So, I've never been good at expressing my thoughts, but friends have told me that writing this stuff down can help with moving past things, or at the very least help the healing process when it comes to a variety of things. These will mainly be my thoughts on the state of things when it comes to my experiences with the furry community and my interactions and relationships with people within it. It will have both bad and good things talked about. Also, two main reasons I'm writing this, the first to help me process my thoughts and go over the lessons I've learned in my life so far, the second one to share my experiences and lessons I've learned with others to hopefully help them in some way.

So as a disclaimer right now, if mental health stuff such as abuse, trauma, suicide, and other hard to talk about subjects will trigger something or cause issues, please don't continue as YOUR mental health is important and very valid! Otherwise, if you are okay with reading about such things, then continue onwards.

I don't really know how to begin something like this so I will just start at the beginning. For several years I never really considered myself as a part of the furry fandom because my experiences up to that point had been mostly negative, both from those who aren't considered furries and those from within the community itself. The amount of drama the furry fandom produces on a regular basis makes a lot of those drama-based shows and movies look tame in comparison. Not to mention that a lot of the drama that comes up ends up being very close to or the exact same as the various dramas that came up during high school. So for those reasons, for the longest time, I tried to disassociate myself with majority of the people involving themselves within the fandom at large.

However, due to my mental state at the time not being great, it was something I was longing to be a part of, not out of the idea of being a furry but the idea of having people around me that liked and shared the same/similar interests that I do. A sense of belonging and community is what I desperately craved for, and in a lot of ways, I think that is one of the main reasons a LOT of people join this chaotic fandom. When I eventually did join the fandom, I was very hesitant at first due to previous experiences, but I met some friends at the time that helped ease myself into things. These friends now are dear to me, and they know who they are. So, to you guys, thank you.

Some background about myself. I have been dealing with some version of trauma since day one in my life. The more serious stuff didn't start up till around age 8 or 9 years old and that's when a lot of my depression and anxiety really started to flare up. At the time I didn't know it, but I was experiencing a lot of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) types of stuff. Couldn't sleep well, had night terrors nearly every night. Panic attacks were normal for me in my everyday life; I couldn't go for an hour in a day without having at least 1 or 2 severe panic attacks. It was bad. It got bad enough that by the time I was starting high school I was having some powerful suicidal thoughts and making plans of a way to kill myself in a way that didn't allow for much pain.

High school wasn’t a great time for me, in the sense that other students, classmates, teachers, and even some of the others in charge were using various methods of abuse through bullying--physically, verbally, and emotionally. I’ve had a couple teachers tell me that since I won’t amount to anything in life, may as well end it now. The list goes on and you get the picture.

During this time music, helping others, and finding any bit of joy I could get, whether that was with video games or promising myself that I’ll make it through one more day and then I can decide again if I will live tomorrow later. It was a dark time in my life and one of the biggest methods or strategies I found that worked decently well for me was the use of silver linings. I learned what a silver lining even was from, by far, THE BEST animated show to this day, Avatar the Last Airbender! Uncle Iroh and his talk of silver linings in every dark cloud, and the power of hope: “In the darkest times, hope is something you must give yourself. That is the meaning of inner strength.” That quote resonated with me and still does to this day. At the time, I only really took the fact that I had to do something to gain some kind of hope in my life, to prevent me from falling into despair.

Hence the use of silver linings, which is for whatever negative thing you can find, you can find at LEAST one positive thing to take away from it. One example I remember the most is something along the lines of, “I can’t seem to do anything right! At least I can help a friend.” Or “I might die tomorrow. At least I won’t have to endure this pain anymore.” Stuff like that which, yes sounds very dark. But, given what I was saying to myself, it was a ray of light in the darkness that I could latch onto.

One other strategy I found was trying to come up with some kind of quote or saying to help describe or explain the way I feel about something. One quote I managed to come up with at the time “Greed is the disease that poisons the mind.” Granted I have no clue if it was made up by me as the so-called OG, but it didn’t matter so long as I could use it to describe my feelings on life.

Due to all of this, I dropped out of high school during my sophomore year due and honestly, if it wasn't for my mom (as annoying as I thought she was at the time), it showed she really did give a shit about me. My dad played a pretty big role in just getting me out of bed each morning despite not wanting to and giving him all kinds of grief. Such is the life of a teenager, right?

During this time, when I was suicidal and trying to find out if I had the will to off myself in some fashion. I ended up diving more into playing video games and joining an online Halo Reach clan that ended up being named "The Taco Army" of all things. I doubt anyone from those days will read this. But if you are, just know that my time playing with you all really helped me a lot more than I will ever be able to express. I had found a community I could sink my teeth into and call my own, a means of connecting with people even if they were all online and I was only able to talk with them through the party group on Xbox 360. (Spacing the exact name of it, but basically forming a party with the ability to voice chat). Over time I grew a lot and the fact that I had someone within that group that was one of the people in charge I could really connect with helped a whole lot. To this day I still love the conversations we had about a variety of things. This was a time in my life that if this group hadn't appeared when it did, I may not have survived my high school years.

One of the main lessons I learned and struggled with for a long while during my time being suicidal was to keep an open mind, despite all the negativity that I was choosing to see around me. Eventually good things would happen to me at some point, right?

Fast forward into my early 20s and I'm starting to get into playing World of Warcraft as a role player on one of the roleplaying realms (Not going to say which one but if you know, you know). I met several people there that I grew to have a lot of fun with. But with that did come a lot of toxic people, as one tends to run into online. Up to this point in my life a good chunk of people I knew had a version of using me in some capacity, be it as a free non-licensed therapist to listen to their woes whenever it was convenient for them, or as someone to help them when it comes to giving advice or being a good friend without fully realizing that they weren't really a friend in return. Due to this disposition, my mindset was that of "Well since I'm helping them in some way, who the fuck cares if they're just using me. I'm helping someone and that feels good." Granted this was before I realized that I was using my desire to help others as a crutch in a sense to avoid dealing with my own personal problems. Why focus on your own problems when helping others deal with theirs is so much easier? Granted, on some level it did give me a reason to wake up and get up out of bed a majority of the time. It was a lifeline for me to keep on going and see if there truly is a light at the end of this road.

My various online interactions with a wide range of people have been a mixed bag. But some of the more negative experiences I’ve had to deal with were involved seriously toxic and abusively manipulative people. Some people I have met have blamed me for their attempted suicides or their self-harming. Some took it further and have threatened to take their own lives or harm themselves if I leave them or walk away. Which, if anyone’s been put into that situation knows, that is NOT a simple thing to walk away from. I remember hearing that the “friend” ended up in the hospital after an attempted suicide and their sister ended up getting a hold of me and start blaming me for their attempted suicide.

Now, this situation is really shitty and fucked up, because it was NOT my fault that the person was self-harming nor my fault that they tried to end their own life. We cannot make anyone do anything and they have their own control and agency to make their own decisions. The life lessons I learned from this are that people who use this blame game or threaten to harm themselves if you don’t do something for them can’t easily be reasoned with and, as shitty as it sounds to say, you MUST tell yourself that you did everything in your power to help them, and if they chose not to take it, there’s nothing more you can do. They made their own choices. Ideally, in this situation, if possible, you can call someone and let someone who can try to help the person know what’s going on and to get them the help they need. But sometimes it’s not that simple and you’re left with two choices. You can continue to be used as their means of trying to cast the blame for their own issues onto you, or you can remove yourself from the situation. After everything else trying to help this person, if nothing works then you have nothing left you can do and from there on it is up to THEM to make the choice if they want to get the help they need or to choose a different path.

I know it sucks, but YOU matter too and, if that person is unwilling to seek the help after countless attempts to try and get them the help they need, there’s nothing else you can do but to remove yourself from that situation, so that YOU don’t get sucked into someone else’s issues. Put on your own oxygen mask first before helping others; right now you need to put yours on by leaving the situation in this case.

Now, one of the people that has helped me the most I met on World of Warcraft during one of my sessions trying to find someone to role play with in Duskwood forest. (Actual role play, not the lewd kind mind you). At the time he was working evening shifts and for me I was up during the afternoons and evenings, so it worked out well. Over time we started chatting about a variety of life stuff, interests, and some stuff about our personal lives. Eventually, after enough time passed, we even added each other to Discord which was something of a rarity for him to do. Doubly so that it took a year or two before this event happened, so I counted myself very lucky to have met him. This person was a big advocate for furries and the community surrounding it, which helped me see the whole community in a different light. Someone who was genuine, honest, and cared about those he interacted with at this level. Up to this point I had known maybe only one other furry, but they were very hush and quiet about involving themselves within anything inside the furry fandom. So, this friend I met that night wandering the roads of Duskwood slowly became one of my closest friends and eventually I got to visit him in person, and it was like we were friends our entire lives when we finally met in person.

He helped me a lot in being more open minded about the furry community and even recommended me to use a furry app called Barq to try and meet more local friends. So, I tried doing that for about a year with mixed results and haven't really used it much since.

During this time, I did meet several new people, one of which taught me a very valuable lesson in how to spot red flags as quickly as possible. This person was someone I met in person and at first, they seemed nice and compassionate. Though as time went on, I realized they were just using me to buy them things and, whenever they got me a gift in return, they used it as a means of having me owe them a favor. This isn't really the point of giving someone a gift, doubly so because when I gave them gifts, I never expected to give something in return. Hell, I even told them multiple times that if they ever feel like returning the favor to me, don't. Instead, pass on compassion to someone else to help spread more compassion into the world.

One of the things this person wanted me to do, AFTER telling me to not only take them out to lunch to pay for the whole meal, but also, during a time where I was going to leave to Oregon to attend my grandmother's Funeral/Celebration of life, this person was having their birthday and WANTED ME to BUY them their Birthday gift EARLY. They said, "You're going to be gone when my birthday actually is, so could you just give me my birthday gift early?" and since at the time I was so shocked and couldn't believe what I just fucking heard, I was just in autopilot mode, which was the "Helping people is good and this is helping" mode. So, like a fucking fool I took them to one of the stores and they chose what clothes they wanted to pick out. In my head I was trying to figure out how the hell do I deal with this in a nice friendly way. I didn't fully realize I was being abused and being taken advantage of until AFTER they got their "gift" and then in my head...because you know I figured if I'm spending this much time with them, I should see some reciprocity out of the deal at the very least, say a hug or plutonic cuddles when I needed support. Surely, they care about me, right?

I know there are those reading this who are shaking their heads and either writing a comment or saying to themselves, "How the hell did you not know by that point you were being used?!?" In my defense, I have been used like this all my life and figured this was just a normal thing for someone you care about to do. I had no idea this was actual abuse and being used until AFTER they wanted me to not only PAY FOR THEIR PHONE BILL but in addition, PAY FOR THEM TO HAVE THEIR FACIAL and BODY HAIR REMOVED! Like WHAT?! I'm all for people being their authentic selves whatever that means to them. If it means they are transitioning from male to female or female to male, go for it! You're awesome and amazing for becoming the person you have always been and getting the body to match.
But to top it all off, I have a little memorial to my dog that passed away not too long before and that dog saved my life more than once. He was always there for me and in return I'd show him as much love as I could with pets, hugs, kisses, treats, walks, and scratches. I have his pawprint mold as one of the things sitting on the memorial. This FUCKER thought to put their drink atop of it as if it were just a fucking coaster!! I took them home and when I was on my way back, I finally had my limit broken and finally realized what probably a lot of you might have realized earlier: "OH FUUUUUUCKKK! They were just using me this entire fucking time!!! DAMN IT!"

Several years passed with this type of mindset before I finally figured out that helping someone that doesn't in fact want to help themselves isn't doing anything for anyone. It's just sucking the energy and emotionally draining myself. I like to call this group of people emotional vampires. I've dealt with a lot of emotional vampires in my life and have had to learn a lot of new lessons as I started going to therapy while also dealing with these various people.
Another important lesson I learned was from someone I met here on FA. I was friends with this person for, I want to say, a year or two. At first, he was amazing, and we had a lot of fun. But he had his own struggles with mental health and that desire to help people kicked in and I wanted to help him, thinking he was genuine. I didn't know it at the time, but whether it was subconsciously or knowingly, he too was using me as a free therapist. For the longest time I didn't want to think that because I actually grew pretty close with them and, over time, I started noticing that my body would have a negative physical reaction anytime I would play games, talk with them, or just being around them--a sense of feeling icky or having the feeling of being repelled from them like magnets that have the same ends held together.
Some of the choices he made were to get angry at others whenever games weren't going his way--even if we were on his team, he'd just up and decide to quit when he didn't like things. He'd have a 'woe is me' or a victim mindset where he thought the world was out to get him and he was the victim of every little slight against him. He wanted to date, and I told him no because I didn't feel that way about him. He took that hard and dragged the issue passive-aggressively into other non-romantic activities we were doing. To be fair though, I probably sent mixed signals after buying them a gaming PC. This wasn't really me stating I wanted to be more than friends but more just me trying to show him in a big way I really do care about him a lot, just not in a romantic way. The lesson I learned is that giving gifts to people to show your appreciation for them might be misinterpreted to show romantic interest. I know now and am more careful when gifting things to friends.)

Now, for a while I stuck around because I thought, with me being around, I was helping him in some way and he was improving. But only after about a year or two, did I finally realize that he didn't want help for himself and was just using his victim-mindset as the means to try and lure people in, with the hopes that they would help him. I can understand why he did this, in the sense of he didn't want to feel alone anymore and felt that the only way he could try to make friends was to use this tactic to keep them around for the long term. I also know he's been the victim of abuse and trauma himself so, in some ways, thinking he was someone who could understand what that can feel like helped us grow closer. Turns out it was the opposite; the friendship was as it was one-way. I feared leaving the friendship because we shared a lot of friends and he had both implied and directly told me that, if I left him, he would make sure his friends would know how shitty a person I am. I wasn't expecting any of our mutual friends to show me any sympathy or understanding of why I was taking my actions. But my gut was telling me if I didn't end this now, I would regret it later. Thankfully I listened to my gut and got out of that situation. It turns out that I wasn’t alone in my experiences when it came to some of the other friends we both shared. Or at the very least some of the mutual friends expressed understanding of why I was doing what I was doing.

But it wasn't all bad. There were some great memories I have with him when it came to playing games, chatting, getting art together, and even planning a time to come up to visit him in person. Though a lot of those memories started to turn to ash as I started to remember that the good times were far overshadowed by the bad. Those gaming sessions quickly turned into judgement, lashing out in anger, or blaming me for something I now realize wasn't even about me, but about himself. I and his other friends were the lightning rods he used to vent his frustrations, anger, and loathing he had about himself. I even brought up multiple times that he should seek professional help from a therapist/doctor and go regularly. At first, he said he was, and I think he was telling the truth originally. But as time passed, I found out that he had lied to me, thinking that if he didn’t, he would lose me as a friend. If I’m honest with myself, he was right, and I know in that way it might've sounded like I was being abusive to him trying to leverage our friendship to get him to go see a mental health professional. At the time I thought it was the only way I could convince him to actively seek help for himself to begin the healing process. This was my naivety showing that no one can do that for someone else. The person must decide for themselves whether they want to get themselves the help they desperately desire and put in bitter work to start the healing process.
Now I’m not sharing this information to bash on the person that I’ve had these experiences with. I want to share my experience with this situation and how I ended up handling it and what mistakes and what lessons I learned from this entire ordeal.
One major lesson I truly learned was the difference between what it means to help someone grow versus the help that may feel good, but which allows the other person to avoid the hard work of their own growth and remain stagnated. The act of compassion and helping another isn't a bad thing; it's quite a good thing. But if left unchecked and measured in large doses, it can act as poison to both you and the person you are trying to help. I’ve come to understand that helping someone only works if the person you're trying to help is actively seeking help for themselves FIRST. Otherwise, no one in the entire world will be able to help the person if they don't want to be helped.

I don't say these things about previous people who have abused me in the past or that they are just toxic to say how badly these people have hurt me. Instead, it has been important for my own growth to use my experiences with them to learn valuable life lessons—lessons that were bitter work to learn. I just wish that these people and those that they have affected choose the path to healing instead of hurting others.
At the end of the day, I am very thankful for my experiences with those who have traumatized me, abused me, and used me to no end. I know this may sound strange, but in all reality without these experiences I wouldn't be where I am today. I've healed a lot and grown a lot from both these lessons and the bitter work I've done with myself over almost a decade (9 years as of writing this).

There are two main points that I’m wanting to make sure I clearly emphasize here. First, I am writing this as a means to not only forgive those who have abused me in the past, but to also accept the bad parts of my life that I’ve had to experience and truly be thankful for them. Since without the bad experiences, I wouldn’t be where I am today. The second and pretty big reason why I’m writing this, is knowing that my experiences aren’t unique and there may be others that are going through something like this or perhaps even identical to some of my experiences. This is me wanting to help you in some capacity with showing you some of the lessons I’ve learned, some of the advice I’ve been given, and the situations that at the time I thought to be normal, when in reality they weren’t, but were quite toxic and abusive. But it’s not easy to see these things when you’re in the thick of it.

I’m hoping that these hurt people finally stop hurting others and start their own bitter work in the process to heal their own wounds and mental health. Hurt people hurt people, healed people heal people.