland dinner at 6, go to bed at around 9:30. sad! truly not a situation that i want to be trapped in that much that much longer!

i think the best and most important part of this year was becoming closer with alex. as i mentioned before, we see each other most weekends, to our great benefit. our living situations have flip-flopped, with me living at home and alex living in an apartment near campus, which in both similar and different ways have taken their respective tolls on us. having each other while going through changes and stagnations in our lives has been immeasurably important. thank you alex for providing a place to be myself other than my own head. thank you for being my best friend. 

now i come to the thing that i’m most excited about for 2020. not 2 suck my own horn but i have cobbled together a fuckin dream team of five friends (me, alex, chris, kelly, and molly). the two times we have all gotten together it has been so satisfying in such a wonderful and otherworldly way that i am filled to the brim of happiness being around them. the craziest thing is that i met chris and kelly through twitter! TWITTER. and they’re real-ass people and my real-ass friends! i haven’t been so pleased with something in my life like this for so long and it feels so good to have adult friends that i have chosen rather than friends by circumstance. it’s truly a crime that we can’t see each other more often, but we already have a day picked out for the next time we all do something together. feeling emotional writing this paragraph bc i love me gd friends so much!

there is a lot of uncertainty about this new year for me. i sure as fuck don’t want to live at home more than i have to but don’t know where to go, my practicum class starts for me this summer which means i’ll most likely have to change jobs (fine by me, but will be exhausting), i recently began my search for therapists and hope to find one soon to help me ~unpack things~, my thesis begins in the fall semester and i don’t know what to do for it, and i’m not 100% dead-set on working in special education. it’s been hard transitioning from living on campus and going to school full-time to the life i have now. 

[awkwarddezzy]

Uplate on RL Dan

typed this all last night on a word doc and felt too lazy so I only proofread once

Hiya lovelies! Whoever read Anywhere But Here and 7 Days are aware RL Dan (if you didn’t read the stories, his name is David) and I broke up. Since posting those imagine fics, a lot of things have happened. I mean A LOT. Between then and now, the things that happened will make you guys dislike RL Dan less (should you hate him for what he did). DO NOT BLAME HIM FOR HIS CHOICE. As you’re about to read, what’s going on with us atm will shed a new perspective for our entire situation.

PS before I forget I learned what “her” name is. However, for privacy purposes, I’ll call her Sarah like what I did in 7 Days. As for David, I’ve grown used to calling him RL Dan here so that’s the name I’ll be sticking with.

We chatted on Facebook Messenger a few times throughout winter break. When I originally posted the stories, I assumed Sarah and RL Dan would get a chance to meet, talk, and start a proper relationship over the break. I was ready to spend the next three weeks wallowing in my misery and playing the role as supportive best friend as I watched their relationship progress. But that didn’t happen. She was supposedly under a home lockdown for whatever reason. Maybe she was grounded for doing something bad. Maybe an alien attacked her like what happened with Tabitha in that Sims ep last year lol. I didn’t know. She had no way to get in touch. On top of that, she was sick. As someone who has asthma, I felt bad for her. This is a season for getting sick. RL Dan was feeling incredibly disconnected since he wanted so badly to talk to her. So I gave him words of encouragement, telling him things will get better and to think positive. And it did… I guess. He got to talk to her a couple times before New Years Eve, though he was laying low and mostly focused on the holidays.

He appreciates when I’m around to cheer him up. He knows about my situation of barely having internet at home (a reason also explained from 7 Days). He’s happy I’m still there for him, because he was afraid I wouldn’t want to talk to him anymore. But I’m not that sort of person. Experience from the past taught me to keep fighting for people even if they’re pulling away.

We’re both emotional messes. It’s one among many reasons why we’re so close.

He told me a little bit about Sarah. In his words, “she’s smart, funny, she laughs at my jokes, she’s always been there, she makes me laugh, she loves her family, I just think she’s great.” He described her as a likable person, but in the back of my mind, something felt off. I didn’t know what it was, but I imagined her as one of those “dream” nerdy girls that seems so perfect you wouldn’t expect them to have a bitchy side. I didn’t tell him that though. I didn’t want to sound jealous, and I really did want him to be happy. He was doing what I wished I could’ve done in the past with someone else.

I also asked him why he wanted to talk to me when we started the poetry unit for our creative writing class. Apparently, I did mention I was into MCR too when we had to do that whole explanation of our opinions about poetry. In his head, he thought I was cool and felt intrigued to approach me after class. It was something I was curious about for the last few days, especially since you guys know I’m incredibly introverted and have a difficult time socializing to people outside of social media.

Fast forward to this Monday. What was SUPPOSED to be my first day of microbiology lab was a bust since I got an email in my college email account from my professor telling us class won’t start till Wednesday (today). So for the next few hours (because I didn’t wanna go home yet), I was chatting with Crystal aka @beforethebraces, later, RL Dan. With Crystal, we talked about… well, something that makes her incredibly happy right now that I can’t share the details yet (I’ll let her be the one to give me the green light for the big reveal). But anyway, we also talked about David and our thoughts about Sarah. We had a very, very deep conversation over the feelings I still have for RL Dan. She gave me the best advice about believing there’s a reason we met. She agreed how we’re highly suspicious of Sarah’s feelings for RL Dan. Between the two of us, we analyzed the events I knew happened with Sarah and RL Dan and realized there was something fishy. We sensed Sarah didn’t feel the way RL Dan felt toward her.

When I got to chat with David (he had class and immediately left campus afterward for dialysis), he told me he ran into Sarah on his way to class. They did some catching up. He learned her phone was acting up, hence why she couldn’t reach him. She was also still sick (he thought it was the flu), so even if she could get in contact with him, she didn’t feel well enough to do so.

So how do I secretly react?

😡😡😡

I sensed some lying.

Lemme break it down for you guys.

The most obvious one: You can’t have the flu for three weeks. As a future medical specialist, it isn’t possible. A flu is only supposed to last a week or two. Anything beyond a week could mean something serious.

Second: the way RL Dan described their encounter seemed like she was distant from him, as if she feigned being sick so she wouldn’t talk to him. If you’re being distant, it usually means you’re hiding something, or at least have something weighing your mind.

Third: What if the lockdown was an excuse? It was a possibility on the back of my mind while I was on break, but didn’t think much of it since it would make me sound jealous. But it was likely. Think about it: if you’re sick, wouldn’t you desperately want to talk to the people who matter to you? That’s what Crystal and I would do. When I was really sick in 10th grade and was absent from school for 3 days, I was desperate to get online and talk to my friends so I could tell them what was up. I barely kept my resistance to stay offline. My mom drilled into my head to get better, so that’s what I did. And I was so exhausted I’d sleep most of the day away.

In general, I had a hunch Sarah wasn’t being truthful. But I wouldn’t allow my suspicions cloud my friendship with RL Dan. I did what a good friend would do: give a great pep talk, because that’s what I’m a master at (ask Crystal; just being there for her and not being a judge gets her through awful times). I kept him company while he was on dialysis. He told me he had issues with his schedule. We tried to make plans to meet up the next day, though the time I’d arrive at school is the time he has a class. So we just let that tiny dilemma be. We’d have time to meet another day once we get used to our spring courses.

So that brings me to yesterday. He found me sitting at one of the tables in front of the campus Subway. I just finished my first day of a micro lecture class and doing my usual Tumblr spree/waiting for another chat room to open for Mystic Messenger (I finally started deep story and crossing my fingers to land on Jumin’s route). I planned to stay for 10 minutes or so before catching a bus home. We talk for a bit, and he finally tells me he discussed his feelings with Sarah with her.

She. Changed. Her. Mind.

She told him she didn’t feel the sparks anymore and the door is now 100% closed. In other words, it’s done-zo. Oh, and he apologized for our breakup. He still feels bad about it.

We met up again a couple hours ago, though it was short. He wanted to see me before he had to head home, eat a quick lunch, and go do his dialysis. In that time frame, we talked like we usually did. Still super close, still open and didn’t act weird around me, still just… him.

How rare is it for exes to remain like best friends? You guys tell me.

So… what happens now? Where do we go from here? RL Dan says he’s fine about it. Good actually, since he knows the truth and now he can move on. I feel guilty about my hunch being right. I’m selfless and was so supportive for his happiness. But I can’t help but feel… hopeful. A door closes and another opens. An end to a beginning.

I’ve let go of my fears about love. I did that during the break. I’m not scared anymore to fall in love. I’m not letting my past hold me back. I feel refreshed for 2017: with school, with love, with life… with everything.

Think positive. That’s my motto for the year.

I’ll give RL Dan a few days to think it over. I was so, so tempted yesterday to ask him about us, but my feelings weren’t what’s important. It’s his. I won’t make the mistake to give him space, because trust me, I made that choice once and it was the worst choice I ever made. But I will be here for him. I’ll talk to him and continue to be his confidant. Now isn’t our time. It’s too soon for him to jump back into a relationship. No matter how much I want us to get back together, being hasty will only lead to disastrous results.

Then again, a part of me thinks we never actually broke up. I see it as us pressing pause in our relationship; someday, when the time is right, we’ll press resume.

Red string of fate, ya’ll. I still believe he’s on the other end of mine.

I care so much about him. It’s scary. I don’t want to lose him as a friend. For now, I’ll set aside my emotions and get through the rest of the week. I’ll talk to him one-on-one about our relationship next week (unless he brings it up sooner). I’ll tell him I still have feelings for him. I’ll tell him I didn’t give up on him and wonder if we could open the door for our own relationship again. I’ll go on a first date we never did and be the girl that won’t ever hurt him again.

So… yeah. You guys deserve an explanation for what’s happening between David and I. Dating him during a time where I suffered through a semester-long existential crisis over questioning what I was doing with my life really helped me out. I was in such a funk and he was that fallen angel who rescued a princess of darkness. He reignited my passion to go into the medical field. And it’s not everyday I meet a boy who resembles Dan Howell (and a bit of Phil). When I truly got into Dan and Phil in early 2016, I structured my ideal boyfriend to be someone who’s a mix of Phan. And guess what? I met that person. I met that person who knows about their existence. I met that person who I don’t have to put a persona for. I met a boy who showed me the best parts of falling in love and refused to let me go when he chose Sarah.

He matters. He’s… my cheesehead (a nickname I started calling him since he’s so cheesy AF lol). He understood the part of my past that made me fear trusting people. He’s everything I could ask for in a red string soulmate.

Nowadays he calls me fam. Like we’re family.

I adore him. He’s a beautifully broken boy I waited 19 years to capture my heart like this.

Trust me on this, everyone. I know what I’m doing and I won’t let him hurt me again.

I’ll definitely update you guys again once I do our one-on-one talk. You guys have been incredibly cool about us and I really love sharing these kind of details with you. It’s exhilarating to experience events that become incorporated in my imagines.

My life… it’s a gigantic fanfiction eh? 😂