Sorry to hear about your maternal grandmother and Alzheimer’s. Alzheimer’s is brutal because it is slow and torturous. It is hard when one family member has to keep order in extended family. It is like almost the relatives need a dictatorship to not act unreasonable. Although since my grandfather almost definitely had Asperger’s, extended family often bullied him and picked on him since he was a child. Another problem was that it took him until age 50 to get married. To struggle that much in those days was probably a sign of weirdness. That is why I am only 30, but he was born before the end of the First World War. I had heard from my grandmother when she was alive that when he had run a fish bait store in the 1940s and 1950s, his siblings plus other extended family used to take advantage of him by going into his store, stealing some of the items and then challenging/taunting him to try to stop them. This type of idiocy is eerily similar to stuff that I have had to deal with in my own life.

In order of how common, number one would undoubtedly be tech. I think that tech people make up over 90% of the people whom I meet at socials, including tech women. Usually working for Google or Facebook or Uber or whatever, or some biotech company like Genentech. The other 10% are almost always real estate and finance. I do find, in general, that the real estate people are especially obsessed with money. I remember how one had told me last year about how proud she was because she had managed to sell a small, beat-up looking, fixer-upper house with a collapsed staircase and broken rooms for over $2 million. People pay a lot for terrible quality here.

I do realise now that my gender has played a heavy role, much more than I had ever imagined. My mother had once revealed to be that she had lost her virginity at 27, but that like before as I said, she got dates now and then—because she never had to approach men. There are pros and cons of course, but since I never was a type of guy to approach, getting dates was always extremely hard for me.

I have often been socially clueless. Taking until around age 25 or 26 to figure out that it was kind of on me to ask the women out is testament to how clueless I was. I often do not think like other guys. In fact, I have been sometimes told that in terms of dating, I think more like a woman—that I feel more comfortable if a woman approaches me than vice versa. I have asked out women before, in the past few years. It has often been extremely uncomfortable and nervous. The only other time that I have asked out a girl was when I was 17 and in high school. I asked out a girl to go to the prom, but it took me over two months to get rid of a lot of the anxiety to do so. Even so, it was unbearably uncomfortable. And I have a feeling that she only agreed to because she had no one else to go with. Or at least that was how I felt about myself.

I have absolutely overlooked signs of interests. But then I feel like it is both—perhaps I overlooked interest but also realised/believed/inferred that maybe they were not even interested in the first place. I will never know. My brain is just not attuned to this. I am more of the type, “If I do not see/hear it, then I never know if it exists.” The subtle cues will never work with me because I just cannot see them. Communication has to be absolutely blunt and blatantly obvious to the point that even a blind/deaf person can sense it. And again, perhaps the way that my personality is, of a type of “opposite guy”, I would be so flattered if a woman went up to me and told me straight, “You are hot. Go out with me.” Of course, like you say, this is highly unlikely. But I would be flattered and would definitely consider going out due to her bravery and lack of anxiety like I have when I approach.

I know that I am having self-esteem issues, but blunt honesty is what I need at all times. I need to know what is going on and where I stand. I can send you the photo tonight, but do not hesitate to tell me what you think.

Since right now I am looking at Italy for study, their bureaucracy is notorious for being delayed and also cumbersome. I also have to take some academic tests, plus an advanced Italian language exam. I personally want the certificate at a higher than required level so hopefully they see that I am better than the average foreign student in the language. Language certificates never hurt even if not totally necessary anyway. So I am not sure how long it might take, but maybe more than a year.

In the meantime, I am wondering if I should try to do a short few-months-long work thing in a Nordic country like Sweden or Finland, just a short one to get a quick change of scenery. Not sure how to do this, nor when. But if the visa application and stuff for Italy takes long, at least I get a temporary change of scenery from going somewhere else first for a short stint. My self-esteem is at a serious low, but at least I can say that I am relatively okay at languages. I know Swedish to intermediate level, and am learning Finnish now. Of course, in the past few days, it has been hard to concentrate.

The California primary is on Tuesday, 3rd March 2020. It was in June four years ago, but this year it is the fifth in order. I am thinking of how to help/work for the campaign. I am thinking that perhaps people there are humbler and more down-to-earth than the people whom I meet at socials.

I suppose that yes it is just like that analogy. It feels like trench warfare where my self-esteem and self-worth are pitted against the insults and failures of my life. And sometimes it feels like the insults and failures are like a blitzkrieg that fall upon me.

I am so embarrassed that this is even an issue for me, that I also find myself in such a situation. I could try to start by talking to my mother again, even though this is really embarrassing to talk about. But you are right that being shameful is not worth suffering in exchange.

I think back to my childhood, how since apparently, I was bullied even since the age of 2. When my mother brought me to nurseries, the other children never wanted to play with me, and I ended up stuck in a corner playing by myself. Then when I started school at age 4, every single year was bullying. In elementary/middle (primary) school, I had constant physical and mental bullying, often on a daily basis. High school was a lot of psychological bullying. Perhaps this really messed up my self-esteem and self-worth up to this day. So many of my classmates were brought into the principal’s office in elementary school because my parents found out that they physically bullied me. One was even threatened with expulsion if he had continued to assault me. Up to now on my left arm, I have a scar because a classmate from elementary school had pushed me so that I fell very hard and got scraped on the pavement. I only managed to make one friend out of all of the years in elementary/middle (primary) school and high (secondary) school. It seemed like wherever I went, the vast majority of people just made fun of me and thought of me as a piece of shït. It seems like these haunting memories might have affected my dating life indirectly by making me hate myself.

You are right, I should not have given in to my compulsion to look at that news article. It is serving as counter-evidence to my own self-worth, since the article talks about people who are my age or older and have always been single/virgin and how they fail in dating solely due to their situation. When I read those articles, sometimes I just feel like saying out loud, “Look how much of a f__king loser I am”.

Since I am my mother’s only child (I have half-brothers, but we share only the same father and all have different mothers), a lot of her feelings sometimes get transferred onto her. A few times over the years she has told me something about how if I feel happy, she feels happy; if I feel sad, she feels sad. And that if I feel depressed and down due to something in my life, then she ends up feeling depressed. I guess that I can kind of understand this—she feels bad that I suffer due to thinking about certain issues.

I often wish that I could enjoy life. I feel like I have spent so much of my time suffering instead of actually living. I feel like I have lived most of my life since birth submerged in a stew of anxiety, depression, awkwardness, loneliness and feeling like I never belonged. Sometimes I compare myself to my mother, and think how did she lose her virginity at 27, had a few (albeit short) relationships in her 20s, yet I am 30 and have totally missed out on all of that? I feel like I must have done something wrong.