No. 16 - There are less than 100 summers left

Last summer I watched a T1 game in Korea and spent 6 weeks in Boston for a summer camp.
Last last summer I stayed in Korea the entire summer doing math.
Last last last summer I (unfortunately) took an SAT/ACT preparatory course.
Last last last last summer I went to lake Tahoe.
Last last last last last summer I moved to America.

And the rest I don't remember much; basically I remember less than half of the summers I've had?

I've been trying to figure out why I haven't been able to write my thoughts down as much as before lately, and as I tried* to write this post, I realized I couldn't. It was awkward because I was completely fine trying to think of what to write, but I was struggling to put them into concrete words from a series of cloud of thoughts.

*emphasis on tried -- it took me weeks to get myself to write and post this one

I constantly judge myself. I don't know why I think "who am I to judge" for everyone but myself. I judge myself on looks. I judge myself on what I wear. I judge myself after every word I utter. I judge myself after every awkward moments I live through, wrapping my hands around my head for something that lasted 3 seconds in a conversation I had months and years ago. What will they think? What if they don't appreciate what I said? What if they end up hating me? What if they judge me?

Even as I was writing this blog post, I kept reading what I wrote again, cringing like I was looking at my old texting style from 7th grade. Honestly, I don't even know if people actually read this, and this is fully for my own fulfillment yet I still worry of how it will be shown to others. Looking back, even when I was writing college essays I was struggling to write about myself because I thought people who were helping to edit my essays or the admissions officers would judge me so badly that they would hate my guts. Just the possibility of people reading what I think makes me feel like I am showing too much vulnerability and weakness to an unspecified number of people.

So, every time I try to allow leniency onto myself, my brain just dysfunctions and starts getting anxious over everything again. One day, I figured the reason why I can barely hold eye contacts with people is because having people look at me generates too many thoughts in my head, making me worry about the smallest bits that the person can notice about me in the few seconds of eye contact -- such as looks, clothes, pupil dilation, eye twitching, asymmetry in my face, breathing pattern -- though they all seem to be trivial for others. Every "um I forgot"s I've told were just a mere lie to cover up something I decided not to say, and in reality I still remember what I was about to say.

Then another day, while I was fighting demons to fall asleep instead of replaying tragic moments of my life in my head for 3 hours straight, I realized: no one cares this much. No one really cares about what I wear, nor do they care about my looks, even less do they care about what I say. At the end of the day, I barely remember what people even said to me (my defense system seems to just wipe everything out of my memories these days). Assuming it goes similar for everyone else, I decided to embrace my thoughts and say them out loud.

If I were to even barely remember what I did over the summer less than half a decade ago, even more so what I told my mom ten minutes ago, I might as well just say everything out loud rather than keeping it to myself and letting it rot inside of me for so long. I am now legally an adult and have graduated high school, therefore I expect myself to be more mature and be able to say everything I was meaning to. Regardless, I almost passed out from anxiety trying to figure something out myself instead of saying it out loud.

With the less than 100 summers left, I don't want to leave any regrets in me for not saying things out loud.

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16/100

Wrote this on June 17th 2025 (posted August 19th 2025) so that's saying a lot...

Also I said I would post this after polishing it but I got lazy so that's that.