I feel like I need to write this just so I know it's out there. I'm...really not okay at the moment. I've spent the last week with this awful feeling, and I'm not entirely sure what it is? Longing? I've got this horrible pain in my chest and I'm struggling to keep it at bay. I've been struggling to eat or sleep or even focus on anything. At any chance I get I just want to hide in my room and whine quietly.

So about a week ago I lost control on trying to supress my "little feelings", I guess? I had for some time been occasionally checking here and Inkbunny for babyfur art and such, but the other day (Last Friday, maybe?) I read a really good webcomic (Shine, by BabyStar in case you were wondering, although I'm sure literally everyone has read it) and...maybe it was too good? It made me feel things I'd been spending years trying to hide, and I couldn't stop reading. Now I'm stuck with this horrible longing and it really hurts.

I've spent almost half my life deeply, truly, bitterly hating myself for being a babyfur. It's effectively shaped my whole personality and it makes me feel so sad now that I realise that. Almost all the problems I've had have been due to how much I hate myself. I don't want that any more. I seem to always try to make others laugh by being the one who's deliberately stupid because I really value myself that little that I'm willing to degrade myself for the abusement of others. I don't ever tell people how I feel or how my day was because I don't feel like anybody really cares. Besides, if they knew how I felt and what I was really, they wouldn't be my friend. I've never really felt proud of anything I've ever done in my life, because a part of me has always thought "Yeah, but that doesn't change the fact that you're a freak, does it?". I've never been really close to anybody and I've never been in a relationship with a single person. I've never kissed anybody like that and I don't think I've ever held anyone's hand because I never let myself get close to them. They'd find out and tell everybody how much of a freak I am. Besides, I couldn't push something so awful and weird onto somebody else, it isn't right. Being a babyfur made me spend almost every day over a period of years wishing I was dead.

After a period of looking at this side of myself many years ago and a particularly bad relationship with someone in the community (my fault for letting myself get completely stepped on because of my low self-esteem) I packed it all in and pushed it inside of myself for about four years, and managed to convince myself I could be normal-ish. I made some really cool friends and really matured while at university. Now I'm back where I was in multiple senses.

Back when I realised what I was I has this unbelievable crushing feeling inside because I felt so conflicted. I desperately wanted to be normal and yet I knew inside I wasn't and could never be. I was so depressed I spent days staring into space, rocking back and forth like I was some sort of addict. I was "emo" in the sense of feeling really melodramatic and hating myself, feeling like there was no point, that I was a monstr with no redeemable qualities that people would chase with torches and pitchforks if they knew the truth. And now I feel a bit like that again half a decade or so later. Maybe it's because I hid from it instead of learning to accept it that meant I just put it on hold. I guess that's one problem I had. Lots of people here seemed to be in the "Well I was always bullied at school so I learnt to not care what others think and just accepted myself" while I wasn't. I was just above the threshold enough at school to get away with not being seriously bullied, and I had a pretty good group of friends. Not necessarily close friends that I could talk to about things, but they were friends. I was able to be normal enough that I didn't want to be weird.

Another way I'm back where I was is that I moved back to where I was before I went to uni, where I know I've gotten away with doing things before in secret. Knowing I've gotten away with it here makes it harder to push the feelings away. Finally, I'm back here in the sense that I'm a part of this community again. Hopefully I'll do a better job this time and manage to make good friends.

(sorry this probably reads really weirdly, I keep going off track and writing pages of stuff and then cutting it out again, so it probably flows all wrong)

I guess in short I want to talk to some people here who are like me, who can help me understand and solve some of these feelings and work towards slowly accepting myself and finally being happy. After all, if this is who and what I am and I can't change that, I guess I should try to enjoy it instead of letting it hurt me so much. I just want a hug and to know it's okay.