So, I guess I'll start with my name and stuff, Josh. I'm 20 (birthday was yesterday, actually) and was born and raised in England.
I'm very very confused about myself right now of course, so I've come here to Susan's. But this isn't the thread for that.
A little back story coming up, I figured that I'd just go through a
brief summary of various points that I remember as I go through my life. Here goes!
(Excluding the trans stuff, that's for another thread I think)
Ages 4-10
My family and I lived in this semi-detached house on a main road. There was only one other kid in the houses on the road and luckily it was the house attached to mine.
We first met when I stuck my head over the fence dividing our gardens giving her a salute with a mostly eaten half-watermelon on my head. We became pretty good friends, spending an awful lot of time together adventuring, creating, and whatnot.
But my friendship with this girl was limited, as she went to private schools. But that only made our time together that much more special.
Then, when I was 9 her Mum was taken by cancer, which was a huge shock for both of our households, her step-dad then got depressed and realised he couldn't support Ally (my friend) any more, so she moved away to live with her real dad. Which was another huge bummer as now I've lost my only friend outside of school - I can't really remember why, but I rarely had school friends over.
So after that I begun to spend an awful lot of my time on our family computer, playing video games. It got worse when Dad got a new computer and I got to take the old one into my room. This got pretty bad at one point, for several months I would wake up at 4am to play games before school, although it didn't affect my primary school life, I was always getting pretty good grades.
School. I always thought I was pretty happy in primary school, I was a really fast runner which made me popular for any game involving running, I was envied for my unbeatable status in Mario Kart Double Dash. As for my friends, I was friends with pretty much all of the boys there, I can't recall even talking to any girls at school really. But I remember observing, (I don't know if I'm going crazy, but the more I think about it, the more I think that I was looking over to the girls wishing to be one of them).
Grades, I was pretty 'smart' in primary school too, I loved learning, so I did a lot of it.
I even started to read encyclopedias that my Nan bought me while also listening to the teacher towards the end of primary school.
And then, before I knew it, that part of my life was over, it was a sad day, I cried and hugged everyone I could get my hands on.
Wow, I said this would be brief... oops.
Ages 11-16
Secondary school, ugh. I didn't enjoy it at all, the teachers were lame, the other students were lame, and I got bullied for some reason.
Then my parents thought that it'd be a good idea to move to a little village and as a result of that, also move schools. This was a good idea.
The only problem is that I felt like I never properly settled into that school, I felt different from everyone else, the whole thing kind of feels surreal as I watched everyone do ludicrous things to stand out.
I became quite the outcast, never really talking to anyone except a select few who joined me every day either in the computer lab to make silly flash animations or the library to practice drawing. I love creating, if you can't tell.
Then for some unknown reason, I started to feel like I didn't really fit in with my few 'friends' either, alienating myself from them I began to act out in class, being as rude as possible to everyone, I wasn't a nice 14-16 year old.
This was also the time at which I decided I didn't want short hair anymore. I ended up skipping a lot of school (up to 40%) in one year, my parents got pretty worried and I shunned them for trying to help, resulting in them calling a therapist to try and 'fix my stupid head'.
This didn't work of course, I'm still broken ^_^. I simply told the therapist what she wanted to hear, and after 5/6 sessions and a bottle of anti depressants later I was 'fixed'. I was also still playing a lot of video games during all of this.
But the rebelling didn't really stop, and as a result of this my grades did take a hit and ended up getting pretty bad grades in secondary school.
Ages 17-Now
Went to college for a year for a computer course, It turned out to be terrible, turns out I knew everything already (not trying to sound big headed, I was really disappointed). But the classmates were okay, I could joke about nerd stuff with them.
After I finished that computer course, my parents went on holiday for a week (left me at home), and my dad said 'If you haven't got a job by time we get back, you're coming to work with me'. I didn't get a job by time he got back so I ended up labouring bricks, blocks and mortar for 20 months, which I've got to say was the lowest point of my life so far, I was suicidal, I hated the job so much, I'm a small person and not that strong (and didn't get stronger after a year of doing it), yet I had to carry heavy stuff around scaffolding all day, it was literally killing me, I tried to tell my dad that I couldn't do it anymore and he just called me a pussy, which hurt. I felt like I was doing this for him as he did need the help, and he turns around and yells at me saying I've never done anything for him, this hurt even more and I burst into tears for the whole night, my dad even asked me in a state of despair 'what is it? why are you like this? are you gay? do you want to be a woman?' At that moment I froze for half a second, it felt like I had just been shown the world the first time, but I stuttered 'no'.
And then a few days later a miracle had happened, an old school friend had rang me and told me he could had got me a job in computer stuff, I was thrilled, 'a way out!' I thought, I did everything I could to get the job and I did, it turned out to be even better than expected, I spent the entirety of my work days messing around with this 150k+ line business management system, and occasionally adding components to do things, the massive downside is that the guy didn't pay me, well, he paid me just enough to cover the bus but I couldn't keep it up for more than a few months, and still owes me quite a bit, but I chose to let him get away with it because he was my way out of bricklaying and turned my life around, opened up the world of programming for me and more.
After that I stopped working for a few months and really pushed for this game on Android that I was making, and at the same time wait around for a potential job opening with a friend, which worked out great. I now test devices and package them (which in itself is a crap job), but I love the people there, (not to mention I'm really good at the job, producing way above targets
) and I get paid on time!
tl;dr: Happy in primary school, downward spiral in secondary school, unhappy bricklaying for a while, got out of it and now doing an okay job.
That's about it, so hi there Susan's, I'm Josh.
