As a result, through finding EM when I was around 15, I was pretty extroverted online. I like talking to people and getting their perspectives and connecting with people across the map to substitute for where I couldn't irl. I remember I used to talk to people on Skype for hours on end every day either on call or not.
Things are a bit different now, I'm sure most people can tell. I'm pretty active in the massive group chats, but I rarely have 1 on 1 conversations with people. I've put a lot of thought as to why that happens now. Why've I become so introverted, even online?
I think some of it is because I have a pretty good circle of irl friends that keep me busy pretty frequently. I'm not in as much need of actively making new friends as I used to be. Some of it is also just how my personality has developed. I've gotten to where I'm comfortable for being alone for a long period of time and easily entertained. My hometown was pretty boring in general, so talking to people from EM served as a pastime sometimes. Most of all though, where I was mostly meeting people when I was in high school, I have a select few tight friends on EM that I've had for years. I'm really happy with some of the relationships I've made, and while I'm definitely not against making new friendships as they come, I'm not as inclined to look for new faces when I'm bored.
I still don't know how to wrap these share sessions up, but I am definitely not opposed to getting to know new people! If you want to know more 1 on 1 do not be afraid to message me. I will respond unlike somebody (^:
So back to how the Christian school environment wasn't the best: if you were found out to be gay, you were pretty much exiled from most of your grade, especially if it was something that wasn't expected. If you were fruity you got a bit of a pass, not a big one though. Some of y'all've heard me before; I can pass as straight if I want to, but with that ability came a lot of stress and paranoia. It also wasn't uncommon around where I was from for parents to kick their kids out of their living space if they were found to be gay. While I'd love to say that wasn't the case with my family, I'm pretty sure if I came out to them around high school age, you could catch me dabbing on the streets.
So with this in mind, I kept myself pretty estranged from everyone. I would have acquaintances and close friends, but I kept a lot of secrets about myself so that no one would get close to me and have any shred of speculation that I was, in fact, gay.
I should also note that my graduating class was around 80 people, so if even one person found out, the chances of the whole school finding out, and by proxy, my parents, was very high.
So in a lot of ways, people didn't really frick with me. I don't think people thought I was shady or anything but I'm sure I came off as really uninteresting or 1-dimensional. A lot of my close friendships around that age actually came from EM. I'm sure I'd be a lot less funny and type a lot slower if I didn't have like-minded people to bounce ideas off of. I definitely didn't have that at school. I was really different in the ways that I thought, and I was just going through the motions with everything religiously so that nobody suspected me either. I hid a lot of my passions for music and survivor from people, diminishing any connection or embarrassment from people as well.
oh hey i relate to almost all of this and can definitely confirm that at a Christian school it's not an option, you either believe in it or fake it til you make it
it definitely screwed with my head just with how much stuff i was told was true and idk how much of it really WAS and im still trying to figure that out idk if you're feeling the same
I don't know if I was ever really a Christian. I knew that I was gay from a really young age (like 4) so I was taught growing up that being gay was wrong and as a result suppressed it. I couldn't reason as to why it was wrong though, it's not like I didn't do everything Christian could do, and I knew the logic and moral conflicts that were associated with other sins. Why would the one "sin" I'm consistently be guilty of be the one that cannot be changed no matter how much I pray? I figured most people if I were to ask would say "you're not waiting long enough", but I decided after a while of torturing myself over it, I gave up trying to believe something I knew was wrong.
While I think the Christian education was really great in instilling important moral values and perspectives that I don't think I would have developed without it, and it also gave me a deeper outlook into Christianity works from a detailed point of view, the pressure to be sinless in a realm where it was physically impossible due to my sexuality really put my development a few stages back as I struggled to both keep it a secret/manage the paranoia associated with what happened if someone found out and also be unsure of how to handle my sexuality/religion for the longest time.
So some stuff the general public may or may not know about me:
I went to a Christian school from kindergarten-12th grade, and this was both a good and bad thing, I guess as most school experiences are. In my hometown, it's a lot harder to get an adequate education if you go to a public school, so my parents put me in private Christian school in order to guarantee a good education, expose me greatly to Christianity, and that's how my dad was educated, so it has to be correct, right? I do think that there were a lot of opportunities that were handed to me that I don't think I would have been able to get at a public school though (AP classes, certain clubs, etc).
I guess the bad part of the Christian schooling wasn't anyone's fault directly; it may just be how these things work. Firstly, at least the one I went to, Christianity isn't really an option -- it's something that's forced on you in conjunction with the education. So you kinda get brainwashed from a very young age that Christianity is 100% correct and instead of taking education from a secular view everything you learn is ingrained in Biblical themes. Since Christianity becomes the core of what you believe, it also affects how you view other people and how other people are viewed as well. Anyone that isn't a Christian is viewed as a bad person on sight, because if you're not a Christian after being exposed to it again and again, you have to be immoral, and you're only supposed to be making close relationships with people that follow the faith.
If that's all it was though, then you could hardly call that a bad experience. As you grow up and move out of the place where you grow up, your thoughts and beliefs get challenged anyway, so you can easily break away from this if you wanted to, but what about the people that didn't really believe it in the first place?
I'm gonna start using this as a confessional..? I'm not sure what to call it exactly, but I've been told that I'm intimidating and that a lot of people don't want to make the first move to get to know me and I never really do that either. As a result I'm just gonna post some stuff about me and my life as it comes and see what happens.
So, I'm really not one to complain or talk about stuff that happens in my life in general. If something gets hard in my life I think about what the best solution is, consult it with really close friends, or if I can't come up with a solution after taking a few different perspectives, I discard it and stop worrying about it until it comes up in my life again.
If something good happens, I also don't feel the need to share it, because I've grown up noticing that people don't really care. Like, people may feel happy for you that you did good in something, or even feel that you're bragging or ego stroking, but nobody's going to understand how your own intrinsic success feels good because they're not you. It's enough for me to know that I've accomplished my goals I guess.
I don't think it's necessarily bad or anything that people share that kinda stuff on their threads, but it doesn't really do anything for me personally. I'd only do it if someone asked, and so far no one has!
I don't really know how to end this so I'll cut it at here for today
