life story thread

[EzExZeRo7497]

I haven't really posted in the FFR forums for a long time, but the older life story thread was one of my favourite threads, and I wanted an avenue to talk about my personal problems.

- Born on July 4, 1997 in Singapore. I've been raised in SG since.

- I was told really often that I was a really precocious child when I was young; my parents, parents' friends and teachers all said something of that sort. I never really had to study for anything, though there were times where my results were pretty bad because of carelessness on my part. At least in terms of academia, the only regret I had was that I stopped taking Chinese classes seriously. I'll talk more about that later...

- I was a really awkward person. I never really knew how to interact with people. I was bullied a lot in school. Sometimes for my weight at the time, sometimes for my behaviour, but it's something that shouldn't be bullied for in general. I was bullied all the way to about late secondary school (around the start of the second half of high school). This was around the time I started really getting into rhythm games.

- I found rhythm games in early 2010, but I really started to get into rhythm game communities in about late 2010. I didn't have any close friends in school, so I talked to a lot of people online. At some point I stopped socialising with people in school and only talked to people online. I got really good at SM over a relatively short period of time, and that's probably because I've spent so much time on them from 2010 to 2014.

- My father went to prison when I was about 8-9 for drug trafficking and a few other offences that I can't remember off the top of my head. Mother had to make ends meet here and there for the first 2 years because of debt that my father had accumulated over the past few years at the time. I didn't talk to my family often at the time, so my father going to prison didn't directly affect me very much.

- I went to a really bad secondary school because I did extremely badly for my final exams for primary school, but I don't think it affected my growth too much.

- I only really started to deal with mental health issues when I was 15 or so. I realised that I felt really sad every now and then and I wasn't sure why. I don't think I was stressed or anything at the time; there were just long periods where I just didn't want to do anything or had no interest in anything. I told my mother that I was dealing with depression at the time and was mad at me, but she (thankfully) was more accepting of it over time.

- Went to vocational school (for an associate's-equivalent, this is mandatory) for finance at 17 (2014). Horrible decision. Hated almost everything about the field. Felt like I was running on fumes for most of my time in school. Didn't put in much effort into studying because studying finance made me really upset about choosing finance in the first place. I skipped all of my lectures because I wanted to get by as painlessly as I could. I really wanted to switch majors at the time, but I ended up not doing so because I didn't want to spend any more time in vocational school than I wanted to. That was also a bad decision.

- My mental health was deteriorating at this time. I've had long spells where I had no interest in anything and wanted to kill myself because I didn't think that there would be anything that would make me happy. I've never attempted suicide or self-harmed, but that's only because I was too tired to do anything. I've dealt with bouts of low energy for most of my life, but it really got bad when I was in vocational school.

- I was dealing with slight gender dysphoria by this time. I eventually shrugged it off because there were other pressing issues at the time. A few people took note of it because I've told them, but I had always been really subtle with my desire to be someone of the opposite sex at that time.

- Depression and fatigue got to a point where I legitimately couldn't comprehend text at all. Reading anything at the time felt like reading something in Arabic. There was some revelation at some point in vocational school when I realised that most of my problems at the time came from not feeling fulfilled in anything. I took a semester off in late 2015 so that I could find something that I was interested in. That's how I started being really interested in psychology and started to learn multiple fields by myself.

- I'll go on a tangent about rhythm gaming because rhythm gaming was/is a huge part of my life. Communication with other people in rhythm games around that time was fine. I started to get into the osu!mania community at the time and made friends there. I stopped playing rhythm games altogether at the end of 2015 because I stopped getting any pleasure from playing, but I started to make charts for StepMania and osu!mania a bit earlier than that and have been really active in both SM and o!m communities.

- My charts got pretty popular in osu!mania mostly because they were hard and not stupid to play through. I guess that was nice. I focused a lot on charting after 2015, and even though I've produced many different charts over the years, people generally really liked what I was making. I mostly attribute that to how I was just "ahead of the curve" at the time; I was just lucky that I've been able to "improve" at a rate that's faster than the unranked osu!mania charting section did. I didn't really feel happy about people liking my charts. This persisted all the way to early 2019, when I just stopped charting altogether because I was frustrated with my own works.

The lack of joy from activities that I've put a lot of time into is a regular phenomenon. I get really good at something, but I never feel happy even if I've reached that point. I just feel that I'm not good enough in one way or another. This part is pretty important, so keep this in mind.

- I eventually got back into vocational school and finished my last year. Finished my last exam in August 2017. My depression wasn't as bad by this time because I felt that I had something to strive for (research in some area of psychology), though I still felt tired and was still very unhappy that I was learning something that I didn't want to learn. I also had to do a mandatory internship (something administrative) and it was some of the most mindnumbing garbage that I had to go through.

- I continued to self-study and talk to people in rhythm game communities. I realised that I had an interest in linguistics (and psycholinguistics especially), so I ended up spending a lot of time on that. I decided to pick up a few languages on my own (Portuguese, German, Swedish) to see what it'd be like to learn a language as an adult. I was trying to sustain this daily habit of trying to learn something around this time.

- I had to do mandatory military service in early 2018. I was put in a really low category because of my mental health history, and a couple of medical officers believed that I had autism spectrum disorder because my experiences in school and also because my brother was also diagnosed with autism.

Being in that category basically meant that I had to sit in halls and do administrative work for 2 years. I broke down and cried multiple times because it felt extremely mind-numbing. I almost felt dust collecting in my mind and parts of my body withering from a lack of use. I was also getting really worried because I felt that I wasn't being productive. I knew that I was going to attempt suicide if I stay here for too long, so I told medical officers and higher-ups about how I was feeling at base. People there were thankfully mostly receptive towards my problems, though there were a few higher-ups who were clearly apathetic to my concerns.

- I was eventually discharged from the military after a few months. I was told that being discharged from the military prematurely meant that I had a lower chance of entering university and finding work, so I ended up putting in a ton more effort into self-studying. I started reading as much relevant material as I could, which I thought wasn't enough because I still had fatigue issues.

I basically studied about 3-8 hours a day on whatever I was interested in (psychology, linguistics, or other languages). Because those skills weren't quantifiable and that I never really had any joy from learning, I've always felt that I wasn't "good" enough. It didn't matter how much I knew and how much material I can understand -- I just didn't think that I knew enough. Again, this was a common thing, and that applied to every single field that I've put a lot of time into.

- Gender dysphoria started to get really bad by around late 2018 after a few events. I eventually decided that transitioning would be the best way to go in the future. I tried to explain to someone about my decision to transition earlier, but I'm missing a ton of details.

My parents aren't happy about it, and while my parents say that they're ultimately supportive, it's really clear that they aren't supportive and would much rather have me stay where I am. Whatever.

I still haven't been very open about my gender dysphoria. A lot of people in rhythm game communities still know me as a male, and I'm very anxious to even share about it given a couple of messages that I've seen in various communities. There are smaller VSRG circles who do know that I'm transgender, but I tell them not to be explicit about it for the most part. Posting this here is the second place that I've ever said in a public website that I'm trans (first time is on my RateYourMusic account), and I'm thinking of removing this even now.

- I applied to university early this year and was accepted into a honours degree program in psychology despite a lacklustre GPA from vocational school and premature discharge from the military. I didn't really feel anything from that acceptance letter. My personal problems with competence were deeper than just "being good enough for university" at this point. I was just trying to make myself happy, and I haven't been able to do it.

- Currently in university in my first semester. I'll be taking philosophy and linguistics minors in the future unless I do well enough in school to do a double major in psychology and linguistics. Travelling back and forth is a fucking pain because of constant migraines (I take medication for migraine prevention) and depressive episodes. Studying has been okay because of how much time I've spent studying in my free time. I started studying philosophy (moral, political and epistemology at the moment) in my free time through textbooks. I'll probably be able to do just fine academically. I'm still an emotional mess, and I've been trying to survive since.

My writing is probably really disorganised (it's 3am), but I think that's a decent enough summary of what I had gone through over my life. It's definitely not as bad as many people here, but I ultimately just wanted a place to write down how I've been feeling over the past few years.

I also just wanted to thank the FFR community (and other rhythm game communities too) for making me feel at home for so long. I don't talk to most of the people that I talked to in 2011-2012 or so today, but I just wanted to say thanks to them for having me around and dealing with my garbage when I was much younger.