Five facts intro in Going public

Five facts about your current relationship:
Hopelessly single, lol. This is the longest I’ve gone without dating in years. I’m recovering from some medical issues and just haven’t felt like getting back out there yet.

Five facts about a past relationship:
- I have had two serious long term relationships, and a smattering of shorter relationships.
- Drew was my last serious relationship, and we were together two years. We moved states together, we lived together, we adopted a cat together. Looking back, things were always a bit rocky, but I guess I didn’t understand that wasn’t OK. He was 8 years older than me, and was a bit of a fuck-up in the past. His family loved me and I got the sense they kind of felt like I was the best thing to happen to him. I broke up with him a year and a half ago now. It was a great relief to break up, as he had lied to me and I had just realized we weren’t compatible anymore.
- Dylan was my other serious relationship, also lasting around two years. He was just a couple years older than me, and also had a history of being a fuck-up (do you sense a pattern? ha) I was an incredibly good influence on him, and I think I really set his life on a different course. He raised my confidence in a lot of ways, because I thought he was gorgeous, and was flattered and surprised he was so into me. Our breakup was mutual-ish in the sense that he checked out, but I initiated the actual conversation.
- My first boyfriend was named Mike, and we met in college. I was an AWFUL girlfriend, because I was clueless. I didn’t do anything straight up mean to him, but I never prioritized his feelings and was very selfish. Things started to fizzle, and he broke up with me. He also had the largest penis I’ve seen to date.
- I’ve dated a handful of guys since Drew, but just one I called my boyfriend. I wasn’t official with the last guy I dated but we were together a couple months. He blindsided me and screwed me over the day before I had surgery, which has left a very bad taste in my mouth.

Five facts about your mother:
- She has 8 siblings, one of which died before she was born. Two other siblings of hers are dead now, both from cancer.
- She grew up on a farm in Minnesota, and then moved to town when she was a teenager. She grew up very poor and was raised poorly I think. My grandma was a narcissist for sure, and my grandpa was very passive and lazy af, barely providing for his family. He spent years in the hospital when she was a child.
- When my mom was 12 she was shipped away to the city every summer to nanny for her aunt and uncle and her three cousins. She LOVED being able to escape the farm and have autonomy. By today’s standards that was a pretty horrific thing to do - kids taking care of kids. They also let her get shitfaced drunk whenever she wanted (her aunt was a nurse so they had to have known that was wrong)
- She’s a very talented artist, and was able to use her skills in her career. She did stints as a stay at home mom with my sister and I. She’s retired now, as of 6 months ago.
- She wasn’t a good mother and took on a lot of narcissistic traits of her own mother, causing a lot of strife in my upbringing. She’s becoming more mild as she ages and I’ve been determined to keep things peaceful between her and I ever since I moved out. I still keep a lot of emotional distance and she’s on a serious ‘information diet’.

Five facts about your father:
- I fucking hate him, and I’m writing this on Father’s day. I had nightmares about him last night.
- He’s truly one of the most fucked up people I have ever met. I don’t understand his behavior at all.
- He has 9 (I think?) siblings and he hasn’t kept in contact with any of them since he was a young adult, even though most of them live very close by. He also literally never spoke to his parents. Everyone else in his family stays in touch. I think something really fucked up must have happened to him as a child to make him this way.
- He has no friends, no connections, no one he talks to outside of my mom (they are still married, over 30 years I think). I cut him out of my life when I was 12. I just stopped talking to him one day after he treated me like shit when I was at a very low point, and he never protested or asked me why. My sister will be cordial with him, but as far as I can tell they have no meaningful relationship.
- He just retired a few weeks ago, but worked at the same company since he was 18. He moved up to a leadership position at some point. Given his knowledge and dedication and how many hours he worked I think his position and compensation was miserably low. I’m sure his career growth was limited by his shit personality. He does manage to pull out some gregariousness for work, though. I was always amazed and offended by the personality he would put on when I saw him take work calls.

Five facts about your sibling(s):
- I have one sister, and she is 12 years older than me. My mom’s pregnancy with her messed up her reproductive system and she was thought to be infertile, until I came along.
- She is married and has two children. Her husband is Chinese/Taiwanese and is pretty cool.
- She was always the golden child and was pretty mean to me growing up. She left for college when I was young, so it barely even feels like I have a sister.
- In the last few years we are both trying more to connect, and texting once in awhile. I spent a night at her house when I visited MN over the holidays, and I felt she was a bad host, and it basically crushed my hopes for a fulfilling relationship with her.
- She has a marketing degree and worked in the book publishing industry. She got laid off at the same time she was pregnant, so she became a stay at home mom for several years. Her husband inherited a property management company from his family, so they run that together now. She also does some work in the publishing industry part time, and still does most of the parenting.

Five facts about your house:
- It’s an apartment. It’s a one bedroom with a den. I pay like $2500 a month for it :|
- I love it here! [Fake] hardwood floors, nice finishes, and it’s a brand new building so I’m the first to live here.
- The building itself is very swanky. Everyone who lives here is rich. The parking garage is filled with luxury cars that cost as much as a year’s salary.
- It has a/c which is not common in this part of the country. I also don’t need it often, but it’s nice to have.
- It’s nestled in between downtown, and a residential neighborhood. In one direction I walk to do all the downtown things, and in the other direction I can go for quiet walks or runs.

Five facts about your nieces and/or nephews:
- My niece is 10. She’s spunky and smart.
- My nephew is 8, he’s shy and mischievous.
- They’re both mixed race, which means CUTE. My nephew was one of the cutest babies/toddlers I’ve ever seen.
- I moved out of state when my niece was just a few months old, so I’ve never really spent much time with either of them. The weakness of my relationship with my sister does not help the situation with my niece and nephew. I send them presents on holidays. Hopefully I can get closer to them as they get older.
- They’re both a little standoffish. I attribute this to the fact that my sister and her husband are both a bit emotionally cold, I’ve seen it firsthand it and kills me. But overall I think they are having a happy childhood and will survive it better than I did mine.

Five facts about your education:
- Sometime in high school I decided that education was my ticket out. I amassed close to two years of college credits while in high school, from a combination of AP classes and taking classes at the local community college. Through self study I was even able to take a few AP tests in which I hadn’t taken the class.
- I decided to go to college for physics. I chose a school in Chicago, and had a great experience. I worked really, really hard and graduated magna cum laude.
- Funding college was straight up traumatic. My parents had a decent amount of money but weren’t really interested in helping me fund college because they felt like our poor relationship meant that I didn’t deserve their help. Of course, the FAFSA doesn’t care about that, so I was expected to pay a lot. During senior year of high school my mom told me that she wouldn’t even co-sign on loans because “what if you died?”. She eventually changed her mind on that, because at the time she loaned my sister $30k for a house flipping project. After my first year I was able to only take out government loans, and minimized expenses by renting an apartment off campus. Still, I had to work a LOT to survive. The university has rules about how many hours you can work, so I gamed the system by taking at times 4 on campus jobs, and working the max hours at each one. Some of them were overnight jobs, so I would be awake at all hours of the day at night, working like a dog.
- I won a prestigious NSF fellowship for graduate school. This meant they paid me more than the average graduate student, and I was able to focus on research rather than teaching.
- I went to graduate school for physics in Oregon. I entered into a PhD program, and ended up staying there for 3 years before I left with a masters degree (3 years ago now). It was a hell of a time. I developed epilepsy my first few months there, and my coursework never really recovered. I also didn’t really connect with my cohort. There are a lot of reasons why it didn’t work out. Anyway, no one from my old lab has finished their PhD yet. Pretty wild to think I could still be there.

Five facts about your job:
- I work at one of the biggest tech companies in the country, as a software engineer.
- It’s been a trip. At big companies, things are always in flux, and I have been through a lot of big changes. They pay me a lot, for which I am grateful.
- Half of my team, including my manager, work from home offices in other states. This allows me near total flexibility. I can work from home whenever I want, and keep whatever schedule I want (as long as I attend required meetings).
- I’m doing pretty well there, especially for my level. I don’t find the work to be particularly interesting, or particularly challenging. Yes there are problems to solve, but they’re not impossible.
- I don’t care for the people I work around. I loved my previous team, but staff changes on my new team have ruined it. Lots of times at work I’m very lonely, but I do have people on other teams I’m friendly with, which keeps me afloat.

Five facts about your pet(s):
- Cosmo is 12!! He’s a white, black, and brown 13lb big boy.
- I met Cosmo when I was volunteering at a cat rescue in Oregon. I had recently broken up with Dylan (who was allergic to cats), so I felt it was finally time to get one of my own. Cosmo was adopted as a kitten by an elderly woman, who eventually had to give him up when she went into the nursing home. His next owner was good to him, but then she got sick and had to leave him behind. She had someone half-assedly taking care of him, but it was a bad situation and he was semi-abandoned. During this time, his teeth rotted, and they have since all been surgically removed.
- The reason I adopted Cosmo is because he had the loudest purr I had ever heard! He was very calm and loving and suited my lifestyle perfectly. He’s the biggest attention whore ever. His personality has changed over the years, and he’s become more spunky. Especially after his teeth were removed and he was no longer in pain did he become more energetic and playful. One big flaw of his is that he is too chatty!
- Sophie is 2! She’s a brown and black beauty queen. She’s originally from Texas, but was shipped up here as a kitten as this area has high demand for rescue cats.
- She’s very playful, and independent. But she is becoming more cuddly as she gets older. At the same time, she has a shy and timid way about her. I feel kind of bad, like I should have socialized her better when she was young. She had Cosmo have the BEST cuddle times ever, though. Overall she is an absolute princess and causes no trouble at all.

Five facts about your phone:
- It’s a Samsung Galaxy S9+ in rose gold.
- Team Android 4lyfe.
- I’m too addicted to it.

Five facts about your childhood:
- I grew up in a midsize town in Minnesota. I lived in the same house the entire time.
- I grew up wandering around outdoors, being a rough and tumble tomboy. It was the kind of childhood where your mom would kick you outdoors all day everyday in the summer, and I loved that. My neighborhood friends and I would wander around the woods for hours at a time, making small amounts of trouble.
- I always had a lot of friends at school. There were fights and struggles, sure, but I was never isolated or ostracized. If anything, I could be a bit of a bully. I was the kid who was always trying to be funny and not pay attention in school in favor of having a good time.
- I was very, very sad. My parents were emotionally abusive and neglectful. I can’t even describe to you the depth of my loneliness and hopelessness. I often felt suicidal (but made no attempts, I had no idea how). I received zero love or affection from anyone in my life, and as a result had no idea how to make meaningful connections with anyone. And as a result of that, never got close enough to anyone to tell them about what was going on.
- I was always known to be intelligent, and succeeded in school. From the outside it looked like I was thriving.

Five facts about the city/town you live in:
- I live in downtown Bellevue, WA
- It’s across the lake from Seattle. But having to cross a bridge from Seattle to the east side makes it seem way further than it really is.
- It’s a very swanky town and is filled with tech company headquarters. For example: T-Mobile, Expedia, Nordstrom. Then there are satellite offices to other companies like Microsoft, Amazon, etc. Hence my absurd rent.
- It’s pretty ethnically diverse (white, Indian, Chinese)
- Because of the posh-ness of it, there are less quirky and cool things than you would find in Seattle. And the nightlife is really lacking.

Five facts about you right now:
- I’m laying on my couch in sweats, and I kinda need a shower.
- I’m having a very lazy day so far. All I have done is eat breakfast, drink coffee, and do this.
- My cats are exploring the balcony and enjoying the sun.
- I should probably conquer more of my todo list.
- I should probably do some work today.