ctrl+z

i think you're cool. alas, i've lost the ability to have a conversation with someone. even an email seems beyond my capabilities. directly communicating with other people (as opposed to indirectly, like through writing on my website) feels beyond me. i don't know how to do it. sometimes i feel a vague urge to say something to someone, anyone---yet here is my place to do it. why send an email when i have nothing to say?

this website feels like a prison of my own making. i've satisfied many of my needs for self-expression and communication. the only thing it's lacking is other people---not an audience: a conversation. but for what? and why does it bother me so?

you say there's no such thing as gender in the kitchen, but i'm pretty sure the gender is male.

i've once wondered if you'd ever become disillusioned by the idea of love. have you conflated it with lust? i've thought that it makes sense for people to do that. everywhere i see, romantic relationships are seen as a stepping stone to sexual relationships, even though internet people would say these can exist separately of each other.

i've never been particularly interested in the concept of love. daydreams of the perfect man and my wedding day and how many kids i want and married life never plagued my mind. i was surprised to hear my sisters both had concrete ideas about these things. "it's just what people do," they all say, but i've never done that. am i broken?

to me, marriage seems like an abstract concept. it's something i can witness from afar, but it is not something i can see myself partaking in. i'd like to analyze this and say something like "it's because i don't agree with marriage as a whole" or "i refuse to tie myself down to someone for life" or "eff the patriarchy." those would be nice masks to wear. they'd tell you something interesting about my beliefs and values. unfortunately, the actual answer is that marriage doesn't interest me; worse, it bores me. yes, people are married, so what? why should i want to be married?

i don't understand the structure of love. people talk about the 'talking stage' and then there's a honeymoon phase, or a boyfriend/girlfriend --> fiancee --> husband/wife --> ??? stage. there's the situationship. there are so many terms that float around. there's so much anticipation for the next stages, but what happens when you're in them? where do you go and why?

someone says they've been with their boyfriend for four years, and i ask: why? what's the point? what does that mean? what does that look like? what do you do? to me, 'girlfriend' is a potential role for me to play. i don't know what it would mean. i suppose it depends on the guy---what girlfriend do you want, and let me turn myself into her. i see myself as malleable.

and so, i pose: what do 'love' and 'dating' mean to you?

please don't be a bitch about today.

also part of the reason why i mention coworker not leaving on time is because, if he left on time, --- and --- would have to get off of their phones and actually work. imagine that.

you do not pay me enough to put up with all of your yelling and passive aggressive comments. you're bitching about the knives, again. when you see other current and former cooks sharpening knives, you tell them what they're doing wrong, and then tell them how good of a job they're doing. when you see me sharpening a knife, you black out and start chit-chatting with people about football or joking or whatever the fuck. when you see other people sharpening knives, you pay attention, but when you see me, you just ignore me. if the others ask you questions, you answer, but you just stare at me like i'm an idiot for opening my mouth. it's been like this for the past two years that i've spent trying to sharpen knives. i've asked [other cooks] for help and they say they don't feel like it or have other things to do (like scrolling through their phones?//????). and then who do you yell at when the knives aren't sharp? me. because, in your words, it's easy and only takes five minutes. we've spent two years establishing that 1) i suck at sharpening knives 2) youtube videos are not an acceptable resource for learning to sharpen knives 3) sharpening knives is ez-pz and there is no reason for knives to be dull. also 4) if i'm telling you i was just sharpening that knife, and you're telling me that it's not sharp, maybe listen? ask yourself, "huh, what's wrong?" instead of talking about how the cooks never sharpen the knives. for christ's sake, -- and --- and --- and --- all saw me. stop yelling at me and stop bullshitting me.

funny how i can find you attractive, daydream, all while simultaneously knowing that nothing would ever happen, you do not find me attractive (i presume), and then wondering what the point of all of this is. something in my brain is broken.

i don't want to date you; i honestly struggle to understand why people want a boy/girlfriend/romantic partner. maybe that's my lack of experience talking or maybe it's something else entirely. i hope the fact that i'm not interested in labelling my 'condition' says enough. there's a part of me that thinks i want to fuck you, but the concept is too abstract---i can maintain a daydream, if you follow what i'm saying, but even then it's all an abstraction; i cannot imagine you as the concept i'm imagining. am i putting on masks? am i pretending to have desires, or are those things i desire?

worse still, i don't know if these feelings / desires are about you at all. sometimes i think i'm just a lonely person who is projecting onto someone who has the misfortune of being there. you've got a great personality, you're easy on the eyes, and i look at you and think: damn, there's someone who's got his life figured out. and that thought triggers another: do i want to be with you, or do i want to be you?

backtracking, i'll admit to how i sometimes think about opening up a dating app. this thought is so dissociated from reality that i have never searched for a dating app in the app store, much less downloaded one. i think it'd be cruel for me to go on to the apps and engage in dating behaviors out of curiosity. what would it be like to text a man with ulterior motives? what would it be like to go on a date with someone? what would it be like to be called so-and-so's girlfriend? (is there even a so-and-so who would call me their girlfriend?) what would it be like to screw someone, and am i too broken to?

i feel so broken and wrong. i know that this isn't about you, but my brain wants to make it about you. my brain is lazy and projects onto you to take a shortcut. i'm left to deal with this mess of contradictory emotions and incompatible desires. i don't care if i never saw you again, and i want to curl up on a couch next to you several times a week for the rest of my life. which is it?

every time i've given you pushback, it's because you were telling me to do something that 1) our boss has specifically said, on mulitple occasions, that we absolutely cannot do that or 2) you're saying something that doesn't make sense and directly contradicts how we usually handle a situation. i'd put 3) on a separate list, which is the times you criticize ---'s behavior like you expect me to do something about it. he's been here for longer than all of us, and if you have a problem with something he's doing, you need to talk to him, not me. oh and 4) that time you guys called a meeting last-minute, said everybody absolutely had to be there in 15min, and then we were waiting half an hour for our boss to show up. "i don't want to hear any complaints" ma'am, you are being unreasonable. you used to be that hardworking coworker who definitely screwed up... a lot... but was otherwise pretty reliable. now you're turning into a bit of a bitch and using your authority to try to reign supreme. the fact that i've had to go to our boss and say "hey she said to do this, but you've told us not to do that, so what am i doing?" on multiple occasions is aggravating. i'm not trying to undermine your authority, i'm telling you that what you're asking us to do isn't foodsafe or isn't possible. or that it violates our usual procedures, and i want to know if the procedures have actually changed...oh wait they haven't? i shouldn't have done what she said? okay...

i've lost what respect i used to have for her. i cannot stand people who say "do it because i said so" and expect me to blindly follow orders. i should be able to say "hey, that doesn't make sense, can you explain why you're saying that?" without being hit with a "just do it anyways." especially when you're telling me to defrost raw meat in hot water. this is a restauraunt! we cannot do that!

also, if a customer is complaining about the food / there's a problem with their order, i need to know what's going on. just telling me how you want me to fix it doesn't give me the information i need. i'm thinking of the time when you told me to do ---, even though that's never been how we handle that situation. we always [redacted] because that is what our boss has always told us to do. when i asked you why you're telling us to do it differently, you said "i don't know, just do it anyways." you're the one giving us orders; "i don't know" is not an acceptable answer. also, we knew that there was an issue with the rest of the customer's food, yet your answer to why we're not fixing that was also "i don't know, but we're not." like ??? you're the one who decided how we're handling this situation. to top it off, the main reason why i needed to look at the rest of the customer's order was because [might've been something else], which 1) is not something the new cook who was working on that order would've catched. hell the older cooks don't always catch it and 2) if it was [that situation], then i need to know that before doing what you're telling me to do, because then we do what you're saying, we find out that "hey this doesn't look right," and then the customer ends up waiting an extra 15min, and then you bitch about 'why is this taking so long.'

also 3) foh guy deciding to take over line because of how many mistakes we'd made was entirely innapropriate. for one, he kept making more mistakes, all of which were things we've repeatedly tried to address with him. two, that was the only mistake. your fellow manager and our boss had already established that [the thing he was upset about] was a mistake with foh giving the wrong orders to delivery drivers, and we know this because [yada yada yada]. stop glaring at me and listen to the manager who is trying to tell you that. three, you're putting us in a really awkward situation where we're telling you that [redacted making mistakes and giving customers wrong orders], and you're completely ignoring us. great, you have made the problem worse!