Just fuck my shit up fam

Please stop
I really didn't want to be reduced to this. I've grown up being thrown back and forth between excessively lonely and excessively bullied long enough to know that the worst thing to do is to admit that you're being hurt; to give someone who has it out for you the satisfaction of knowing they're succeeding. I know that in writing this, stricken with insomnia early in the morning, fueled by depression and desperation, that I'm probably only going to make things worse for myself. I'm going to fuck up and throw myself inadvertently into more chronic suffering.

I didn't write the post I did last year, coming out about myself and my personal life, because I was comfortable with doing it right then. I had been terrified of what people would think of me, and every day way filled with paranoid thoughts, but I knew I was getting closer to a place where I could be comfortable talking about it. Well, I didn't get that chance, because I was inadvertently informed that someone had vandalized a page involving my name on TV Tropes, basically calling me out on the fact that I used a voice changer at the time out of fear and basically calling me a liar and manipulator. I was horrified anyone would say such things, and I didn't think they were true, but I couldn't prove otherwise unless I basically put my whole personal life on the table... and that's what I did.

That was far from the first time I discovered something like that, and far from the last, but I'll get back to the latter. Ever since I started to figure myself out, maybe around four years ago now, there were malicious people trying to make me feel bad about myself for those feelings. Eventually I left the community they were involved in, but for whatever reason, they decided they weren't done. They followed me around, trying to spread nasty rumors about me as well as personal information. They found my email back then, they used it for a number of shady websites that flooded my inbox. They impersonated me on websites, if not just trying to write about what an awful person I apparently was.

I thought I was safe for a while, trying my absolute hardest to ignore them and not let it get to me. Of course, the TV Tropes vandalism proved I was wrong, and I just couldn't take it anymore. If I really was the liar they said I was, coming out about everything and seeing how people reacted would prove it once and for all. Well... apparently, people didn't think so. I was overjoyed not to have my worst fears confirmed, and really hoped that I wouldn't see any continued harassment; or at least, that it would stop affecting me.

Yeah... neither of those things have worked out. You know how some people search their username to see where they've been mentioned on various sites? Usually it's called egosurfing, and is generally a positive thing. I search my name to find if I've been impersonated somewhere, or a nasty page put up about me. I don't understand who is still doing this or why, as they've given up trying to convey some sort of "message" about me and seem to basically just want me to be uncomfortable when I inevitably discover it.

I know you're reading this. Apparently you people, whoever you are, keep up on my tweets and twitlonger posts enough to try and tear me down the moment I gain some confidence about myself. I tried to ignore it, I really did; the last thing I needed was to give whoever seemingly has nothing better to do with their life the satisfaction of knowing they're adding to my misery, but it hasn't worked. So, here it is, straight from my typing fingers: Congratulations, you get to me.

It's clear to me now that no matter what route I take there's little chance of it stopping; little chance of me just enjoying a night with the people I care about before finding out that someone wrote terrible things about me and stopping everything just to tear my hair out and wonder what I did to deserve it. All I've ever tried to do in my life is bring people joy in whatever form I can, whether artistic or just by being me. Maybe whoever this is feels like I've somehow cheated, that if I were "honest" from the start I wouldn't have gotten anywhere; and maybe you think I deserve that.

Let me put you in my shoes for a moment. You grow up with an unstable childhood, moving from house to house and changing schools constantly, hardly a moment to make new friends before having to start over. You never connect with anyone long enough to really figure out who you are, and on top of that, you develop a constantly-crippling auto-immune disease that means you have to stay home and away from social interaction even longer while your parents scramble to figure out how to heal you. Eventually you get a start with the Internet and connect with people you know you won't be forced to say goodbye to by a move. As part of finally getting to talk to people you share interests with, you figure out that something had been missing from your life up until that point; some kind of identity, something that made you unique. You start to wonder if it conflicts with the circumstances of your gender.

Well, you don't have the chance to really figure that out in a stable environment, because your friends start telling you that it seems like just a plea for attention. Between disapproval from your own friends and outright bashing from other people, you start to lose emotional stability; alienating basically everyone around you because you're horribly confused about yourself and no one seems to be okay with it. You finally get out of that place and find somewhere to start fresh, but you don't want to let go of an identity that felt like it was just starting to give your life meaning, nor do you want to risk being turned away by yet more people, so you adopt that identity while keeping the old one to yourself.

I'll spare you the extended shoe-filling session and stop there. Hopefully you understand a little better how I ended up where I am, and I'm sincerely sorry for not being upfront from the very start, but the fear and paranoia that led to the decision was inflicted on me the very moment I considered becoming the person I am today. I was told it was wrong, that it was an act for attention, that I was just "pretending."

And here I am today, dealing with what seems like the same group of people, and I don't even know what they want from me anymore. Hopefully I've said and shown enough by now to make it abundantly clear that I'm not fucking "pretending," so what do you want? What are you trying to prove? I seriously want to know, because if you're going to keep trying to make me miserable despite my best efforts to be honest and open, I'd at least appreciate knowing what I did to motivate you so strongly.

I'm not stupid, though; I know that probably won't happen. More likely than not if I finish typing this and go through with posting it, I'll have just made things worse for myself. What else can I do at this point, though? I came out about myself as thoroughly as I can, did my best to explain how I got to where I am and why I feel the way I do. I was sincere, and I really hoped to make those people understand something apparently unclear; that I wasn't an act, I wasn't pretending to be anyone, I was and still am just trying to be... myself.

Please, stop. I assure you that I'm already miserable enough without your help. I wake up every day and, whether or not I tell anyone, am constantly in paranoid doubt about the way I look, feel, and present myself. I worry about being judged, not accepted, over things and feelings out of my control. I break down crying, wondering why things had to end up the way I did. Why couldn't I have been born without this kind of stupid dysphoria? Sure, at this point I also lament about not having the "right" body, but if these feelings hadn't cropped up I would've been more or less a normal person. Would that have been for the better? Is that what you would've wanted?

I don't know at this point. By writing this I'm willingly resigning myself to a life of continued harassment for reasons I don't understand, all because I just couldn't keep in my stupid feelings anymore. I hope you're satisfied with all of this, whoever you people are, because you've succeeded in dragging me down. I pretend to be strong and confident, that these things don't get to me, but in reality I just bottle it up. This is me exploding with my feelings, and admitting openly that I feel awful.

I'm going to go lay down now, and I really hope I can get some sleep. I'm sincerely sorry for poisoning my followers' timelines with this emotional drek, but I really couldn't keep it in.

Whoever you people are, I'm sorry for what I did. Whatever it was.