what a month i’ve had. to an outside listener, they would probably be appalled at what i’ve lost in just the span of a month. this year has felt like the longest year of my fucking life. but i think that’s a good thing, because i thought that usually, you feel the years getting shorter as you age. maybe this is a sign of rebirth. as of my 25th birthday i started to gain a better understanding of who i am, who i want to be, and what i want as a person. and everything that has happened since then (just a few weeks after that) has been rooted in accepting the person i used to be, the actions i took because of it, and wanting to be more.
i used to say that i became sentient at 17, because that was the first time i had ever really thought about anything outside of my bubble. then, when i clawed my way out of the lowest pit of my life at 19 i thought that was the start of my life. then, when i started hrt when i was 21, i thought that that was the start of my life. then, when i dyed my hair and started presenting more as a girl a year later and going to tournaments again as rainy, i thought that was the start of my life. then, when i moved out of my parents house for the first time after finding full time work, i thought that was the start of my life. then, just a few weeks ago, when i met someone that embodied the type of person i wanted to be, i thought that was the start of my life.
it’s interesting to look back on things and think about the types of changes i experienced and, despite them being so different from each other, they mark such a drastic directional shift every time. at 17, i started to care about others. at 19, i started to care about myself. at 21, i wanted to feel like myself. at 22, i wanted to look like myself. at 23, i wanted to be myself. at 24, i wanted to like myself. and at 25, i want to be more than myself.
i have done what i think is an unimaginable amount of work on myself to live and to chase my happiness, or whatever i perceived as my happiness. but i find that what i want changes way too much to ever really dig my heels into any one thing forever. things change, i change, the people around me change, my environment and circumstances change. everything changes, and after losing so much, i have come to realize that the only things that will ever be a constant in my life are myself and change.
despite this year being heartrending and difficult in dozens of ways, i have gained so much that i never saw before. perspective has always been something that i struggled with - my understanding of what ideas and opinions people can hold have always been so pigeonholed on a few different lines of thinking that i was able to conceptualize in my head. meeting more people has made me realize that there are just so many viewpoints i had never even considered to be possible before. the world seems bigger and more vast; until recently, i had only ever wanted to be around people that were like me in the ways that i thought mattered. i thought that was moral, and i thought that was fine and correct to want to pursue that. i don’t think it’s immoral to want that, but i don’t think it’s particularly moral either. but i want to explore connections and friendships with people who might just be incredibly different from me a little bit more.
there is a lot of life that i was unable to live because of a multitude of factors. my upbringing, my stressful home life, my transness, my lack of self-confidence - there are so many things that i wasn’t able to experience in the past because i wouldn’t allow myself to, or because i didn’t feel like i belonged, or because i didn’t have the confidence or energy or friends, or countless other things. and every fleeting moment of life that have ever made me want to keep living have been the ones surrounded by people i love (and who love me) at majors and everyday conversations.
for a long time, and perhaps even now, i struggled with life as a balancing act. go to work, be stable, find love, take care of your mental and physical health, your looks, your hobbies, your sleep, your friendships. as anyone reading this knows, doing this 100% of the time is fucking impossible especially if you’re unmedicated. but now that i feel more unshackled, i’m starting to realize that i can just kinda do whatever the fuck i want, without any regard for the values that were embedded into me years and years ago. it scares me so much to decenter stability from my life but i fear that this is a step that i have to take if i want to be free. more than anything, i want to be free.
i truly thought my shackles came off as soon as i started hrt. but in fact, i just got better at moving around while chained. it gave me energy, but not freedom. i was silly to think that freedom would come in the form of a pill.
when i was younger, i had no idea about what i wanted except that i wanted to break away from what my parents expected of me. when i got a little bit older, that desire took shape as being someone the me of my past needed. someone warm and understanding and nearly unconditional that forgave the transgressions i made. and when i became this person, i found that i wanted to rest. i had been growing for so long, and at many points, it felt like i was growing because others would not. growing stronger to better deal with the weakness of others was something i always did with so much reluctance because it made me feel as though i was the only one that was trying. and growing stronger for myself was something that never really motivated me that much - i was only ever able to frame and view it from the perspective that i needed to be more for other people.
i think the person that i needed is someone that people can so easily take advantage of. and i knew this, but i think i was okay with it because i thought that all the malice in the world could never stop me from being this person for the people that truly needed and appreciated it. i do think that this was just another way to posture myself as a being that had so much love yet was still hurt time and time again by the evil in the world. and it was easier to just believe that i was this person that rarely ever did anything wrong and was only ever wronged by others. it was cleaner and fit into the little box that i had made for myself better.
to an extent, that’s all true. but i’ve been thinking a lot recently and i realize that a lot of the interpersonal harm done is often unintentional. i think the people that have hurt me in my past have never really intended to hurt me for the sole purpose of hurting me. and that’s not to excuse any of it, but i think we (or at least i) can easily demonize people for things nowadays. the panopticon has become self-enforcing, and anyone who has done harm in their lives is doomed to inevitably become a mini jesus christ, crucified within the humming of the algorithm for days. the algorithm is god and every person that has done harm becomes jesus christ for a moment in time.
thinking about this scares me a lot. even those i love seemed to unwittingly uphold this foucaultian system, and the digital landscape has transformed over the course of a few decades to one where people could escape and find community to one that has become self-policing. we watch ourselves and others and beat them to death when they step out of line on the basis of morality. it scares me. i don’t think we were ever meant to live like this. i want to be a kinder person to people that have wronged me and give more grace, i think. not that i think that i should just let them keep hurting me, because i’ve had enough of that in my life. but i think i want to forgive people more than i have been, because we are really all we have.
ultimately i feel that i felt like my self worth was still tied to the amount i was willing to sacrifice for people, and i wanted that to change. i still want to give, a lot. i still want to be a beacon in this world that can be so dark and cold. but i think i would like to discern more. take things slower. learn more about myself and others. be less impulsive. but at the same time, i want to live. i want to be more impulsive and take things faster and let myself be entangled in every strand that connects me and other people. i just want to be more careful about how much of myself i’m willing to give to people. there is so much love to go around, but for the first time in my life, i had a taste of what it truly meant to be free. and that is what i’d like to go into 2026 chasing.
i finally got medicated for adhd a couple weeks ago, and i feel like someone who can do things now. i have had countless days where i get home from work and just sit there and dissociate and scroll youtube shorts for hours and hours until i sleep. i had so many things i always wanted to do, but i had never done them. after losing some close friends that meant a lot to me, i had a renewed sense of what i wanted out of myself and life and the things i wanted to do to get closer to that. and holy fuck are stimulants fucking amazing dude. i can just do things now and i just feel normal. like i don’t have to be motivated by stress or reward or short-term interest or anything like that anymore. it feels so fucking insane to think that this is just how a lot of people function normally.
for a long time, i’ve had a lot of issues being present in my life. i get distracted so easily. even within the context of a single set or stock of melee, i just completely zone out and forget what it is i’m supposed to be doing. and i guess this applies to the rest of my life. you know, i sit there for hours and hours and hours. i’ve probably lost hundreds or thousands of hours to this exact feeling. what the fuck am i supposed to be doing right now?
what do i want to be doing?
a couple months ago i met someone that, to me, felt like someone who lived life the way i wanted to. so incredibly bright it was blinding. so.. present and moving forward with more confidence than i’d ever known in my life. a freedom and poise that i coveted so deeply for myself.
in the past, i lived my life according to the person i wanted and needed to be for the me of the past. i wanted to be someone that the past me would be proud of and would look up to. my growth was built in strength and resilience and the ability to get hit by a cannon and keep moving. i optimized to never fall no matter how many times i sobbed into my pillow or slammed my fist into the ground until my knuckles bled or screamed in my car. all i could do for myself back then was to grow strong enough to tank everything that flew towards me. all i could do for myself was try and surround myself in my love and hope that that was enough to make me and the people around me happy. and for a while, this was okay. i pretended i loved myself enough to be okay throughout the day.
in the last year, i have started thinking more about the things i want. i covet so deeply. i’ve been thinking of myself a lot as a girl who wants everything that there is to want. but perhaps that this isn’t as true as i might’ve thought. perhaps the core of my desire is to find people that i can share myself and my love and my passions with. perhaps i simply want to go where i am loved. for a long time, i never had a home. i settled in when i made myself one recently, but i’m a greedy person. i want to fly and have a home. i want to fly and know that there will always be a place for me somewhere. i want to soar despite everything, as she did.
every day, going forward, i want to be present. as present as i can, as often as i can. i want to be there. i’ve been there for others since i gained sentience, but i often won’t be there if not for others. i won’t be there for myself. but if i’m not where i am, where am i? what place could possibly be better than where i am? the answer is that often times, there are better places to be. with my loved ones instead of at work, snuggled up in the covers instead of outside in the cold, doing something i enjoy instead of something i hate.
in my case, there were so many times where my mind was in a different place entirely. i would be at home after getting back from work. but the time would disappear from 6 pm to 1 am, without any input from me. i wouldn’t be where i wanted to be even when i had the means to do so. and for a while, i rationalized this by saying that i needed the downtime and the processing after my long and stressful day. 15 minutes would turn to an hour, to 2, to 3. then i wouldn’t want to get up. stuck inside a stasis where my soul ached to move, but my brain did not. and my brain would always win.
my brain is my enemy. my brain halts the progress that i put into my heart and body and makes sure that every step i take is smothered in bureaucratic red tape until you see hundreds of wires pushing against my legs, begging me not to go. my brain is a self destructive toddler that will make me try to kill myself every single day of my life unless i defeat its 7 evil tasks. if i try to hang out with my brain after 10 pm sometimes it will also try to kill me. if something slightly bad happens my brain tells me that i should kill myself. if i mess anything up my brain tells me that i should kill myself. if i look in the mirror there’s a 10% chance that my brain tells me to kill myself. despite what i have come to understand about myself, my brain tells me that i am none of the good things, and magnifies all the bad things to an untenable degree. i don’t think it’s telling the truth to me but the demons whisper louder than i can bear sometimes. my brain begs me not to leave it behind in my pursuit for happiness. in this way, i feel more than ever that i would like to take her with me, but i know that in my heart, i cannot do that right now. i hope i can come back for her when she’s not trying to stop me from doing everything i ever wanted to do, or trying to stop me from being everything i ever wanted to be.
my brain is so beautiful when i let her speak. when i nurture her and give her what she needs, she sings to me. perhaps she lashed out at me for so long because i denied her that, and i blamed her for making me miserable. the only time i would let her speak was to berate me or panic, so of course that's all she learned how to do. i removed the iv tube of dopamine from her arm and started reading her bedtime stories and stroking her cheek and she started crying. i’m sorry. i’m doing my best now. i came back for her because i knew i couldn’t leave her behind for long, and it was my fault she was that way. she is still broken in the same ways that i am, but we’re both picking up the pieces and want to add more when we get the chance.
my body, heart, and soul are my friends. my body, heart, and soul will come with me to the places that i want to go. i am luffy and my body and heart and soul are all of the straw hat pirates i have come to love and trust. even more than that, they’re me, and i need them to live. i want to nourish them and feed them and grow them to the best of my ability, because i have found that caring for them is the only thing that allows me to want to grip onto the reins of my life with bloodied, white knuckles. for all that i have lost this year, i have gained so much more than i could have ever even hoped to have just a few years ago. but as i said before, loss is an inevitability in life. or at least mine. because when i don’t live, i have nothing to lose and i do nothing that would make me ever lose anything. every day we have to work together to placate a brain that wants to swallow the world whole. but i love them, and they love me, and they allow me to do everything i ever wanted to do, and allow me to be everything i ever wanted to be. more than that, they want me to do all of that.
in my twitter bio, i say that i’m a woman of desire. i want so many things, all there ever is to want. and i used to be afraid of my desire and loathe that i wanted so much that i couldn’t have. but who says that i cannot have it? i want it all. on the eve of my 25th birthday i realized that life is meant to be more than dreaming. dreaming of a better life, a better world, a better place - i realized that yearning only placates me for a short time until i have to face the world i live in. even when my dreams are in front of me it feels as though i only look at them and give them a kiss before sending them away. as though all i want is to yearn for ideals in my head and not to make them a reality.
rather than a yearning that slowly torches away my skin because of my lack of action and ability to do anything to get the things i want, i want to make this flame of desire mine. i want to make it power me instead of burn me away. i fucking hate being potential man. i want to do things.
i went a pretty long time without even mentioning melee, and i think that means something. melee has always been in my life, but i’ve never designated any real importance to it until 2023, when i started trying to be more involved in my scene. and for a little bit, it was the main thing in my life outside of work. now, i still think it’s one of the most important things in my life, but the difference between now and then is that i have so many things i care about now. and that feels really fucking good. because honestly, i love melee more than ever.
i think i’ve said this in the past, but i think it’s beautiful that melee has been there every step of the way throughout my life. it mirrors the person i am so deeply in terms of my play and my outlook and my decisions and even how i feel about myself, and i think it’s incredible that anything can make me feel that way. i joke about working out and eating and sleeping better to get better at melee but the more i think about it, the more i realize that i truly see melee as an extension of my own self-improvement. i really was just drifting for so much of my life until i decided to wake up for the first time after not making it out of r1 in 2023. and then, over time, i watched myself become someone. i graduated and found work and moved out and got PRed for the first time in 2024.
but then i got stuck. heading into 2025, i took on more than i had ever taken on before, and learned what it meant to perform radical self-sacrifice for someone. and despite it all, i kept moving forward and reaching higher heights. my year wasn’t too eventful, but i picked up some wins over some good falcons and finally defeated my longtime norcal demons.
in july, i found that the weight of the world seemed to no longer be on my shoulders, and it was terrifying. terrifying that i felt like i had no more chains to stop me from being the person i wanted to be, and that from here, it would only ever be myself holding me back. liberation is striking when all you’ve ever known is the dull, everlasting pain of responsibilities and obligations. even after the stake was removed from my back, it took a while for me to realize i could ever be free from my past. but at the edge of 2026, i found myself with better work, fulfilling relationships, more hobbies, more passion, and more ideas. i finally shot up from the bottom of the pr to the top. i started an article series and a local and moved into a new place and just started learning chinese and guitar. i’m knocking on the door of top 100. i built a circle of people i love around me with my own two hands that i feel eternally grateful for. and i want to continue to open my heart to as many people as i can. after all, we are all we have. and one of my promises to myself is to never forget how far i’ve come. i truly have come so, so far.
more than anything, i’m so excited to become the person i was always meant to be. it’s been a long road of finding the balance between everything, but a few heartbreaks and some stimulants might have just let me crack the code. at long last, i’ve stepped foot on the path to the one piece.
things have been difficult. and although i’ve lost a lot in the past year, i’ve also gained more than i currently know what to do with. i think that i gained a lot of things by letting go. but now, i want to hold on tight to myself.
i’ve been listening to a band called pigeon pit a lot recently, as a past recommendation from someone that used to hold me dear. and in my favorite song from them, they tell me to “never slow down, white knuckled angel. this is gonna take everything you have.” but this time, with my hands numb from cutoff blood circulation, i’ll be in the driver’s seat. and i plan to savor every last drop of life in 2026.
i had an amazing time at genesis, smash camp, fight at the museum, goml, eugenebound, genesis black, socal sweep, and scl. and i’ll see everyone again soon. i love you
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your dear friend rainy