#WorldMentalHealthDay

"I’m asking for help at 22 that I needed at 12." I said during a rant of tweets that came from learning what day it was yesterday.

I'm establishing a support group, people I can trust if shit hits the fan. It's the only way I'm going to get through this, because thoughts that haven't been in my head for years are coming back. I'm a witch in the eyes of many, and I choose to embrace that. I'll be the thing you hate, and I'll do it harder and better than you ever could. I'll be vegan when I'm able, because I feel I respect animals too much to let them lead terrible lives in order to be butchered en masse. I'll paint my room black wherever they'll let me, and my furniture will be goth-y. Black cats, sphinx cats, and snakes are my first choice for pets. Dyed hair, piercings, and tattoos are things I'm heavily into. Witch suits me just fine.

This self confidence is pretty heavy set into what I will be, as what I am is: depressed, self loathing, anxious, tired, dysphoric, and sometimes I get suicidal thoughts. This is not what I had planned for when I started high school thinking I'd reinvent myself. Middle school was a disaster that I'd never fully recover from. When you're the weird kid that gets bullied for how you look, it starts to take a toll. For me that toll was my mental health, and now I have body issues where every day I look in a mirror I find something new wrong. It got to a point in grade 8 that I thought about the logistics of turning a coat hanger into a noose and asphyxiating myself, because every day I would go back to the same thing. It's like groundhog day but instead of being about 3 million years of the same day it's 1 year but just feels like it's 3 million when every single thought stops being your own and turns into their comments. You go from trying to be funny to trying to stop hurting, and then you just hurt alone.

I already had depression going into grade 8, it's what started it. I stopped caring about hygiene because what was the point? It took too much energy and I started each day with none. I didn't know what depression was, I didn't know I needed help. Nobody told me how to ask and nobody even tried to see if I needed help. The teachers just separated me at lunch and told me "well, he was bullied too" like that was supposed to help me feel better or something? Honestly I didn't care that he was bullied, until I reveled in it. I was glad he got what he gave. Nobody helped me, and it set something off inside of me. I had only used the internet for games like runescape and this turned me to a discount 4chan where I learned about shock sites where you could see things that weren't supposed to be seen.

I became one of those internet shitlords, I saw people insert things in places and then have them break, I saw a politician bring a brown bag with a gun in it and commit suicide on stage, I saw people fuck things that probably are best left unfucked. This turned me from innocent child who didn't know what depression was into someone who wanted people to hurt, just like I had. I wanted to have each person who fucked with me be subject to the things I saw, I was suddenly violent and it scared me and I stuffed that feeling down. This was the worst I ever got, I was in grade 9 with friends who picked on me, nobody who cared about me, and I honestly hated every living person. I was a monster for a short while, I'd spread the worst shock sites and become immune to seeing someone shit all over themselves or shoot another person. I'd know it was a shock site and click links anyway just to see more.

I'm terrified, mortified by who I used to be. The thing that took this frothing nerd from 0-60 was a lack of help, and everyone around me failing to see that I was struggling alone. The one time someone did really help I changed. My best friend in the whole world is named Morgan. She and I met on Omegle (not the webcam one so like WOWEE I COULD HAVE BEEN CATFISHED SO EASILY) and I talked to her and then soon texted her number with some of that good old random internet humor (which is the worst oh my god) it was something close to "this is the FBI, drop the cheesecake" because cheesecake is..... funny???? IDK. We talked a lot, she actually cared about what I felt and I didn't know how to deal with this. Her genuine friendship took me from frothing nerd down to just kind of an asshole. I was still struggling with the whole having feelings other than hate and rage, and we butted heads a lot. I was selfish and dumb. This and the fact that I didn't feel like I fit in anywhere made for a cocktail of bad decisions. I was a really bad friend and tried to rely on her without letting her rely on me. I almost lost her as a friend but we reconnected after about 6 months of not talking. Later on I met her in real life and she was exactly who she said she was.

As I learned what feelings were again I kind of drifted away from "nerdy" areas of the internet because they were almost always cesspools of hate. I learned that gay and straight weren't the only two options to identify as and became a closeted bisexual person, then learned about being trans and felt that might fit, it did. Still making the move from disgusting garbage person to a decent one I stumbled along the way. The funny thing about being trans is it comes with a lot of doubt, that other people can instill in you. "Oh you boys and your ______" "Oh you're such a boy" were the two that made my whole body twitch. People unknowingly have so much power over you, and you can't do anything about it.

This made spirals into depression worse than before, as it'd be right when I'm feeling at my worst someone would bring up your gender and you'd just want to die. You have to avoid people in order to not experience this and suddenly you're a recluse who only wants to interact with people who don't know that you're trans. I played as a girl on runescape and got lost in the game a few times because Ms. Badforlung was cool and cute. Where the real me was sad and gross. I say was like that stopped being the case. Games ended up being a huge part of me since those characters would be what I wanted to be. I'll never get the 22 years I lost in the wrong body back, but some of them were made less painful with the help of computers.

This started my addiction to games. I have been depressed for so long that if something that can make it stop for even a minute, I will cling to it. Sometimes the things that I used to escape turn bad and make things worse. After a few anti-trans posts with "gross" (not directed at the post but the person the post targeted) I suddenly felt uninvited to a discord I used to be a part of. It was people who knew me as someone I am not. I thought a lot about it and suddenly decided maybe this place I don't feel welcome in is, perhaps, a place I'm not welcome in.

#LGBT #transgender #trans #MentalHealth #Depression