So, I'm leaving for college soon. I'm both really happy and a bit scared. I think I need to say something.
Like, I'm leaving home. I'm entering a new chapter in life, one where I'll be more free than I've ever been. I love my parents, but I know that they, by nature of being parents, have restricted me from truly expressing myself. I'll still be somewhat restricted, but at least there are fewer restrictions placed on me. I know lots of people find themselves during college, so I'm hoping that I find myself around the same time.
If you told me, start of last year, that I would make it this far, I don't think I would've believed you. I was a paranoid, stressed-out teen, and I was teetering on the edge of a mental breakdown. Not to say that I'm still not paranoid, but I like to think that I've improved in this regard. Going further back, I was a dumb kid. I was bullied for being socially-inept. While they contributed massively to my future struggles with mental illness, I learned from that. I became better at talking to people, and I made friends. Actual friends, that I trust to some extent, which is a high honor, considering the constant ghost of bullies past that looms over me. I won't mention names, but there was that girl in cram school, the group of friends in high school, and... Bay12.
Honestly, Bay12 has been a huge influence on me. I've only been here for a year and 8 months, but it's undeniable how much y'all have changed me for the better. You've all been amazing, you've all been supportive, you've all been... there for me. I was not in the best place back then, and I'm sure I would've been in a far worse place now had I not decided, seemingly at random, to register an account on here. I started with some kind of succession fort, and I eventually barged in here, the Bay12 General Discussion (and associated boards/threads) group. Y'all accepted me, the weird, 'perpetually lost' (to borrow my sigtext), kid. What did you see in me that I couldn't see in myself?
And on the other hand, while y'all are very much positive, y'all are realistic, genuine. I don't feel a need to censor my emotions here, except when it would also endanger me. Y'all are supportive, yes, but there are times where some of you go "please don't, for the love that all that is good in this world, don't" to some of my dumb ideas. There's a sense of realness that I think tends to be lost in larger communities. There's no forced positivity going on here; we're (wow, look at me, thinking I'm representing Bay12) allowed to feel whatever emotion we want here, and we just let it happen. Maybe that's down to the average age of current Bay12 General Discussion users; pulling a number out of nowhere, I'd say ~30 years old. I'm not about to look through people's profiles and posts to find that out; too creepy, I feel. I like a large dataset to play with, but that's going too far.
Sorry, this got off track real fast. Probably says something about me when talking about Bay12 takes up more than half the post. Maybe I learned that skill of topic-drifting from here, heh. I'll just say this: when Toady dies and we all go our separate ways, I'll remember y'all fondly.
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Topic: [MILK] There were 12 eggs here what did you do with them? (Happy thread?!) (Read 14538023 times)