r/TheBigGirlDiary

Ever been someone so observant that you could see the writing on the wall?

How did it make you feel to just sit there in limbo while you watched everything playout in a way where the only thing that was avoidable - was people assuming you were too naive to see it?

I, personally, find this kind of obtuse 'maintaining' the status quo as disrespectful.

I have seen it a few places in my days:

- A job I ask if I am going to be replaced from, and they say no... until they do.

- A relationship that is already separated in all but name?

- A divorce where families try all kinds of "fixes" that just end up being prolonged torture until the inevitable.

I feel like when you are the unwilling bystander to the train you can see speeding towards you down the track - but cannot get out of the way; is when it crosses the line of for your own good, or "committed to trying".

Bonus points if you have ever been gaslit on the other side of it for being an "overthinker" or for being a "Self-fulfilling prophecy" who by raising concerns and standard foresight ability - suddenly went from having zero control over the situation - to being the orchestrator of the outcome.

Anyways - just the philosophy of the day.

Do you have a similar story? I'd like to hear it.

Everyone keeps saying I’m in love, I’m falling in love… but what is love??

Like does anybody actually know??

How do you fall in love?

How do you even know you’re in love?

And do you think nowadays it’s just for aesthetics and nobody actually knows what they’re talking about??

Because I genuinely don’t understand it.

Like—

If you like someone’s appearance → that’s attraction

If you can’t stop thinking about them → that’s infatuation

If you can’t function without them → that’s attachment

If your mood depends on them → that’s dependence

If it’s “you are mine” → that’s ego

If you are obsessed with them → that’s obsession

So if you strip all these things away, then remains an uncomfortable question:

WHAT IS LOVE??

Like , does anybody have an actual answer? Please tell me.

The only explanation that makes sense to me is:

love is not “she is mine” but “I’m hers” — becoming of your loved one.

And still the question remains the same…

WHAT IS LOVE??

I don’t really have a big circle of friends, and I’ve always told myself I’m okay with that because I’d rather invest in a few people properly than spread myself thin across a lot of surface-level connections.

But something I’ve been slowly learning in my 30s is that “quality over quantity” only really works when the effort is actually mutual. Otherwise it just becomes one-sided effort with a nicer label on it.

There’s one friend I genuinely consider quite close. We’ve had really good time together before, the kind where conversation flows easily and you leave thinking “yeah, this is a real friendship.” A couple weeks ago we went for a walk and it was the same, relaxed, easy, we even talked about doing it again and literally put it in our calendars for another morning walk.

Then nothing. No follow-up, no mention during the week. When I reached out closer to the day, she didn’t respond at first, and later just said it had slipped her mind and apologized. It wasn’t dramatic or anything, just… flat in a way that kind of stayed with me. And it’s not even the first time it’s happened, there have been a few moments like this where plans just quietly disappear without much effort to reconnect.

It left me in that weird space of trying to figure out if I’m over-interpreting normal forgetfulness, or if the level of investment just isn’t actually the same on both sides. I don’t feel angry about it, more just a bit quiet about it, like something is being adjusted internally without a clear decision.

Just finished Rock Paper Scissors by Alice Feeney and okay the plot twist was GOOD like I genuinely did not see that coming but

Why was Adam reacting that way when he literally knew he caused the accident 😭

And maybe I’m missing something but the ending felt weirdly incomplete to me. Like I genuinely thought there was going to be another twist or something because the book never properly explains if October or henry Winter's agents death was actually suicide or murder.

And Adam’s face blindness was such a central part of the story but then there’s is this scene where he recognizes Robin in the restaurant even though she didn’t raise her hand and was wearing a dress he had never seen before like how did he recognize her???

Idk the second half was definitely better and the twist was GOOD but I feel like the ending could’ve been done a little better honestly.

Had therapy yesterday and I went in like usual, thinking we’d just talk about overthinking again. I didn’t think anything new would come out of it because I feel like I already know I overthink everything.

But I was describing how I’ll spend hours rereading a text before replying, or how I still replay random conversations from years ago like I’m trying to extract some hidden meaning.

She just looked at me for a second and said, very calmly, “You’re running a full diagnostic on a paper cut while ignoring the broken leg.”

I actually stopped talking after that. Like my brain just paused mid-process.

And then of course, immediately after that moment, I started thinking about this ridiculous shirt my roommate has that says something like “my anxiety has anxiety.” I remember laughing at it before, but now it felt a bit too accurate in a way that’s not even funny.

Because it is that loop sometimes. Not just being anxious, but being aware of being anxious, and then reacting to that awareness, and then somehow that becomes another thing to manage. It just keeps stacking.

My therapist asked why I was laughing and I tried to explain the shirt thing and she actually wrote it down. Said it was one of the more honest descriptions I’ve given.

Which is kind of funny because I didn’t mean it as anything deep, it just felt obvious.

But I’ve been thinking about both things since then. Her sentence and that stupid shirt. It’s like they’re pointing at the same thing but from opposite directions.

I don’t know, I’m still sitting with it. I’m supposed to “just exist” a bit more without analyzing everything I do, which sounds simple when she says it and not simple at all when I’m actually in it.

We’ll see how that goes.

Well well well stupid what have you been doing? I mean I don't think so right? Granted I'm looking at my bank statements from the past month and doing the maths. $1500 this past month in this- bills are fine, money is fine. I guess I can afford this but seeing that number what higher then I expected. I really thought it was under $1,000usd. I was debating getting more now seeing that number kinda gave me the ick.

What I'm doing isn't illegal, it's not drugs that can have you sucking dick in the street corner. I'm just kinda floored that much has gone that way. I always have to out some money aside for Lyft when I leave work or when it rains. (It's supposed to rain this week) So I gotta make sure I'm all good.

Then end of this month I'm supposed to be getting the biggest manager bonus I've ever gotten too. So wooo- right. I think I started doing and being able to afford nitrous when I swithed jobs. It started around my bday I said it was gonna be a one off. (Clearly it wasn't) I often wonder if my neighbors can hear me "whippin". Like "that guy has been filling balloons for hours nows".

Overall idk why I'm slightly ashamed of myself. I hate taking out the trash like "this is what I'm choosing to do with my days off" even then gym kinda fell off. (Which is okay I'm going today) So again is this addiction or is this the "slippery slope"but I like the slide but never the down fall. 🙄

Also financially I think it's something TO buy. I got my bed couch rugs my place is almost fully furnished. So I have extra income. Is is bad or just slippery? 🤔 I want someone to tell me it's okay. Cause I need some form of approval.

Yesterday I asked my mom about this tiny scene that’s been stuck in my head forever. I honestly thought it was fake. Like one of those memories your brain accidentally builds from dreams or old photos or something.

In the memory, I’m really little, sitting in a stroller while my mom pushes me across this dusty factory yard to visit my dad at work. He used to work security at some old factory before I was old enough to remember anything properly. He’s sitting outside on a chair smiling at us, and my mom pulls out this strawberry cake and hands it to him like it’s the most normal thing in the world.

I’ve had it since I was a kid but never asked about it because I kinda assumed there was no way I could remember being that young. But yesterday at dinner I started describing it and my mom literally stopped eating for a second. She kept going “wait... how do you remember that?”

Then she started confirming details one by one. Yeah, they used to visit him at the factory all the time. Yeah, she always baked him this strawberry cake recipe back then. Yeah, the yard really looked like that. Apparently my dad only worked there for like two years after I was born, so I was maybe one or two years old.

I don’t know why it hit me so hard. Maybe because I’ve always treated early memories like fake little movies. But this one was real. My brain kept it somewhere all this time.

And honestly the memory itself isn’t even dramatic. Nobody was crying or having some life changing moment. It was literally just my parents existing together on a normal day, carrying cake around.

I think that’s the part messing with me a little. The oldest thing my brain decided to save wasn’t fear or chaos or embarrassment. It was something soft and boring and warm.

Kinda makes me wonder how many tiny moments people carry around without realizing they mattered to them.

The moment I mention past bullying or exclusion, the response is usually some version of “you should let it go”, or “they probably don’t even remember it”, or “don’t give them space in your head”. People usually mean well when they say it, like they’re trying to help me move forward.

But it always lands a bit weird, because it assumes I’m holding on to it on purpose, like it’s something I’m choosing to replay.

It’s not really like that. It just stays there. Not actively, not loudly, just… there.

And what also stands out to me is how rarely the conversation goes in the other direction.

I almost never hear anyone say “maybe that person should reflect on what they did” or “maybe they should apologize if they ever think about it now”. It’s usually all pressure placed on the person who was hurt to process it quietly and privately, while the person who caused it just continues living without ever revisiting it.

There’s something asymmetrical about that, I guess. One side is expected to heal and move on, the other side is basically assumed to have already moved on by default.

I don’t even think I want a perfect resolution or anything. It’s not like I expect people from years ago to suddenly reappear and fix things.

It’s more just this quiet question of why “letting go” is always framed as the responsibility of the person who was hurt, and almost never as something shared.

People always say making friends as an adult is hard, which is true, but I think what makes it feel especially frustrating is that most of us are still using a strategy that only really worked when we were younger.

Back then friendship happened almost by accident. School forced you into the same room with the same people every day, you saw each other constantly, and eventually you became familiar enough to start talking about real things.

Adult life is basically the opposite.

Everyone is busy, schedules are chaotic, people move, change jobs, start relationships, disappear for months, come back like nothing happened. Even when you genuinely want more connection, “go make friends” somehow feels like another admin task on an already ridiculous to-do list.

What actually helped me was realizing friendship usually needs repetition more than chemistry.

Not some huge networking event, not one amazing dinner where you magically meet your future best friend. Just recurring contact.

A weekly group ended up helping me way more than I expected. Same people, same time, a little structure, low pressure. Nothing dramatic happened. No instant bonding montage. But after a few weeks, the conversations naturally got less surface-level because everyone had already gotten past the awkward introduction phase.

That part matters more than I used to think.

I think a lot of adult loneliness is less about being bad at connecting and more about not having enough built-in repetition anymore.

So now my advice is pretty simple: if you want more friends, stop optimizing for intensity and start optimizing for consistency.

Book club, workout class, language exchange, dinner rotation, anything recurring honestly.

Turns out familiarity is doing a lot more heavy lifting than charisma ever did.

I think it’s high time we all accept that yes we are beautiful but WE ALL CANNOT BE CONVENTIONALLY ATTRACTIVE. We all can’t be THAT GIRL and honestly that’s okay. Yes it is.

Even I’m not conventionally attractive and that’s okay or I pretend it is but whatever.

Forcing everybody into the same standard is helping nobody. I think half of our inner debates would calm down if we just stop trying to tell ourselves we’re pretty—no you read that right, see I’m one of you too—but let’s just accept na that we are not that conventionally attractive and focus on much more important things bcz ik how much time this one thought takes.

And it’s not black and white, how can it be?

And yes we all have proofs. We’ve all seen those pretty girls win. The attention, the privilege, the way people treat them differently—boys yes ik you have that thought too—all of it is a BIG YES. You are not hallucinating that. And wait, that’s not going to change. This is going to be like this, they are going to get better things, more attention and all but that’s okay bcz what else can we do.

But yeah… it’s just that thought again and again.

just accept it yrr maybe this way it will hurt a Lil less

I was watching an old show the other day and there was a scene where someone just casually said a phone number from memory, super fast, no hesitation. Not even their own number. Someone else’s.

And it made me stop for a second because I genuinely had to think about whether I even know my own phone number right now.

I do, technically. But only because I type it into things enough times. It doesn’t feel memorized in the way older generations seem to have actually memorized things.

My grandma used to keep this tiny notebook next to the house phone with names and numbers written in really small handwriting. I remember flipping through it as a kid and thinking it looked weirdly official, like a mini database. But my parents always say they didn’t even need that half the time. They just knew numbers. Friends, family, work, random places they called often.

And honestly that feels kind of impossible to me.

Now if my phone died unexpectedly, I think I could maybe contact... two people? Maybe.

It’s funny how fast certain skills disappear once technology quietly takes over for you. Not in a dramatic way. Just little things. Directions. Birthdays. Phone numbers. Stuff people probably repeated enough times that it became automatic.

A few days ago my friend asked me what I was doing for my birthday and when I told her I didn’t have anything planned because most of the people I know are busy, she offered to go get causal dinner with me and I was so excited because I almost never get to hang out with my friends on my birthday. But then her best friend invited her on a last minute road trip, and she came and asked me if it was ok if we broke our plans, because she wasn’t sure when she’ll get a chance to travel with her friends to this place again. I told her it was fine, because I know how important her friend is to her, and how sad she would be if she missed this, but I’m really disappointed. Not because the dinner plans were *that* important to me, but because it reminded me that I feel like there’s not a single person out there who would choose me first. I’m always a friend, but I’m never the best friend. I’m never the person people cancel plans for and always the one they cancel plans on. My other friend agreed to have bday dinner with me, so I’m not gonna be alone tomorrow, but I’m still so sad that I’m alway second in line.

I took my car in on Friday just to switch out my winter tires. Very normal errand. Dropped it off at 8, got a call around 2 saying it was ready, so I walked over in genuinely good spirits because the weather was nice and I was feeling productive for once.

Paid my $75, got handed a set of keys that felt vaguely unfamiliar but I figured maybe I was overthinking it because I almost never use my spare set anyway.

Then I walked outside and immediately couldn’t find my car.

Not in a dramatic way, just that weird slow confusion where you scan the lot once, then again, then start wondering if you somehow forgot what your own car looks like.

The guy at the front desk came outside with me and we both did this awkward little search around the parking lot before I spotted my actual car still up on the lift with two mechanics underneath it.

At that point everyone got confused at the same time.

The employees kept insisting my car was the grey Elantra parked in the back. I was like no... I know this sounds difficult to prove, but I do in fact know my own license plate. The blue one with its insides exposed is mine.

Turns out another Elantra had come in needing wheel bearing work, and when they lifted my car they saw mine were also in rough shape and just... started fixing them.

Not gonna lie, I already knew my car sounded a little questionable lately, but I absolutely was not planning to deal with that this week.

A few hours later they called and told me they replaced both front wheel bearings anyway, covered the entire cost, apologized repeatedly, and threw in an oil change because they noticed I was due for one soon.

So I left home that morning expecting a tire swap and somehow accidentally got a much healthier car for $75.

I was hanging out with my brother and SIL earlier and accidentally reminded myself that some people truly never clock out.

I was trying to lift something over my head and my elbow did that weird thing it sometimes does where it kind of locks up for a second. Not painful exactly, just annoying enough that I had to stop and adjust before trying again.

I casually said, “oh it does that sometimes,” which in hindsight was apparently the wrong thing to say in front of two traveling physical therapists.

They both turned and looked at me at the exact same time.

Not even dramatic, which somehow made it funnier. Just this very focused pause, then both of them went, “What do you mean it does that sometimes?”

Same tone. Same face. Like I had just confessed to living with a raccoon in my walls and acting like it was normal.

I started laughing because you could literally see them switch into work mode in real time. Suddenly I’m not just hanging out anymore, I’m apparently a case study.

So anyway, I’ve been informed I’m getting an at-home PT assessment after work.

Honestly kind of love having friends and family with hyper-specific jobs. You mention one tiny random thing and suddenly you get free consulting whether you asked for it or not.

My grandma has this phrase she repeats all the time: “whatever you hate the most is what you’ll end up doing anyway.”

Like if I said I hated eating pork as a kid, she’d immediately go, “just wait, you’ll marry someone who loves pork and wants it every day.” It used to annoy me so much because it felt like such a strange worldview. Like what does that even mean. Am I not allowed to dislike anything? Is life just some weird punishment system?

She said it again today and for some reason I finally asked her where that came from.

She just shrugged and said, “life experience.”

And honestly that answer made more sense than I expected.

My grandma got married really young, to someone her family chose. Had kids young too. Most of her adult life was basically built around other people’s decisions, other people’s needs, other people’s routines. Not in some dramatic way, just in that very ordinary way women from her generation often lived.

So of course that became her logic. Not “choose what you love,” but more like, don’t get too attached to preferences because life doesn’t really care.

I don’t even think she means it in a bitter way anymore. It just sounds practical to her.

It’s weird because I spent years thinking she was saying something super irrational, and now I kind of hear the whole sentence differently. It’s less superstition, more biography.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about this idea of “third places.” Not home, not work, just somewhere you go regularly that isn’t tied to productivity or responsibility or some version of needing to get something done. And I think I accidentally found mine.

It’s this pretty casual pizza place near where I live. Nothing fancy, nothing particularly aesthetic or special from the outside. Just good pizza, familiar staff, the same tables, the same background noise every time.

I go there a lot with my husband. We’ll sit for way longer than intended, eat slowly, talk about random things, scroll on our phones a bit, go quiet for a while, then start talking again.

Over time, the people working there started recognizing us. Not in some dramatic sitcom way where everyone knows your life story, just small things. A hello. Remembering what we usually order. A short conversation here and there.

And weirdly, that tiny amount of familiarity feels more grounding than I expected.

I think adult life can get strangely narrow if you let it. Home, work, errands, repeat. Maybe a few scheduled plans squeezed in somewhere if everyone’s calendars magically align.

So having a place where I can just exist a little without it needing to be optimized or justified feels kind of underrated.

Every time I get blood work done, the process is basically the same.

Doctor says everything looks normal, maybe gives one quick sentence, and then a PDF gets uploaded somewhere with a long list of numbers and abbreviations that somehow both belong to me and feel completely unreadable at the same time.

And then of course I do what I probably shouldn’t do, which is start looking everything up.

Ferritin. TSH. Bilirubin. Vitamin D. Whatever random marker catches my eye that day.

Suddenly I have six tabs open and I’m trying to piece together what any of it actually means. Not even in a dramatic way where I think something is wrong, more like... these are apparently my own body statistics and I weirdly know nothing about them.

That part always feels a little strange to me.

We spend years learning all kinds of things that never become relevant again, but somehow understanding your own bloodwork is treated like niche specialist knowledge.

I get that medical interpretation is more complicated than just reading one number in isolation. Obviously context matters and people can absolutely spiral if they start self-diagnosing based on one slightly weird result.

But there still feels like there should be a middle ground between “don’t worry about it” and needing an honorary medical degree just to understand a PDF.

I think health education is often framed around prevention in a very broad way. Eat vegetables, exercise, sleep more, drink water, all true, all useful.

But not much attention gets given to understanding what healthy actually looks like in measurable terms when information is literally handed to you.

Maybe that’s why so many people end up bouncing between Google, forums, and random health apps trying to translate their own data into something human-readable.

I moved into this apartment about two months ago and for the past two weeks, i’ve been hearing this weird tapping from upstairs. Not normal footsteps or furniture moving. It was very precise, almost like a rhythm, usually around 8:30 or 9pm. Sometimes it would go on for fifteen, twenty minutes, then stop, then start again. I got kind of obsessed trying to figure it out. At first i thought maybe some exercise thing. Then i convinced myself it was a rocking chair. Later i thought it had to be a pipe dripping.

I knocked on my neighbor's door once, and Margit, a very kind older woman, answered and gave me that look like i was a little off. The tapping kept going. I even started jotting down times like a detective or something.

Two nights ago, I ran into her in the mailroom and just asked, very politely, what she was doing. She smiled and said, "oh that’s my loom, I weave every evening after dinner." Two weeks of tapping and I had invented way too many theories. She showed me a scarf she made. Really beautiful. I apologized for bothering her before and she said it wasn’t a problem at all.