Tell me your life story.

[Staiain]

my life sux no details needed

[chez-the-guy]

I'm sorry if I type a lot but I don't expect anyone to read this.

tl;dr first: 14, lived in Japan for a majority of my life, now residing in the US

1998.
I was born in Virginia Beach to my loving mother and father. I don't really remember a lot of things back when I was in Virginia when I was little, but then when I was around 3 or 4 years old my family and I moved to Japan because my dad was in the navy and he was stationed in a base in Japan.

I watched my older brother (4 years ahead of me in school) leave the home to attend his classes while I stayed home because I wasn't old enough to attend school yet.

Kindergarten: the cute years.
First grade: Above.
Second grade: Above.
Third grade: Above.
Fourth grade: When I made a YouTube channel for random videos of friends.
Fifth grade: when I thought I was all that and stuff, and then I realized I was wrong. [Started playing FFR!]

Sixth grade, middle school, changed a lot of things in my life for me.
I started getting unusually sad and I felt really lonely. But I still tried to make friends, it somewhat worked. I didn't feel like I could really open up to anyone though.
Seventh grade, I met a girl who liked me, but she was really shy. We started getting closer and I felt like I could open up to her, so I did, and I wasn't expecting open arms from her, to be honest, because I didn't expect that at all from anyone. Grades started to dip, though.
Eighth grade, I felt like crumbling to pieces. I felt so overwhelmed by stress that I don't even know where it came from. Started taking meds without my parents knowing, but they made me feel indifferent. I felt more lonely, sad, maybe even depressed. Before I knew it I attempted "those things" that are really bad. Got sent to the counselor and had to fake an excuse to keep my parents from thinking I was insane.
Ninth grade rolled around and I felt worse. I ignored so many things that needed my attention, and I felt like I was unconscious the entire time. I felt like I couldn't take much more, but then FFR was still on my list and people were there to talk to me. It got better a little but I still felt depressed. So then I put myself into isolation, which, although made me feel very lonely at the time, it helped me in the long run and it made me feel relaxed for some reason. And through all those months with my girlfriend, I can't say I treated her the best I could've.. but that state of isolation I put myself through made me make her feel like the best girlfriend she could possibly be. I felt relaxed, taking her on dates off base and just hanging out with her, and then the summer came.

July 2013, the year when I would finally leave Japan, after living there for more than 10, maybe 11 years. I felt bad because, well, Japan is a really nice experience (off base, hanging out, food, arcades). But I felt like I needed to move on back to the states (god, their internet on base where I lived in Japan was worse than dial-up) to continue on with life. GF was devastated on the day I left, but we still talk and try to keep each other as close as possible, so that when we meet again we can marry.

And, that's pretty much it; August 20, 2013. Age: 14. Hope you enjoyed reading my terrible life story.

[mi40]

taking meds 'secretly' in 8th grade and now you're age 14

lol

[chez-the-guy]

i was messed up back then shh

[Arch0wl]

Most of this shit I talked about in the AMA thread.

I was born when my parents were essentially homeless. They lost everything they had in Vegas and they had to move in with my dad's parents.

When I was a little over two I "came online" or had awareness of myself. I was looking down at my shorts -- they were navy blue -- and looked at the costumes that my mom had for me in the closet. One of them was a ridiculous pea pod costume you're supposed to put babies in and hold in your arms. Another was a frog, if I recall correctly. I had fucked up teeth because I had chipped a bunch of them by falling down against the concrete. (I still have shitty teeth and need braces, but can't afford them.)

Three was an interesting year. My mom shoved an enema up my butt.

It felt like a huge dildo.

I got a train station for my birthday present. We lived at my mom's grandparents' house. My grand-uncle, or whatever, threatened to put a car bomb in my mom's car, among other things. A couple of years later he got an inheritance and was burned alive when he died in a one-person plane crash.

Four sucked. We moved into a house that was infested with roaches. I distinctly remember the image of a flying roach in my face at night -- it looked like something demonic, especially because when you're that age a huge roach is around the size of your face. Imagine a roach the size of your foot and you have a rough idea of how big that is relative to a kid's face.

My mom started to teach me arithmetic toward the end of four, and I got it way too easily. There was a Mexican candy store across the street, and I wanted to play with the girl there. My racist grandma said "you better not bring home a Mexican, or we'll have to throw you in the garbage can." So, I stopped playing with that girl.

Five was when kindergarten happened. This was, I think, the first time I conceived of the idea that some people were smarter and dumber than others. I remember seeing schoolwork as an obstacle to toys, and I just assumed this was true for everyone. One girl was counting to five very slowly, and I asked her why she didn't just add the numbers in her head.

Her response: "I'm doing maaaaath!"

That was when I realized I was better at that than a lot of people.

Six. We learned how to read. No one had attempted to teach me before this point, but when the teacher did this I basically raged every time someone else had to read from a book because they did it so infuriatingly slow while I would read at talking speed. I would correct other students and tell them that they need to emphasize excitement for exclamation points and put a rising tone on the end of question marks but no one listened. I think that's when the idea of disliking stupidity really sunk into my head.

I started playing video games a lot.

Seven. Some kid who sat in front of me threatened to slit my throat with a razor blade. The teacher made him clean the floors. Also, her son died, so she had PTSD about kids and was going off on us constantly. She held back one kid for a really stupid reason.

A girl I was friends with had skipped a grade and this was the first I had heard of this. I wanted to skip a grade but didn't know how.

Some girl called me weird. This was the first time I had ever been called a name before, so I called her fat. She cried. I realized this probably wasn't the best thing to do, but this was self-defense in my 7-year-old mind.

I learned how to masturbate from a friend at this age. We would masturbate on bunk beds to Channel 99 porn. We called it "weiner suckin'." We did this chronically.

At some point I made a tally of how many times I had proven my mom wrong about some issue or another. I think I got up to 50.

Eight was third grade and this is where shit got interesting. There was this Colombian girl named Alexandra who I had the most enormous crush on. Like, I had never experienced this before. She was smarter than most people, so that plus the Colombian thing made me think she was super hot. I just assumed everyone valued smartness like I did, because the role models I looked up to did.

I hung out with her once and her sister said she didn't like me and liked athletic kids. I thought I was pretty fit (I was, at the time) so I didn't know what the deal was. Apparently sports started to become a big deal and this was a bandwagon I didn't get on.

There was one conversation though, that I'll never forget:

Me: "...(something something) Bobby's World"
Her: "Wait, you watch Bobby's World?"
Me: "Yeah, it's a good show!"
Her: "Wow, you are a dork."

It took a long time for me to get over feeling that rejected. I think I held this in for like, two years. My mom holds grudges for extremely long periods of time, too, so she sort of just egged this on and said how right I was to hate her. (But my mom does this for reasons that mostly aren't her fault, not because she's a bad person or anything, so I'd rather not go into it.)

I thought she was a "social climber" and was throwing me under the bus for points. The idea of "selling out" occurred to me.

Every week or so I would write short stories and read them to my class in a chair. They involved things like cars made out of vegetables.

We had a reading competition among all the classes for who could read the most books and recognize authors and such. I facerolled everyone and carried the team ridiculously hard.

My mom tried to get me to skip a grade because my 3rd grade teacher said I was reading at an 8th grade level. The school whined at her and said I'd be socially undeveloped.

My friend and I were still masturbating chronically. We sucked each other's dicks a couple of times.

N64 came out. Holy fucking shit.

Nine (4th grade) was when I transferred to a nicer (read: more politically correct) school and started getting fat. Pokemon cards came out and I was super hipster about this and got in on it before everyone else. I met a kid named Kyle over Pokemon cards who, until I was about 16, would be my best friend.

5th grade; 10. I was the fattest kid in school, frequently bored by school and compensated by talking 24/7. Lots of people didn't like me or my personality. I was soft-bullied, in the sense that I was too large to be physically picked on but I was ostracized a lot nonetheless. Two girls made up a story that I was going to bring a gun to school and got me expelled.

Something interesting happened here that shaped the development for the rest of my life. I was fat, but I didn't know I was fat. My parents did not make it clear just how fat I appeared to everyone else.

This caused me to distrust the opinion of people close to me. For the longest time, I would not value the opinion of my close friends that much, and would seek out distant opinions from people who were probably closer to an independent observer. Kyle was the exception, but mostly because he was an asshole, so he was distant by personality anyway. If someone seemed like a supportive friend, I didn't trust them and thought they were lying to make me feel better.

6th grade. I was homeschooled. School was ludicrously easy up to this point so it didn't occur to me that I might have been missing out on advanced classes somewhere. I played Phantasy Star Online literally every day all day and chatted via IRC on the Dreamcast thing.

The internet appealed to me for two reasons:

1. You are communicating with your mind, not your body, so I am not judged by how I look (this was more true back then, webcams are huge now)

2. Everyone was distant from me and seemed smart/older, so I valued their opinion more than close friends

However, I am naturally an extrovert. Some people are naturally introverts, so they learn how to adapt to, say, going out to clubs. I was the opposite, in that it's not really my nature to stay inside, but because being inside has these things I like (mental stimulation, opinions of distant people) I eventually became very comfortable in that environment.

7th grade. Same thing. Add GameFAQs.

8th grade. Mostly the same thing except Graal and Graal forums. Toward the end of 8th grade I got into DDR.

9th grade. I'm like 14. I posted on DDRSA and wore ridiculous goth clothes because I had very pale skin, and I wanted a crowd who didn't think it was ugly. I had also lost a ton of weight thanks to DDR. I went to this stupid homeschool/private school thing called Friday School where you'd show up every Friday, have a long class, and then get homework for the week. I slept through every class, but my math teacher passed me because she liked me.

10th grade. I'm 15. This was the heyday of Stepmania. I really, really wanted to bang this girl named Victoria.

11th grade. I'm 16. I tried to transfer into a public school since private school was so stupid, but because the math teacher and my parents had basically let me coast I didn't know any math, which was a far cry from the days of elementary when I could bulldoze everyone. I went to a really ghetto school for people who had been suspended and/or who had fallen off the academic latter. People killed people (one guy killed a cop), most of my classes were filled with pregnant chicks, students would come to school coming down from crack, pipes were left in the drinking fountains, gigantic piss puddles in the bathroom with pee completely covering the walls, etc.; every person I know who has went there and transferred to a public high school widens their eyes when talking about this place like they had just done study abroad in Compton.

I had to teach myself math out of a textbook. It blew.

The second semester was when I had quit SM and Carly put out jp007, which if you don't know is a video of me masturbating. Every single person I knew had effectively seen this, and this caused me to feel extremely awkward about expressing sexuality. This was the 2nd most traumatic moment of my life, behind the expulsion in 5th grade.

I started going by "Alfred," which is my real name. Prior to this I had gone by "Josh", which was a nickname. I did this for two reasons:

1. I felt like I had fucked up my life so much that I needed to become an entirely new person, and the school I went to exacerbated this feeling.

2. Since "Alfred" is my legal name, this made forms, mail, licenses and so on much easier.

Around this time I started reading philosophy and writings about argumentation. My whole world was flipped upside-down because this was a systematization of something I did all the time on forums already, and I was able to think so much clearly that way. Prior to this point I argued almost solely via rhetoric, but this provided me greater avenues to certainty.

12th. I felt very awkward about my sexuality and my past history as an asshole, so I developed this extremely formal persona where I talked like I was writing an essay 24/7 to feel "clean."

I discovered reddit. The stuck-up, nitpicky writing style common there gelled extremely well with who I was then.

Outside of this, though, I was the most vicious person I had ever been in my life. Ideologically I had a kind of megalomania thing going on, and this is partly because this was also the loneliest I had ever been in my life. I thought planned cities were amazing and that people like Le Corbusier should have been allowed to go through with their plans.

To give you an idea of how monstrous of a person I was, there was this ghetto girl in my debate class who derailed the whole thing, and since the teacher adjusted everything to the curve, the class got progressively easier until it was nothing but talking to each other during the 2nd semester. I hated her, and she knew this, and she constantly threatened to get her black friends to beat me up. I had just gotten out of school with people who were in gangs and might kill police, so I was completely unphased by this and would just lob verbal abuse constantly in an attempt to get her to move out of debate so that the class curve would be fixed.

Here's a sample:

GG: "WOOOOOOOOOOOOW I can't believe he said that HAHAHAHA"

Me: "Do you still talk to your dad?"

GG: "Yeah?" (looking at me like "you're about to say something stupid")

Me: "If I was your dad, I would kill myself."

This is the tip of the iceberg.

I had a lot of influences making me emotionally isolated from everything around me.

I did not hang out with, or talk to, anyone after school. I was scared of people finding out who I was and knowing that there was a video of me masturbating on the internet. I didn't want it to happen again -- the feeling that everyone had seen me doing that. So, I was extremely lonely in general.

I did not trust anyone, because every person I had gotten close to eventually disrespected my privacy in some major way.

I didn't have sex and at one point I didn't masturbate for 3 months. The hottest girl everyone knew by a substantial margin asked me out in a public speaking class. I said "I don't have time." My friends speculated that I was homosexual.

I read The Artilect War by Hugo de Garis. This completely changed my perspective on humanity and my value as a human being.

I tried, constantly, to be the kind of person who reads all the time. I said earlier that I am an extrovert, and I mean it -- I'm also pretty ADHD, so sitting alone and focusing on something like that for a long time when the activity isn't hyper-stimulating like a video game is pretty difficult willpower-wise, even if it's mentally challenging. So I was constantly disappointing myself, because I felt like I was being a failure as a person.

I read a lot of books on IQ, and all of the correlations associated with IQ. I now know that I have a high verbal IQ (~145) and slightly above average spatial IQ (~110-115, depending), but I did not know that then nor did I know that there was a distinction between verbal and spatial IQ. I took Raven's Progressive Matrices and scored something like 109. I assumed that this meant I was stupid. For most of my life, I had been enormously ahead of everyone else I knew in things like reading and writing, so I felt like my whole life was a lie. I also felt like my genes were stupid and I shouldn't reproduce.

I had heard that the SAT was a pseudo IQ test. (It was, pre-1994, then it lost its validity as one. I didn't know this at the time.) I took the SAT and told myself something like, "if I'm just confirming my IQ, well, I'll kill myself."

I under-performed on the SAT.

I had never taken the PSAT nor had I prepared. I was suicidal for a few months, since I channeled every insecurity I had at that time into school. I eventually trained myself on the SAT well enough to get perfect scores, but I felt legitimately worthless as a person since that was the last thing I had left after I felt like every single person I knew was alienated by my behavior or disgusted by me due to that video.

For about two weeks I thought of ways that I could kill myself that would be valuable to humanity. I thought it would have been productive to kill someone who the public wants dead but is too scared to kill because they know they themselves will be killed by security guards, but that's also murder and generally an indisputable ethical wrong so I basically juggled this question along with everything else.

Andrew (Reach) endured having me as a friend at this time. I honestly can't stress how valuable he was to my development here.

Eventually I had a plan that I would go to law school, make a lot of money and use the money to better humanity by funding tech. I didn't think about the financials of this because no one asked me those kinds of questions, and I had zero personal contact with pretty much anyone at this time.

I am still angry at myself for succumbing to this sort of thought, because I completely did not pursue anything I liked. Every decision I made was with respect to what I thought I "should" do, not what I like to do.

If I had taken the Narcissistic Personality Inventory at this point in my life, I would have been off the charts.

I hated everyone and everything at that point in my life, including and especially myself.

College.

I basically studied all the time to attempt to transfer to a better school. I was limited in that I started the "getting in to decent colleges" game retardedly late and there was no way I had a chance at some of the more competitive scores. I leaned on college GPA/SAT hard.

I met some friends who I got along well with. We had a pretty tight group and, thinking about it, I was pretty well-liked for being what amounts to a misanthrope. I think this is because even when I was basically hating the world I still cracked jokes all the time. I love making people laugh.

I really wanted to bang this girl in our circle of friends, but I had been so socially isolated by this point that I didn't know how to flirt competently.

I dated a girl from mainland China. We never kissed. I was able to endure this because I was so used to the asexual period from 12th grade.

College, II.

I went to Trinity University.

Something happened with my identity here because Trinity has, statistically speaking, a lot of smart kids. A solid majority of the school is 'smart'. So since basically becoming a recluse, I had come to see the world in entirely this way, attributing personality traits as differences in intelligence, and it started becoming extremely evident that I could not keep this model.

What makes me who I am, then?

I socialized with everyone I could, constantly, at the expense of school. I rarely did homework because I was always conversing or meeting new people. I think I made 200 new Facebook friends in 2-3 months. My GPA that semester was something like 2.4.

I realized that I definitely had a base personality similar to the people in theater, even though I did not really like a lot of the more traditional plays.

I started going to parties and making out with girls. I flirted with a lot of girls.

I became addicted to social interaction. I started realizing that I may have been forcing myself to be an introvert when I am the opposite.

I made out with Victoria, from that private school. She said I was "smoother." I found out that she had a boyfriend.

Relationship.

I dated a hispanic girl for three years. Her family was ultra-Mexican, her dad was whiter than me and her mom was like Ann Coulter. After we both graduated ~2011-2012, we had planned how we would get married. She's getting her Ph.D. in English at an ivy now.

That relationship undid all of the behaviors I had adopted in 12th grade, but it was gradual. Initially, I was insanely cruel. As in, she'd cry every week because things I would say off-the-cuff that I was used to saying to myself were so harsh. But she saw that these were behaviors I adapted to have, not the way I really am inside, as cheesy as that sounds, so she stuck with it.

I slowly turned into a nicer person. I wasn't really learning how to be empathetic -- I knew very much how to be empathetic already, I just refused to let myself feel other people's feelings -- rather, I was conceding aspects of my worldview that were just extremely hateful or misanthropic, and conceding thought patterns that led me to ignore the empathetic part of my brain because I believed I was pursuing some higher virtue.

I was banned from a play because I made a necrophilia joke.

NPI score around this time was 24.

I almost rushed a fraternity (Iota Chi Rho) but missed out on this because I had to transfer out of Trinity due to financial reasons. I am still good friends with some people from this fraternity.

Toward the end of college, my NPI score lowered to about 18. (It's 15 now.)

in 2011 I started studying for the LSAT. Then the Class of 2011 data came out showing how fucked law is as a profession, and I had to rethink my entire career ambitions and what it is I like to do. This was four years of planning that was turned on its head.

In 2012 I broke up with the girl I had dated for three years. I knew that her Ph.D. program would tear us apart, especially after she got a professorship somewhere, and moreover I had a crisis about how (even though we had sex thousands of times, made out with multiple people, sometimes of the same gender, and almost had a threesome) I hadn't gotten to explore sex in the ways I wanted. It devastated both of us, but we would have broken up due to the employment pressures alone and I just wanted to pull the band-aid already.

I saw Victoria again. This time we did more than kissing. We still haven't had sex though. I think she had a boyfriend then also, and I don't know if she's still with him. She's in New York, and I am defriended.

I had sex with four or five people shortly after this.

I started posting here again.

Hi.

[mi40]

you're still insane at math right?

do banking

[EzExZeRo7497]

Got off my lazy ass and wrote this I guess:

I was born in Singapore in July 4, 1997. My parents weren't all that strict, they didn't really prevent me from using the computer excessively. In fact, my father introduced me to using one when I was two or three years old. By that time, my brother was born. I didn't really have any fights or issues with him at first, but it kinda changed after some time. I'll explain that later. I lived an ordinary life, but I'm also very shy and sensitive at the time. I went to a nursery school, where I did pretty well in school. Though, I found myself to be pretty aloof from my other classmates, even when I was a little 5 or 6 year old. I did have friends, but I never really found the need to communicate with any of them to begin with. I was bullied quite a bit when I was 6.

When I got into primary school, my asocial attitude grew stronger. I rarely made friends, all I cared about were my studies. My results stayed pretty constant, until I reached 3rd grade which I realised that Chinese is by far my weakest subject. I didn't realise how important Chinese is until my final exams, which I'll talk about later. I had little friends, I was very insensitive to others but also very sensitive to my surroundings and myself. There was a time where I flashed to everyone and I liked seeing their faces being disgusted and such in 5th grade. I was naturally good at learning, but I'm also very complacent and lazy. It finally bit back at me when I thought that I will do perfectly fine in my final exams. Unsurprisingly, I got hit with a 188, which was pretty low by most people's standards. What I didn't know though (until I reached 9th grade anyway), is that one third of the total score is based on my mother tongue's results, which is Chinese. My grades were A/A*/A/D, my D being Chinese. If it weren't for that, I would've gotten ~245, which would get me into a top school. Disheartening. Results aside though, I was bullied even more and more. I was sent to a psychologist for being bullied, but I've personally never felt any trauma or psychological damage when people bullied me. I realised that visiting a psychiatrist didn't really help, so I stopped.

I didn't really know what to feel. My results were the only thing that really mattered to me at the time. I felt horrid, but at the same time maybe a neighbourhood secondary school wouldn't be so bad after all. For some reason my mother picked the schools for me, and I went to a school that I have to take a 30 minute bus ride to even get there when there are other schools nearby for some reason. Maybe it was because my results were that poor, or just that it was promising. Whatever it is, it was really different and I didn't like talking to anyone. Not just because I'm anti-social at the time, but I had no idea how to start a conversation. I was bullied and I tried to fit in, but I was pretty much made fun of for just trying too hard to fit in. Finally realised that there's no point trying to, so I just stopped and moved on with my life. My dad went to prison when I was 10, so I had no one to look up to and to actually nurture as an ordinary teenager. That started a chain reaction that made me feel horrid for the next 2 years of my life because I've been bullied constantly.

My studies were getting worse because I started to feel pressure, which is something I couldn't handle because I never had experience with in primary school. My results from there started to get better fortunately, getting a 71%-74% average, including my weakest subject (which I have 20s on lol). My social life wasn't improving at all though. I had a couple of failed relationships, I started to hit my brother and I just feel unsatisfactory overall. All that guilt inside me built up into a full-blown depression and I also started to feel a little bipolar. I wasn't sure if it was just hormones or me feeling down, but I can safely assume that it was the first stage of my depression.

I went to a community where I acted like a complete moron, got banned and left the community, it's a bitter-sweet treatment because it's a bit of a wake-up call to me. My personality started to change from this sensitive, childish boy to a cold, distant and collected male. After I left, I went to FFR instead. I wasn't active at the time, so I just posted scores in the SM Scores thread on FFR. My scores weren't getting noticed, but at the time I really didn't care because all I wanted to do is just share my accomplishments. Though, I did shove a lot of scores at everyone's faces through MSN and AIM (I also have that problem in real life) and now I'm really not proud of that at all. I was percieved as that 13 year old kid who thinks that having good SM scores is actually a big deal. I didn't notice my horrendous behaviour until recently. It feels like shit.

Grade 9. Depression starts to spiral out of control. I become more withdrawn in real life. I probably talk more/type more on the Internet in a day than how much I talk in real life in a week. Although I feel comfortable for a while talking to people I know on the Internet, it can't say that it's a solid replacement for real life friends. That and all the stress I've been getting in class, led me to multiple near breakdowns. That year (as well as last year), I've been using Stepmania as a way to think of something else and to get rid of my depression. It became a little bit of an obsession, I've probably put in well over 2,500 hours into Stepmania in those 2 years alone. Would probably explain my rapid improvement rate, I guess. I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder type II that year.

On a brighter note though, I'd say the community has definitely changed me for the better. I've been this immature, unrealistic and flat out stupid child. I've started to change over the past 3 years and here I am I guess. I'm just this relaxed and cold person. I've never found anyone in my school to be any interesting. I hated their personalities, they're just way too jolly. I feel alienated from them. Not just my classmates, but probably every schoolmate I've ever had as well, for the past 10 years of my life.

2013. Grade 10. Anxiety kicked in, I started to have this perfectionist attitude due to the fact that I NEED to do well (A2 on average, which is 70%, which is ridiculously hard especially for education here) on all of my subjects in order to get a decent major. Depression continues to get worse, I eventually thought of suicidal thoughts at that point. I felt desolate, hopeless and worthless, especially at the most minor of mistakes. There was a point when I spotted a grammar mistake I made and I felt like cutting myself just for that stupid mistake. The Singaporean education system really pressured me, but at the same time it has really forced me to improve the best I can. Personally I would say that it was for the better, but at the same time my parents are extremely concerned over the fact that I was feeling terrible/anxious the entire day. At first, my parents didn't notice that I was depressed until I finally opened up to my mother 4 months ago. I took anti-depressants this year, and I've been doing so for the past 3 months.

At this point I'd say my general anxiety disorder is far worse than my social anxiety, since I could talk to people pretty well these days. Admittedly though, the perfectionist attitude is ripping me apart. I used to be satisfied with my best, but nowadays I've spit on that perspective and tell myself that even my best isn't close to being enough. Although it has multiple benefits, I'd say the dangers of being a perfectionist far outweigh the advantages.

I'm coping well with my studies and I'm hopefully going to see a psychiatrist for a medical diagnosis (pretty certain I have clinical depression and autism) by the end of September to get some help and therapy.

tl;dr reality hit me hard bro

[Arch0wl]

Originally Posted by mi40

you're still insane at math right?

do banking

I was insane at math for an elementary school kid. So I could multiply really huge shit by subdividing in terms of 10 and 5, but there are more advanced mental math techniques you can learn in middle school if you go to those math competitions.

More to the point, banking is really difficult to get into. I've looked into it. I am not the person to make this speech, though. I can tell you why law sucks; Rubix can tell you why banking sucks.

[ilikexd]

This is the best thread I've yet seen on this website.

[kommisar]

well then


Born and raised in Moncton NB, Canada, lived here most of my life and still do.


Brought up by a young mother who had just become an adult, still going to university. Dad left when I was 1, still lived in Moncton at the time. Mom managed to haul ass and finish her masters and raise a 4 year old kid.

I was a pretty odd awkward kid, heavily into video games and so were all of my friends. It worked out that way, since we were all pretty odd. I had a pretty great childhood and lived a pretty modest life. After my 3rd brother was born, David, my mom was diagnosed with Crohn's disease. She was hospitalized for 6 months while they tried to figure out what was wrong. One morning after being dismissed from hospital, I woke up one morning to see her collapse in front of me in a seizure. Hard to forget that day, seeing her drive off in an ambulance with an unknown condition, then going to school. I was 13. During this period of uncertainty, I shut myself in a lot. My stepdad had to raise an infant child by himself, and without mom around, things were just very depressing and quiet. I picked up Counter-Strike and probably played about 10,000 hours of it to this day. It was my way of getting my mind off things. I eventually developed insomnia as a result. I was pumping energy drinks into me to stay awake and I would barely get any sleep during my first year in high school. What a terrible year that was. My mom eventually went into full remission after discovering a new remedy, Remicade, which increased her health tenfold and made life easier for everyone. Thanks to our government's regulations on medicare and prescription costs, her 6000$ injection costs her 20$ every 6 weeks. She might be dead if not for this medicine. Seeing her at the brink of her strength being shoved an IV for the 10th time, breaking down in tears is something I won't soon forget.

In 10th grade I not only got over my depression and insomnia but also gained a great amount of confidence. Found a great group of friends I still hang out with today, went through a modest number of relationships and had the opportunity to go on trips with school and experience things I'm quite thankful for. Travelling is now an undying passion of mine.

I went to community college in cooking as part of their apprenticeship program. I still have no idea why I chose cooking. I sucked at manual skills and knew nothing about it. Looking back I probably would've went into some 2 year programming course to have a generic middle class office job and I would've been happy. Instead I took one of the hardest most stressful and ungenerous careers ever. Cooks are horridly underpaid for the labor they put in. It's unfortunate but business owners often can't afford to pay them more. I worked in Ingonish Beach on Cape Breton island, Nova Scotia for a summer. It was an amazing experience but incredibly stressful. My energy was never quite the same after that. After working another restaurant job in Moncton I knew it wasn't what I wanted to do. I was burnt out working stupid hours and 77 hour weeks.

I quit all of that and applied at a nursing home. This was where I had done my internship for college and I knew what I was getting into. I've been working there ever since. After I go back and finish my apprenticeship program and get my red seal, I will be getting a full time job there which is a generous government job. This is probably the best I can get for my career. I moved out when I was 20 with 3 roommates, I now live alone with my cat, Cosmo, and live a very relaxed and happy life. I now have a girlfriend that more or less lives here (though not officially).

When I was 5, dad left to work in Toronto because of shortage of work in the Maritimes (problem still exists today rip). He moves around the Greater Toronto Area every so often, living in Port Credit, Mississauga, Oakville, and eventually in the Niagara region. After living in Niagara Falls he moved to Fort Erie where he bought a house and currently lives. I used to visit him twice a year, but after his financial situation worsened and gas prices shot up, he couldn't afford to fly me anymore. Once per year I'd see him until when I was 15, he couldn't fly me at all. I went 2 years without seeing my dad. He would make a rare trip down to New Brunswick and I would get to see him, reminding him how little he keeps in touch with me. When I was 19, I made my first trip alone to Toronto, paying it myself. Anime North. This convention is very important to me for a variety of reasons. First of all, it's the time of the year when I get to see my dad, and is now a yearly thing. Secondly, it's usually the best weekend of the year for me, getting to have a blast with my friends from the Toronto area whom I all met through rhythm games. We had never met, yet booked a hotel for the convention and here we are 4 years later doing it every year.

Every year I try to make as many trips as possible. I'm more or less dedicating my life to seeing the world and all it has to offer. I've been to Stockholm, Orlando, Vancouver, Seattle, Detroit, all kinds of places. But it's such a tiny portion of the places I want to see. I'll never be able to see everything, but always having another place to look forward to makes life a fascinating thing to experience.

[Arch0wl]

@ExExZero. Your stress is how anyone would be under those circumstances, although try not to over-diagnose yourself because you'll lean on the labels. Anyway, you can go to the "FFR Facebook Collective" page and find my profile there; friend me if you need someone to talk to.

[EzExZeRo7497]

Originally Posted by Arch0wl

@ExExZero. Your stress is how anyone would be under those circumstances, although try not to over-diagnose yourself because you'll lean on the labels. Anyway, you can go to the "FFR Facebook Collective" page and find my profile there; friend me if you need someone to talk to.

The autism label has been something that's probably going to be true either way. Many of my teachers (along with my parents) have said that I've been very aloof and it definitely is beyond introversion. They have seen me mix around with people but was never able to and I think it's pretty true as well. I just feel... different.

[mi40]

sometimes when you're depressed and have anxiety disorders the best thing to do is fill your head with so many things that you don't even have time to think about anything besides school & taking a shit & more studying

sounds dumb but when it does work, it's awesome

i feel like a lot of ffr/sm peeps who claim to have or have anxiety disorders or depression seem to have either a LOT of free time or NO free time

i've seen a TON on this site for some reason, i don't know that many people with depression and such irl

i think if you have a LOT of free time, fill it up with meaningful & productive things (even boring shit like studying), it'll really help you keep your head clear and give you a GOAL, short term and long term

if you have NO free time, free some up for basic hobbies

[rCaliberGX]

Reading this thread is both fascinating and depressing.

The former because I get to see the cause and effect of events and actions in people's lives and how they shaped the personality they currently have.

The latter because I read all the negative life changing events that they've experienced and how something that will affect me on that scale will inevitably happen to me.

In both ways I can learn from reading this thread, because I'm currently at an age (13) where these things can't happen yet.

that said this is an amazing thread, i may or may not write something later

[kommisar]

Originally Posted by mi40

sometimes when you're depressed and have anxiety disorders the best thing to do is fill your head with so many things that you don't even have time to think about anything besides school & taking a shit & more studying

sounds dumb but when it does work, it's awesome

i feel like a lot of ffr/sm peeps who claim to have or have anxiety disorders or depression seem to have either a LOT of free time or NO free time

i've seen a TON on this site for some reason, i don't know that many people with depression and such irl

i think if you have a LOT of free time, fill it up with meaningful & productive things (even boring shit like studying), it'll really help you keep your head clear and give you a GOAL, short term and long term

if you have NO free time, free some up for basic hobbies

I can totally vouch for this. Often when I would get depressed is because I would over-think everything. Just gotta keep yourself busy and productive. Composing music is probably one of the best hobbies I could've picked up (EVEN STEPMANIA WOAH).

My brother is autistic and is 10 year old now. I'm really curious to see how he'll end up. He's already pretty amazing and dancing choreography.

[leonid]

Born in South Korea

I was awful as a kid, and caused some troubles in kindergarten and elementary school.

Started using computers at the age of 5.
Started using the internet at the age of 8.
Started rhythm game (BM98) at the age of 9.
Started rubik's cube at the age of 12.

Did fairly well at middle school, but failed really hard at the entrance exam for a highschool I wanted to be in
Lucked out and got in anyway

Did basically nothing at the highschool. Had nothing interesting to show off.
Lucked out and got in the university I wanted anyway.
My parents could fund me through the entire university life.

Took many interviews and failed. My resume was blank as well.
Lucked out and got the job I wanted anyway.

My entire life has been basically a huge luckfest.
I don't deserve any of my current statuses, but people around me somehow think I do.

Luck and absolute pitch are my only talents. I'm useless in anything else, ever.

[Arch0wl]

Originally Posted by EzExZeRo7497

The autism label has been something that's probably going to be true either way. Many of my teachers (along with my parents) have said that I've been very aloof and it definitely is beyond introversion. They have seen me mix around with people but was never able to and I think it's pretty true as well. I just feel... different.

If you strongly believe you have some form of autism, Reach can serve as a bridge before you go to a psychiatrist and claim you have it. Try hitting him up. He majored in neuro, but I've known people with MAs in psych who know less than he does on that subject.

[Arch0wl]

this thread has made me realize that I could probably write a memoir about my time in this scene if I wanted to

the post I just made is 3750 words, which is huge for an ffr post, and I felt like I had only covered a fraction of shit when I was done. I was tempted to go back and edit in even more shit but it would have knocked it to the 5,000-10,000 range, and memoir length is like 70k

[Reincarnate]

Originally Posted by mi40

you're still insane at math right?

do banking

I had to log in just to respond to this -- but this is totally off. You don't have to be good at math at *all* to go into banking. Banking is where brains honestly go to die. Go quant instead.

[Xx{Fallen}xX]

This thread is awesome, lets see how i do.

I was born in New York City in 1991, my mom got pregnant as a teenager and had me at a very young age. My grandmother was very strict back then and she kicked my mother out when she found out my mother got pregnant. My father was also very young and didnt want to have anything to do with a baby. I was born while my mom was homeless and we lived liked that for a year or so. My mom was in a previous relationship with someone named Dennis before my father and she decided to call him one day. Its a good thing she did because he still loved my mother and had us move in with him. We became a family and Dennis became my dad, after a couple years they got married and had my little brother (who also plays ffr a little :3)

While my mother was with my father, Dennis also had a child during that time, but his sister convniced him that he couldnt fully support that child and she eneded up taking care of him and becoming his legal guardian, so even though he was my older brother, he wasnt in my life when Dennis and my mother got married.

So when i was around 3 my parents decided to move out of the city and ended up in a farm in upstate NY. My mom worked for the photo studio that used to be in walmart, they gave her the choice of a promotion if she were to move to Utah, so we moved to Utah when i was 4. My parents really didnt like it there and ended up moving back to NY when i was 6. It was then that my mother started working for People's Bank as a teller. It wasnt long after that that her job gave her the same choice as her previous job did, only this time it was in Connecticut.

So we moved to Connecticut this time, this is where i spent the majority of my childhood. People's Bank ended up merging with Bank of America so thats who she worked for then, my stepdad (Dennis) did some oddjobs here and there while all this was going on. The four of us (my mom, stepdad, my little brother and myself,) lived in Connecticut for 6 years. My parents now wanted to move somewhere where the cost of living was cheaper and if they were going to move again they thought it would be best to go all out. So they chose Florida.

I was in 8th grade when we moved to Florida, my mom got a transfer so she still worked for BoA (Bank of America) and we lived in florida for 2 years before BoA decided to offer my mom a huge promotion if she were to move to NY, so off we go again, back to New York. This time we moved to the westchester county 20 min away from New York City.

I was at the end of 9th grade when we moved back to NY, it was here that i made some of the best friends i will ever know. Xx{Midday}xX was one of the first friends i made in the new school and we are still great friends to this day It was then that he showed me wonders of FFR. During my time there in NY my mom was working very hard and climbed the corporate ladder, eventually she was offered another deal. This time is was a promotion if she were to move to Texas. I was in my senior year of highschool at the time and my mom decided to move again. This move was the hardest one for me, since i had made such great friends and wanted to graduate with them.

So now my my mother was the Senior Vice President for Bank of America and we lived in Plano, Texas. I finished my senior year here and got accepted to a college on the other side of Texas, I needed a school that offered Veterinary programs so my choices were very limited. The school was a 12 hours away by car and 25 hours away by train, i mostly took the train to go between home and school, i didnt mind making the trip on train. So i went to college for 2 years but i was having a lot of financial problems because i still wasnt a resident of Texas yet, meaning i had to pay out of state tuition. There is also a law in Texas that says that you cant go to another school if you have debt from another. I have a substantial debt to the college i went to and i cant finish school until i pay that off. But i found a solution to the problem, while i was going to college my parents moved to florida, if i were to move to Florida with them i could go to school there and work while i pay off my debt to the school in Texas.

This were i am in life now, i just hope i can pay off the debt i owe, finish school and live happily ever after :3