life story thread

[Funnygurl555]

Re: life story thread

Low key good thread diversion, I def overshared 😒

i don't think you did

[SpaceGorilla]

Re: life story thread

it's like playing minesweeper trying to avoid the irrelevant bs in this thread but the rest is some good stuff

i'd contribute my own life story but i'm either too young or too naive to make it sound interesting. basically i've been completely pampered up until this point, dealing with some depression kind of like the rest of you. nothing really sad or crazy has happened but reading your guys' stuff can help me appreciate that a little more so thanks i guess

[MarioNintendo]

Re: life story thread

Low key good thread diversion, I def overshared 😒

I don't think you overshared. At least, don't feel bad about sharing. It's a sign of maturity and courage, not foolishness. I don't know what to say in these situations, but I still respect you a ton bro.

[samurai7694]

Re: life story thread

luis if you have a good mic (or not, probably doesn't matter) we should collab on some music

I don't have a good mic but I'd be down for collabs, or even taking recommendations from ambient music since I'm starting to be more interested in it. life's been busy for me, which is a good thing, but I can make time to listen to music!

Low key good thread diversion, I def overshared 😒

I feel the same honestly. I personally did read through all posts here though. I will say this: if my condensed story somehow helps or speaks to someone then I feel a lot better.

[psychoangel691]

Re: life story thread

I feel like I may have shared some in the other thread a while ago (haven't looked) not sure if anyone really wants to hear my story but if I did it I'd probably end up with several posts of different phases in life. I've had a lot of shit go down in my 34yrs on earth, lol.

[TC_Halogen]

Re: life story thread

oh yeah I didn't see that, yeah my charts are bad too but there's always been something cathartic about making your own charts and seeing them to completion

I've been asked over at osu!mania why I've made easier charts when being at the player level that I'm at (two times referring to this particular chart). It comes down to that exact thing; it just feels good to do and it's nice to see something you've wanted to create come to fruition.

As far as life stuff: put in a spoiler to as to not stretch the page.

---

For the most part, my life wasn't too bad growing up. I was raised in Chicago and lived there for the first 18 years of my life. Things deteriorated over time with my parents both suffering from alcoholism, though things have improved substantially on both sides with my dad slowing down and my mom being essentially inhibited in her consumption living with me.

I've heard stories from my mom about how she sheltered me from my father's side of the family and looking back at that, I'll have to definitely agree. My father's siblings and that side of the family in general was filled with a lot of deadbeats, with an overwhelming majority of them not only being educational dropouts but also involved with gang related activity for extended periods.

This person was actually connected to my dad's side of the family.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2004-03-12-0403120273-story.html

I also lost a cousin and that cousin’s father to substance abuse.

My mom was apparently accused by my father's siblings for trying to make me "white" by keeping me away from them (note: I'm Puerto Rican). I definitely thank her for that.

My introduction to education was a little shaky due to having some issues with regards to reading but I eventually turned it around and seemed to be an educational savant compared to the rest of my family. From 4th grade through 8th grade, I played in our school's band. None of my immediate family on either side had any sort of musical inclination, so this surprised my parents. I'd initially intended on playing clarinet, but our school was so poorly under-funded that I was forced to play trumpet instead -- I was a natural at it. By 5th grade, our band director was already feeding me lower-level high school pieces because I was simply bored trying to wait for everyone else to catch up.

I ended up getting into a selective enrollment high school in Chicago (Lane Tech). My time at Lane was mostly great; the school was a melting pot and had so many students, making it pretty easy to become socially active. Despite selecting a technology-oriented curriculum, I continued on with the musical interests and played in the school's concert band from freshman year all the way through senior year. I also played in a pit band for our school’s production of Bye Bye Birdie, which was an incredible experience as well. Lane Tech was when my love for rhythm gaming also spiraled to a whole new level, after running into the school’s DDR club; the person managing the club when I got in as a freshman - aliased Darklink, ended up being a prominent individual within the Chicago scene due to getting their hands on a dedicated ITG cabinet and we stood in touch for a pretty long time after that.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t all fun. In my senior year, a close female friend ended up getting involved in a relationship with a person who was quite frankly, extremely paranoid. They were under an active impression that I was trying to be a thorn in the relationship, even though said female and I had agreed that nothing would ever happen romantically (we simply never had that interest). The male in question eventually started catching me throughout random points in the day, threatening to jump me if I “continued what I was doing.” On a particularly bad rehearsal from band, I was threatened once more… and actually snapped. We’ll leave it at that…

This experience is essentially what caused me to get kicked out of high school. Through sheer fear of being caught in the halls like I had been in the past, I started cutting class throughout the second half of the day. Eventually, I got expelled for truancy.

At that point, I started getting on FFR a -lot- more, particularly in the video chat area. It didn’t take too long for me to run into Kayla and we started talking extremely frequently - not just on FFR VC, but on AIM (holy shit we’re old). My parents would often give me money to go play ITG over at Galaxy Comics, which was housing Darklink’s dedicated cabinet. I started putting away parts of that money away and eventually coordinated with my dad to get myself a train ticket to go east and move with her in January 2010.

I’ll summarize from that move on because it would take 10x longer to just handle that part…

Had first daughter -- Saphira, in March of 2011.
Got my GED in June of 2012.
Moved back to Chicago to live w/ my dad for him to help us out in October of 2012.
Left Chicago to go Maryland on April 1st, 2013 (nice date).
Had second daughter, Ariana, in August of 2013.
Worked at Kohl’s eCommerce for 13 months, hit a lead position but was denied full-time work for reasons I won’t understand. I guess at the end of the day, I can say it was the universe pulling me in the right direction.
On a complete fucking whim after Kayla said “what’s the worst that can happen”, applied for a web development job without a degree (was still doing my associates online), and actually beat out four people for the job.
Got my A.A.S. in Information Technology in July (?) of 2015.
Got into another web development job as a referral from my first job, and spent a pretty long time over there… before being let go with basically no reasoning back in March of 2018, exactly one day after purchasing a plane ticket for my mother to live with us after being horrifically impacted by Hurricane Maria and dealing with shitty family while living in Puerto Rico months earlier (fantastic timing).
After an incredibly long battle of job applications and constant feelings of rejection, landed my current software development job; I absolutely love the people I work with. I worked alone in my previous jobs, but actually feel like I’m a part of something bigger here and it’s a great feeling. Unlike my two previous jobs, I feel like this is my “career job” and I don’t see myself separating from this company anytime soon.

At the end of the day, through all of the struggles and craziness, I still wouldn't have it any other way. Kayla and I have been through a fair amount of shit while being together while also having our own shit that we dealt with before meeting one another and it's been an insane but continuously improving ride.

This still leaves a shitton out, to be honest. But it serves as a good summary of things.

[Funnygurl555]

Re: life story thread

yay you did it thanks for sharing halogen

I feel the same honestly. I personally did read through all posts here though. I will say this: if my condensed story somehow helps or speaks to someone then I feel a lot better.

i've read through every one too (though that's unsurprising since i started the thread). i've purposely haven't been commenting though for fear of being insensitive. like what if someone shares and unbeknownst to you your comment's as good as saying "cool". that's likely my social anxiety speaking though.

i don't think anyone overshared really 'cause it's hard to over share when you're asked to post your entire life. though i get that it makes you feel vulnerable. i've had to let go of that personally 'cause i had to reach out for help earlier this year

it's like playing minesweeper trying to avoid the irrelevant bs in this thread but the rest is some good stuff

i'd contribute my own life story but i'm either too young or too naive to make it sound interesting. basically i've been completely pampered up until this point, dealing with some depression kind of like the rest of you. nothing really sad or crazy has happened but reading your guys' stuff can help me appreciate that a little more so thanks i guess

y'all it really ain't the point to be interesting or to have had shit go down i get it though i felt that way when the first thread happened

[devonin]

Re: life story thread

Guess since people are opening up about a lot of stuff, I should make the attempt, though I'm still going to have to leave some stuff out.

[DaBackpack]

Re: life story thread

the short of it is that the source of my childhood trauma is my father coming out as trans ~15 years ago or so, and the immense pain that entire process caused in myself, my sister, and my mother especially

given what I know about the denizens of this site, I've really been waffling about whether or not it's a good thing to share those experiences here. because there are a lot of unhappy, miserable truths about the trans experience.

I'm not transphobic, and this trauma came to help me understand the LGBT experience as a child, but I'm not sure if it's "right" to share

[devonin]

Re: life story thread

the short of it is that the source of my childhood trauma is my father coming out as trans ~15 years ago or so, and the immense pain that entire process caused in myself, my sister, and my mother especially

given what I know about the denizens of this site, I've really been waffling about whether or not it's a good thing to share those experiences here. because there are a lot of unhappy, miserable truths about the trans experience.

I'm not transphobic, and this trauma came to help me understand the LGBT experience as a child, but I'm not sure if it's "right" to share

Generally one shouldn't ever out somebody without their consent, but if she is out as trans in life, I don't think it would be bad to talk about.

Nor do I think anybody here is going to think that having a struggle to reconcile "my father" and "trans" makes you transphobic. Having trouble coming to terms with it is natural and expected, but that assumes that you're not denying the reality of it, or refusing to try to make efforts to integrate this information into your interactions.

[EzExZeRo7497]

Re: life story thread

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.

[the sun fan]

Re: life story thread

life story

its good to see you again
glad that stuff is going as well as it has been despite setbacks
you really weren't a prick back in 2012 and I'm not just saying that

[BilliumMoto]

Re: life story thread

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.

hard work always pays off (as long as you stay alive)

[DaBackpack]

Re: life story thread

Generally one shouldn't ever out somebody without their consent, but if she is out as trans in life, I don't think it would be bad to talk about.

Nor do I think anybody here is going to think that having a struggle to reconcile "my father" and "trans" makes you transphobic. Having trouble coming to terms with it is natural and expected, but that assumes that you're not denying the reality of it, or refusing to try to make efforts to integrate this information into your interactions.

my dad is open about it, he also doesn't care about pronouns

but I'm not going to sugar-coat it, it was a truly awful situation for everyone involved. It's not about accepting this person's new identity, that was always a given. it's the reconciliation of this new person (who has largely been absent since then) with the few remaining images of "my dad" I have from childhood. occasionally I meet with my dad and he'll do or say something that reminds me of how he used to be and my brain can't process it and I almost pass out/have a seizure

me reconnecting with my dad relieves a bit of my guilt complex but the cognitive dissonance is still a major obstacle for me

[MixMasterLar]

Re: life story thread

I think it's pretty reasonable that if someone becomes someone else that you're not expected to automatically like the new them just because, especially when they act like a wholly different person.

It sucks that it was someone so close to you though; I feel where you're coming from.