Future<void>

The feeling of missing something is nothing new for me, it appears every time I am not at the bottom of depression and don't have anything to distract myself with. Right now, this is the case—I don't have anything in particular to do except for playing games. The approaching classes won't fix it, for this so-called 'university' is a joke.

The truth is—I am not sure if this void is in any way related to what I do. If there is one thing I am sure of regarding existential questions like 'what is it that defines me as a person, and why do I feel like I don't have it?' is that they have more to do with psychiatry than with my hobbies, studies, social contacts, etc. But this notion or even a formal assessment and diagnosis mean nothing as long as they solve nothing. Even in the ideal world where I have access to something resembling therapy, what do I even say to the therapist?

If this is a trans thing, then I am fucked

Seeking help with transitioning or even presenting in any way other than a man is out of the question forever. I am dyspohoric and all but sure the idea that my body, appearance, age, name, the place where I live, in no way determine who I am is, too, a form of gender dysphoria (there is more to it, though). I can't change any of that.

*If this reads like I am trying to cope with existential dread by programming and messing with hardware, I absolutely am

I am 24 now.

Up until the last couple days, I felt good-ish. My mental health has been marginally better than usual, and I found a few things that I feel interested in.

Most importantly, I started to learn a lot more about computers and the web, until eventually, it felt like the world where I belonged, where I knew what I wanted and how to get it.

Still, the more of it I saw, the more it felt like a horrible place ruled by either greed or anger. Somehow, Cohost was an exception. Like home. Now, I am crying and blaming myself for under-utilizing it when I had it.

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Ps. Recently, I started learning Rust and trying to get into tinkering with PC hardware. Maybe, if I find where to go from here, I will finally have something to say

Pps. And I finally downloaded and started playing Signalis. Had to pirate it because I am from Russia, and it is blocked (banned?) here, and even if I could buy it, I would have barely had enough money on my name. Signalis is great, you should play it (please buy it if you can)

If there is one thing I learned when I was trying to get into web dev, it is that I have none of the social skills required to do it. I am afraid of asking questions, I overreact to insults (which you always get for asking a question unless you are ignored completely...). I even feel uncomfortable looking up things that might require some communicating in the future.

Just now, I opened Reddit and typed "r/Piracy guitar tabs". Not quite sure if I found what I was looking for yet, but this action itself feels like a tiny step in the right direction.

An average person won't make a character of a half-decent story. People share episodes of their lives online, and the only thing I can think of while reading them is that if I encountered a work of fiction with such episode, I would close it and never pick it up again.

This is not to say I am somehow above that; in fact, I am much worse than average. This is why, when I caught myself thinking, "She is literally me", I knew I was wrong. The starting point of this story is so far beyond anything I could wish for that at first, I disregarded it as completely unrealistic. It is not, but for my practical purposes, it is. And it was not some coincidence but Hitori's personal achievement.

This is, of course, not limited to Bocchi the Rock. All sorts of damaged, lonely, misunderstood characters are infinitely better than people who claim to be 'like them'. Because of that, I even avoid some pieces of media (Bladerunner comes to mind) because I don't want to play this trick on myself.

The closest I can think of to an actually relatable character in a realistic (as in: occasionally happening in real life) story is Gregor Samsa