Here's a continuation of my life.

At 20, I did something I will always regret. As I wished and gave up my desires for a better life, I thought I would give it to someone else. It was an online relationship where I didn't hold back. All of my mental baggage, desires, insecurities and inner conflicts - I let it out on one singular person to handle it for me. And equally so, I gave a lot of exaggerated love to compensate for my flaws. It was something I thought was right from the perspective I had after my childhood of trauma. It felt correct. Not like I had knowledge of what a proper relationship was supposed to be. It was also the start of many years of complete social isolation, as I let the fear of people and society get to my head. I couldn't even make, or take phone calls. I didn't go outside, at all, not even for groceries. Painful anxiety accompanied me in every part of life, and I knew it was bad, it was so bad that I tried to pass it off as a "cute" thing. I also used Tumblr back then, which was about as destructive as you could think of. I felt caged. Every day, I avoided my mother's look as I could barely take care of myself or my body, and she did the same by watching the tv. Every day, I just went online to distract myself from the outside, the pain, the suffering. Anything to keep it quiet.

At 21, I received diagnoses for F64.0 and F84.9. It didn't change much in practical life, at least the transgender one, as I had already been self medicating estrogen. As for the other one, it did give me rights for certain type of healthcare, although shallow. What can I say? It was just diagnoses, it didn't change anything, I didn't know how bad it was inside of me even if it ruled my daily life. I still felt afraid of visiting my psychologists (they all sucked), I still felt afraid of being seen and perceived in the world, and I still felt like it was a problem I fundamentally couldn't solve. Again, I felt caged, restrained. Forced. Only now it started suffocating me, slowly, badly. Panicking without a support network, and not knowing how to build one myself. Loosely drifting around, aimlessly.

During these years it felt like I tried my best to slow time down. Stuffing myself in to a corner and pretending I was a ghost in society, looking out the window every day and wondering when the day of comfort would come. Maybe one would come, probably, right? Even if I did have my partner back then, uploaded art and had a following, and even participated in various art groups, I felt so, utterly, terribly alone. I kept wondering when it would end. When I would be told all life's mysterious secrets and answers to my questions so I could 'grow up' and stop the pain. It was still so much suffering under the comfy blanket of escapism. Truth be told, it was very comfortable. And I did do a lot of interesting things! I learned programming, drawing, animation, and other creative pursuits, things people have complimented on over and over in life, telling me I should be proud of it. It felt ideal if I looked away from the ugly parts. But I still waited for the fix, hoping it would look like a person. The perfect person who would fix everything for me. My future savior of emotional torment that could read my mind. It wasn't my partner, and I sure let them, and many other side partners and friends know about it. Many bridges burned.

So then, year by year, each one was ticking by, and the pressure was building too. Each year I got older and more desperate. When was it going to start? How do I know when to start? I certainly didn't feel ready. Do I have to do something now? I felt misguided, I felt lost, in my heart, in my mind. So I remembered the last thing my dad told me, and it was to go to school. So I did so without any agency within me. I applied to an animation school, which I was accepted to, but cancelled the last minute. Later, I applied to college, which I was also accepted for. And so the next era began where I was studying something I didn't really feel passionate for, in a new place I didn't feel comfortable at, from following my dad's advice, even if he no longer was here. It got much worse.

At age 24, I went to college. I moved out from my mother's apartment, sat in a small 10m² hostel bedroom and did what I thought was expected from me, but with the exact same paranoia of people, anxiety about myself, and terrible social skills I had. The first half year was fairly "fun", if fun meant playing along with people, if fun meant cutting parts off myself little bit little, week by week... well, there were some moments I had fun playing the Switch with a friend I had, I guess, and playing online. But I did my school work, I did give it a try. Perhaps I was wrong all of these years and maybe if I did try socializing again, properly, it would be okay. Maybe I was wrong about the hormones, maybe I was just shy, like my mother had told me many times as a child. Maybe I hadn't tried hard enough. Maybe I haven't trusted enough.

I dropped hormones. I dropped my expectations and natural self. I dropped every aspect of my personality. I also broke up with that online partner I had. I tried my outmost best, in every way that I can think of, to fit in and to do what everyone else wanted me to do, as I could see in their faces. I went to music clubs, I went to creative events, I even tried the dating scene, I sat in school and studied. And it didn't lead me anywhere I wanted. I tried harder. Taking initiatives, suggesting activities, ignoring my comfort. Over time, it was molding in to someone who wasn't me. Then moving in to a new student apartment to give a proper try. Going further and further, detransitioning, socializing, just one more try, just one more go. Ignoring the awkwardness, ignoring the failures, trying to learn, trying to move on. Something horrible slowly built up within me, a twisted sense of disappointment coming right at my face, even as I has tried everything I could think of.

Then I snapped, and I cried. I sobbed. For myself. Sitting on my bed, face in my hands, heartbroken over what life was supposed to be. I had tried everything, even things I didn't want, just to have a crumb of what I wanted. I had pushed myself to understand everything, everyone, all the fine details of life, like reaching some sort of omniscient status so I could predict every move in life without getting hurt. It didn't work out, of course. So there I was, a pathetic, lonely pretend-male that felt stupid, incompetent and unworthy of life. What now?

I had erased myself, my memories, my past for the second time in my life. I became numb. I felt broken and had given up, becoming a desensitized shell of myself who had lost hope. So I put my heart and mind elsewhere where it belonged better, and it just so happened that I was working on a furry game at the time, that I then spent the next five years devoting myself to. It felt like the only world that would accept me for who I was, my purity, my essence, without breaking me. I called it Kemoverse.

At 25, I met my partner. We met over one of the few furry themed artbooks I threw together with other internet artists. It was mutually self-pressuring from both sides, but at least it was a relief to finally meet someone who I could gain even a crumb of comfort or familiarity with. Well, that was until COVID hit and it fucked it over for a year. A full year of agonizing waiting, knowing there was someone who would finally give me the physical comfort I've always looked for. It eventually happened. We moved in, and I continued the studies in school. It got a bit better, even though I struggled to handle my automatic responses and bad habits that had grown upon me all these years, that had grown from the past. All of my past memories, feelings and experiences felt more distant each year, fading away slowly like a bad dream.

And with school too, of course, I started hating them, deeply. Whereas in the past it was just confusion and fear, now it was disgust and hatred for what it, and society stood for. But I continued up until my final thesis in bachelors. And I remember how pointless everything felt through the years, how I felt too bitter to take advantage of the social networks, how desperate I was for this education to be over so I could crawl back in to isolation again. I remember asking the teacher over Zoom if this is how life is supposed to be - to just write these thesises, to do a good job for a superior, thinking to myself... to erase every part of my personality just to survive. I remember his little smirk and giggle. It was enough. It prompted me to make the only choice I ever felt like I had during all this time in college. I cancelled my bachelors and unlisted myself from the school. I gave up despite being told how fucking stupid I was. I gave up and made my only choice in this entire journey.

At 28, that's when it happened. I also tried applying for a job interview this time, and if school was a mistake, this was a disaster. I don't even want to recount it. A clusterfuck of pain and discomfort that messed me up. I couldn't really find help or feel comfortable looking for help around me. I gave my psychiatrist one of my personal books as the meetings drew to a close. The rental agreement of the apartment was also running out. Pressure was building again. What the fuck do I do? What do I do? I have my partner, but she's dependent on me. I had forgotten all my natural behavior, I had turned myself against society. How could I have asked for help here? And what now? I felt time running out quick, and it was becoming scary. I went to the psychiatric emergency, and that was the final slap to my face that I needed. They didn't even bother pretending to know what to do with me, asking me what I want from them, as I sit there, wide eyed, with fear for my life in my eyes. And I just said, sorry I came here, and left the unit.

It broke me, my hope, my desire to live there, my desire to fit in there. No more of that pain. I gave up on everything I ever knew, all the culture and language I knew, all the manners, behaviors, familiarity and comfort I had gotten to know over my lifetime, and moved away. All of my memories, my family stories, my childhood locations, left behind for something better. I remember how much I struggled to think how this is how people wanted to live like. That they don't want a more meaningful, pure, and honest life like I wanted. That they were happy exchanging a vibrant, exciting, different life to safety, comfort and mundanity, on top of all the surface level promises. And most of all, how I let myself get there. Sure, I can't blame myself for the past events (not that I remember them anymore), but I did allow it to get to me this deep. What could I have done? I don't know. I remember the ferry ride to Estonia. I felt so utterly empty and violated inside of me. At the same time, I treated it as a stoic restart of my life. One that maybe is going a bit better. I'll write about it in a third post.