Sorry, this is just me venting and it's a really, stupidly long post. It may as well be my life story. You could skip it if you want since it's so long. It may involve very personal stuff to me and a minor mention of depression and suicidal thoughts (not mine)
So, I've decided to vent some (a lot) of stuff here because I feel that, maybe someone will listen here and it's better than keeping all of the stuff I'm thinking about in my head. And, if you can read the big title, it's really complicated. So, I thought to divide up the stuff I'm talking about in to 3 main sections and a smaller bit because I don't want to ramble about multiple things.
My lack of trust for others and friend struggles (Suicide mention)
I don't think I've always lacked trust for people in real life but it maybe started when I began secondary school, when I was around 11 years old. I've offhandedly mentioned once in the comments of this post that I'm actually Chinese but born in England. Well, when I was still younger, that didn't trouble me. I didn't care that I may have been...different from everyone else. And then, when I moved into secondary school, it wasn't that much different at first. Some people would ask me where I'm from but, y'know. That's fine. It was fine until something happened once when I was walking from school down to where my little sister's school was with my other sister. We were walking, normally. And then some people, same year group as me, started saying stuff to us. Calling us things like "Chinese bastards" and throwing paper at us. I started crying as soon as we reached my mom's car and she had to talk to my school about it. That did nothing though as people still called me things like a dogeater and stuff. Because of that incident that happened when I was walking away from school, I didn't want to walk after school anymore. I had this completely irrational idea that I could be walking and someone could say stuff again or push me into the road. Instead, I decided to always stay after school in the school's library and get picked up by my mom. When I got into year 11 and I was 15 years old, I started walking more and felt more comfortable but that never stopped me from thinking, "oh, someone could easily push you into the road." So I always stayed as far as I could from the road. Even now, I'm scared of people saying stuff about me. Sometimes, I can hear someone make a small mention of anything relating to Asia, or China or me and I would try to listen to what they were saying. I had thoughts of, "Are they talking about me? Are they saying stuff about me?" Because I was so paranoid of being judged. Even when I moved up in years, I still got stuff about me being Chinese. Year 9, some kids said, "Give me your money you Chinese bitch," not that I had any money. Year 11, before school ended because of the covid-19 pandemic, I was walking up school stairs and there was a group of younger girls on the stairs, even when they shouldn't have been standing around there. I walked past them and they said stuff like, "Oh look, I've got the coronavirus," and start coughing. I literally started worrying for no reason, "Oh, what if you do have it? What if you should still be at home?" It's some of the worst stuff, I've had to go through in the last 5 or 6 years.
Still concerning my lack of trust, I genuinely believed that some of the friends I had hated me. In secondary school, I had one really good friend who I knew was really my friend. But, when it came to others, I didn't know whether they were being honestly my friend or just pitying me. In year 8, I would sit with a group of girls for lunch. Yeah, I'd consider them my friends but sometimes, I felt they were only being nice to me out of necessity. They wouldn't really talk to me but, they were still good friends and generally nice. But, their group of friends was...big. they all wanted to sit near each other, on the same table because each long table had 12 seats. I knew I wasn't their top, most important friend so I just, let them have someone else sit there. But, I couldn't sit with anyone else on a different table as I was too nervous and thought, "Maybe they're waiting for their friends as well." In the end, I stopped going downstairs to eat, thinking that they weren't really needing me down there anyway. This wasn't helped by the fact that everyone would always ask me for answers. So I ended up thinking, "They only like me because I can give them answers."
Last bit of this section. From year 9 to year 11, I had another..."friend." She also wasn't natively English so people didn't talk to her. My friend I was talking about earlier who I was close to, I'll call her G. And the..."friend" I mentioned just now, I'll call her R. R started hanging around G after being paired with her in a lesson for work. So, that obviously meant that at some point, R would hang around me as well since me and G were good friends. We gave R SO MANY chances, even though she was generally shitty. Once she started having a rant saying "G hates me becausr she's avoiding me." At that point, someone from my school hung herself., someone G was close to. I decided to lash out at R for being ignorant and, I knew I shouldn'y hang around her. But, she kept on coming back. She had no other friends, so she always hung out with us, brushing off anything we tell her about or anything I told her about being ignorant. Again, both me and G felt we were being used by her. R eventually left to go back to her old country. I should have been happy but I felt a bit...indifferent. Things were different after she left. I don't know how to describe it, they just were.
How I feel I have to act around others
Even before I entered secondary school, my class in year 6 primary knew I was the smart kid. I did well on tests, I was the only one in my class put on harder maths work. Once I got into secondary school, basically the whole year group of approx. 300 students knew I was one of the smart students. So, some would obviously ask for my answers. It got so annoying that by the point of year 9, I said to the people on my table, "Why are you always asking me? You could come up with some of the answers." They didn't listen, they wanted my answers. One of them called me selfish for not sharing my answers. Even if I said, "maybe they're not right." They didn't care. Being called selfish just for that made me think a lot. In the end, I just gave people my answers if they asked for them. If what I was doing was selfish, then wasn't being so very selfless and helpful if I gave them everything?
I also have this idea that my classmates saw me as more rich or sophisticated, I'm not. Some of them were more richer than me. I'd always present myself as being mature or proper about things. I made myself seem quiet and studious. I had to act as the smart kid. If I said anything or did anything that wasn't generally seen as typical behaviour from me, everyone would freak out. "Oh, Jay got told off?" everyone would freak out about it. "Jay got an answer wrong?" everyone would start going crazy. I couldn't just be myself. At home, I'm not studious. I have no filter, I swear, I act deliberately stupid and I'm blunt about things. I can't act like that outside of the house because it wouldn't be normal. I had expectations and had to be approved by them.
I can't have any interests without being judged. Year 9, I had media class and our teacher let us use the headphones to listen to music. I would listen to stuff like dubstep or glitchhop but the others didn't. Some would ask me, "Oh what are you listening to?" and I could tell that they were being judgemental about what I listened to. For two years of media lessons, I didn't use the headphones to listen to music while working after that. It's literally only now that I've started indulging in listening to dubstep again because I put it down for so long. I obviously can't share how much I play video games, both mobile or console. It would seem irregular for me, irresponsible. Hell, if they knew I played anything like BanG Dream, they'd call me a weirdo.
Things I think about myself (suicide mention and depression mention, not my thoughts of them)
In year 7, I didn't smile a lot. I can't smile if someone asked me to, only if there's something genuinely funny or makes me smile. I didn't know how to say that to anyone if they asked me, "Why don't you smile?" This is probably one of the worst ways I could have approached it, but I just told them, "I don't smile." I felt that, because of all of the stuff that happened to me, the racism, I couldn't just find a reason to smile for no reason. I purposefully distanced myslef from others and in the end, thar's the thing that stabbed me in the back. I realised, "Wait, I don't want to be lonely," but wasn't it a bit too late once you see that everyone has their friend groups? They wouldn't need me if they had better friends.
One of the other worst moments in my last 5 or 6 years was when I was in I think year 9. I remember, waiting in the car for my mom to pick up my little sister from school. It took...way too long than usual. They soon came back into the car, acting all fine. Once we got home, I was told why it took so long. My mom was told by the teacher that my sister had wrote...questionable things. Saying that she was useless, shy, quiet, depressed. I...never thought I would have to associate words like "depressed" to ny younger sister. My sister who seems happier than I ever did, actually has friends she can talk to both online and offline. Depressed? Potential thoughts of suicide? I thought about how I treat her. I tease her because I think that's normal sibling behaviour. I tease both her and my older sister. That then became me thinking, "It's my fault she said that and is feeling this way. You treat her like absolute...shit." I told my mom, I was crying, "It's my fault. I treat her badly, I'm the cause of it." But my mom said it wasn't me. My mom had depression once because of medication she was taking but it subsided. She said it may have been because of her. I couldn't get it out of my head that I was the terrible person that made her say such a thing in school. Because of that, my sister had to go to group sessions and, to be honest, she's better now and they think it's something else and not depression. But, I just remember the next day of school crying my eyes out to G and thinking of how absolutely horrible I am, saying it's my fault.
Because of that, I really didn't want anyone to call me "perfect" because I obviously wasn't. A perfect person wouldn't potentially drive their sister to saying they were...depressed and useless. They would be way too kind, nice, honest. Everything I wasn't. I'll never really forget when I was called "perfect" by my "friend" R. She saw me as...smart and kind and honest. She basically saw me as some deity. I didn't know how to respond other than blankly look at her and say "I'm not perfect. If you knew what I've done, you wouldn't say that." Perfect's just become some kind of thing I don't want to be associated with. I'm not perfect, I am capable of being a terrible person.
Me on Banpa and Twitter
I didn't expect to interact with the community when I started Banpa. I intended for it to be how I tracked things. My first post I distinctly remember was when my phone broke. Afterwards, I made more posts, memes, my accomplishments or screeching about Kaoru or any of the other characters I liked. This became my space where I didn't have to think of myself as a terrible person. I could just be... JaY, your local Kaoru fan. Two years. It's been two years. I decided to expand myself onto Twitter this year and it's fairly enjoyable. Yeah, I have very few followers but it's another fairly safe space for me to ramble about anything I want. Sometimes it's about mobage. Sometimes I jokingly amble about how I keep struggling. I don't need to show myself at my worst and can instead act fairly funny. Something I'm incapable of acting like in reality. I can hide behind my screen and my 10+ different profile icons I change on a regular basis. It frustrates me how I can act like this online but when I'm not, I suppress myself and my own interests.
Even when I went to sleep last night, I had a dream. It was my previous post and there were comments from people on Banpa being supportive. But there was a comment saying that this is all fake garble and that people shouldn't be pitying me. The commenter was...me...? It wasn't using my current user name, Momoyukiis. It was me, using Cookie-Mist with an icon I used on Twitter a few weeks ago. I remember that in my dream, I was terrfied and just blocked the comment out. Even in my sleep, I'm telling myself that I shouldn't be posting this but I want to. I've had these thoughts in my head for so long, I needed someone else to let them out to that wasn't my family or my friend G.
Closing
So, that's about it. A literal, life story of my last 5 or 6 years. What I've gone through and kept in my head for so long. I want to forget it sometimes and I can online but. I can't change myself in reality. I want to be more outspoken with myself and my interests but the judgement I'm feeling is full of pressure. I'm really very quiet, not talkative and way too blunt and sarcastic for my own good. But, I just want others, even if it's only online, to see me as something else. I don't know what else to say other than, if you read all of this. This long, unnecessary garble. Thank you for reading, or listening or whatever. I needed to get this out of my head.
