Welcome to Gaia! ::

I love this thread. It's a great thread.

It's very strange, every day, that I need to convince myself that I'm the naive one. I'm the stupid one. I must be.

My brother brought up today that there's a transgender person at his job. "She's a girl, but she wants to be addressed as a man. Go figure."

Go figure. I still haven't figured out what that was supposed to mean.

Later, I called him out on it. "So what, do you have something against transgender people?"
Whether it was my tone or not (I didn't say that very nicely), he backpedaled pretty fast. "Transgend—No! I just get it mixed up sometimes."

That's fair, I thought. Can't blame people for being surprised, right?

And then I thought of something else.

Why can't I blame people for being surprised?

In the eyes of hundreds of thousands of people, why is someone weird, a freak, just because they don't live the same exact life another person does? Why do they deserve or not deserve certain medical or human rights?
Am I truly the only one that looks at anyone who is a little bit different in any way, and wonder how fascinating their lives must be?

Because often I feel like I am, which means I must be wrong. Surely my point of view means nothing compared to the blanket viewpoint of likely millions of people that follow the motto of "different=bad."

Well, for what my single opinion is worth to those millions of people, my viewpoint is from a multiple personality and, shall we say, a very close connection to the trans community. And my viewpoint is these "different" people have had life experiences you've never dreamed of having. They've learned things that you're too ignorant to even realize are there. They swim against the current that you bigots are making, and when they make it through, they're much stronger for it.

One of my favorite quotes: "...You should not feel sorry for me, and not hate me, because I'm not a victim, or a freak, and I have a lot to teach you."
-Jamison Green

...
I don't know where that all came from, but I do feel a little better now.
I'd like to hold on to some of that bravado through the day. Historic rant aside, I've been closer than I want to admit to self-harm recently. That's something that hasn't so much as crossed my mind in a long time. Who I am no longer bothers me at all. It's the fear of how others will react to who I am that's been getting me upset. It's such a sad thing that a fear like that exists in anyone, needing to hide things, important things, about yourself, just because other people may disagree with it.

But then, I'm the stupid, naive one, right?

Go figure.

One thing that's really bothering me today is that I don't have any friends in real life. (I actually don't. Everyone I was friends with any time before are long gone in their own lives in different places. I have surface acquaintances now... people you see and make small talk with, but neither of you really cares. I am married... but it's a whole long tl;dr about why I don't feel like I can talk to my husband. We actually only see each other for a few days a week even.) It hits really hard sometimes to realize that I have literally no one to talk to that gives a damn. I actually don't have any friends on Gaia anymore, either.

I've called suicide hotlines before, and only felt worse after calling, tbh. There was one and only one time that the person even cared to just talk to me for a while until I said I was feeling better. Too many other times, it's been just someone who is more than willing to list off a bunch of resources. Once, I actually ended up hanging up because I was routed to an operator who didn't speak English even well enough for me to be able to understand half of what they were saying.

I don't like to talk about my problems to people on here much because I always end up feeling attacked, negatively judged and/or put down...

I'm feeling really, really bad today, though... I guess at least I was motivated enough to find and join this group. That's something, right?

I've been suffering from depression for a while. About a year ago I was told to keep a journal of feelings to just kinda rant in. Turns out, my mom was reading it the entire time and staged a very aggressive intervention. She bugged my phone in order to read all of my texts, see my search history, and browse through my pictures.

I'll admit, I made a couple dirty jokes with friends,so maybe I deserve what happened. My mom started screaming at me and calling me "disgusting" and a "whore". I went to my room to discover it had been emptied out except for my bed and my books. I wasn't even allowed pencils. She had stored all of my art supplies in her room (which was always under lock and key). Needless to say, it was the worst day of my life.

It's been about 3 months since then and I only feel worse. I'm not allowed to talk with anyone but family. She made me leave all of my friends and I'm going to be home schooled this year.

I found some ways to communicate with people but it doesn't seem like enough.She never found my laptop so I use it often but I can't communicate with my friends because I can't find their contact info without texting them. My mom gave my phone back but is tracking everything I do on it. I'm lonely and feel worse than when I started. I have no privacy and I'm paranoid.