Have been really anxious and having a lot of trouble with sleep lately and irritability lately and feeling burned out and having a short fuse, but I've been trying to practice shit I've learned from therapy before and separate impulsive thoughts and negative automatic thinking patterns from my sense of self (like, not "ugh I'm such an irritable miserable bitch" but "I have a lot of difficult shit to deal with and it's understandable that someone in my position would be frustrated and have a short fuse sometimes and that isn't some inherent flaw in my character," etc)

Trying to be appreciative of little things that go well or I enjoy or make me notice improvement in myself

-Have stayed dry for more than a month for the first time this year. Feel like I've turned a corner mentally where I just associate alcohol with how awful I felt after my last binge and feel repulsed by booze now because of that association instead of still craving it sometimes after previous attempts staying sober after getting through withdrawals. Was offered some red wine at a dinner and turned it down. I probably would have drank it in the past rationalizing it as "just one glass in a social setting" and "not a big deal," then basically doing the Barney Gumble "it begins" thing and relapsing afterwards with vodka, and I didn't and wasn't really even tempted, so go me.

-Have been better about skincare. Found a moisturizer that agrees with my sensitive gay baby skin and am pretty happy about that. Instead of stinging my face, it doesn't bother me going on, then like gradually turns into the skin equivalent feeling of the nice glow feeling your mouth gets from a pleasantly spicy food? If that makes sense?

-Got some nice music recs I'm looking forward to checking out and have revisited some albums I really like that I haven't listened to in years and had a good time remembering

-Have been thinking about how to spend the money I've saved quitting drinking and am considering getting a mid gaming PC (the newest vidya I've played is X360 stuff lol) and/or music gear (either a lunchbox low watt tube guitar amp or a modeling rig) that's kind of exciting to me

-Mentally am trying to work through some of my hermit tendencies and whether I have avoidant personality disorder and how to work through that. Learned that a once very close friend that I fell out of touch with during covid that I learned is going through some really rough shit and is depressed and I'm struggling with how to approach reaching out to. The longer I've been out of contact with someone, the harder it is for me to think of how to try reconnecting and I feel extremely guilty and sad for how we lost contact. I still deeply care for this friend and felt like they were like the sibling I never had, we just intuitively understood each other in a way I've never had with anyone and were the first friend I made after coming out who only ever knew me as me not (dead name.) I want to rekindle our friendship but I feel so guilty for drifting away from them in the first place that thinking about how to make contact again after years feels so overwhelming and I feel like however that goes I'd probably have an ugly crying type meltdown.

Thanks for reading my bullshit if you made it this far lol, sorry for the wall of text and diarypost

Karuniya & Murati are the only pairing that relies exclusively on one trope, and it's so fucking weird that they're so hopelessly underwritten. How does the main character's love interest have so little screentime and suck so, so bad? Obviously part of the problem is Murati almost doesn't react to any of Karuniya's weird, weird advances, but like... you get more out of Maryam and Shalikova though? They are fun, Shalikova has her lil autism arc? Hell, Sieglund's silly love triangle with Sad Unrequited Dog Girl and the princess has more sauce to it. I like Murati as a character quite a bit, uh my autistic transfem girlkissing protagonist, waow. Literally cannot get that anywhere else. But her girlfriend is a nothingburger and their relationship is even more of a nothingburger.

Maybe it's because they have 0 conflict? A lot of their scenes do kind of read like the epilogue of a romance, which is annoying. I'm always yapping about how romances could be about more than just the commencement of a relationship, and it seems like these two should be it, but after their disagreement over Murati's placement on the Brigand, (kind of interesting) that's basically it for interesting development. You (I) might hope that flashbacks would provide the goods, but the few looks we get into their past seem to tell the reader that not much was ever up. The only thing of note is that Murati didn't really seem to "get" the flirting which was funny, but not in a "haha awww she's doin' an autism" way, in a way where the fact they made out after their first date seems almost weird.

Obviously it must have been really funny to watch my autistic ass badly misread the entire thing and post a nuclear take about it, and it does help at least a little to understand the trope better, even if I still think it's way underwritten. Love to fundamentally misunderstand shit.

When I think of enjoyable romances in fiction, though, a few do spring to mind but Murati and Karuniya are NOT it. There's none of the complication of say, Homa's little flights of gay fancy, it's just sort of "protagonist" and "cute girl". I kept hoping Karuniya would get some characterisation, as a little treat, but while I think UD is pretty balanced on the whole, Kayuniya definitely falls through the cracks which seems like a huge L for what should be one of its most prominent characters? Like what do we know about Karuniya other than that she's a simp for butches and does marine plantlife shit? She is such a nobody and it's a crying shame.