Post by Forestbreak on Mar 15, 2018 18:59:43 GMT -6
hey everyone! been a long time. if any of you remember me, you'll remember me as bird or birdy. i was most active on here from about 2011-2014, but i've been on this site since 2009, almost ten years ago now. i came back here tonight because my roommate's friend and i found out that we'd both been into warrior cats when we were younger, and i mentioned the warriors roleplay site i used to be totally obsessed with. i intended on coming on here to just head back to my forestbreak profile to grab some of my old cat art to show my roommate's friend, but i ended up feeling a lot of feelings instead.
this website meant a lot to me. when i was most active on it, i was really, really not well mentally. i didn't recognize it then because i was in the thick of it, but i can recognize it now. i had zero friends in real life. i was miserable and isolated and i felt like i was living in a stranger's body. this website gave me a chance to escape. the degrees of separation required to roleplay as a talking cat was actually a huge plus, because i wanted to be as far away from reality as possible. and while it wasn't necessarily healthy, it was what i needed at that point in my life.
when i was ten, i made an account here, and a character, rainkit, who i quickly advanced up to being rainpaw (read: by spamming), before losing interest in the site for a couple years. when i was twelve, almost thirteen, i came back for reasons i don't remember and made a new character, birdkit. despite "being a girl" at the time, i felt naturally compelled to make a male character, and my interest in the website stuck that time. and after a couple months, i decided to join the elusive xat chat, despite being a little intimidated because i'd heard it was only really populated by the bigwigs of the site. i got along with the people there, though, and actually started to become friends with some of them! it was great.
time passed and i made some really close friends on xat (shoutouts to leo, zach, flurr, ro, dan, moo, oh god i don't even remember everyone). my xat friends were my best friends, period. after school every day i ran straight upstairs to my terrible, barely-functional desktop mac to talk to them and to post as birdshadow, who i felt more connected to than my own actual self by that point, or my staff character forestbreak. i will freely admit that i wasn't a good person. i lied a lot, compulsively, because i wanted to be anything other than the person i was in real life. one lie in particular i still consider the worst thing i have ever done in my life (if you were there you definitely know what i'm talking about). i was also suffering from frequent psychotic episodes at the time, and the lies sometimes bled into my delusions, or vice versa.
in 2014 things hit a boiling point and i attempted suicide. i detached from this website a lot after that. but after i got out of the hospital, things started to get better slowly but surely. i got on some medications that worked. i cut my hair. i started dressing in men's clothes. i started making some friends, and trying new hobbies. in 2015 i came out in a staggered fashion as transgender. it was really tough for a while, and i didn't have many people on my side. but eventually, my parents came around, and my high school became less resistant, and i graduated that high school last year. almost exactly eleven months ago, i started testosterone, which was the best decision of my life, and came out as gay (to most people. parents still don't know, lol). i started college, moved out of my parents' house, got a job.
i feel like a person now. not only that, i'm a generally happy person. i'm a strong and functional and optimistic adult. i still have my issues, but they're very manageable. in a nutshell, i'm okay. and i owe a lot to this website, because while it was definitely a coping mechanism, it also gave me a lot of tools i ended up needing to get better. it taught me that lgbt people existed, when i'd grown up in a very insular environment and knew nothing about anything in that arena. it gave me my passion for art-- i'm now a studio arts major, and i actually make money selling my art to people, and i found out i loved art by drawing cats on the internet! it reinstated my love of writing. it taught me how to communicate with friends, even if that communication was in an early-2000s-era chatroom over state and country lines.
you guys, and this website as a whole, still hold treasured places in my heart. i don't really know why i felt compelled to write all this, i just sorta did. if we used to talk back in the day, definitely shoot me a message somewhere!!! my tumblr is nest, and my twitter is nesterists. i'm active on both. i'd love to reconnect with you guys. i promise i'm a lot cooler now.
<3,
eli
this website meant a lot to me. when i was most active on it, i was really, really not well mentally. i didn't recognize it then because i was in the thick of it, but i can recognize it now. i had zero friends in real life. i was miserable and isolated and i felt like i was living in a stranger's body. this website gave me a chance to escape. the degrees of separation required to roleplay as a talking cat was actually a huge plus, because i wanted to be as far away from reality as possible. and while it wasn't necessarily healthy, it was what i needed at that point in my life.
when i was ten, i made an account here, and a character, rainkit, who i quickly advanced up to being rainpaw (read: by spamming), before losing interest in the site for a couple years. when i was twelve, almost thirteen, i came back for reasons i don't remember and made a new character, birdkit. despite "being a girl" at the time, i felt naturally compelled to make a male character, and my interest in the website stuck that time. and after a couple months, i decided to join the elusive xat chat, despite being a little intimidated because i'd heard it was only really populated by the bigwigs of the site. i got along with the people there, though, and actually started to become friends with some of them! it was great.
time passed and i made some really close friends on xat (shoutouts to leo, zach, flurr, ro, dan, moo, oh god i don't even remember everyone). my xat friends were my best friends, period. after school every day i ran straight upstairs to my terrible, barely-functional desktop mac to talk to them and to post as birdshadow, who i felt more connected to than my own actual self by that point, or my staff character forestbreak. i will freely admit that i wasn't a good person. i lied a lot, compulsively, because i wanted to be anything other than the person i was in real life. one lie in particular i still consider the worst thing i have ever done in my life (if you were there you definitely know what i'm talking about). i was also suffering from frequent psychotic episodes at the time, and the lies sometimes bled into my delusions, or vice versa.
in 2014 things hit a boiling point and i attempted suicide. i detached from this website a lot after that. but after i got out of the hospital, things started to get better slowly but surely. i got on some medications that worked. i cut my hair. i started dressing in men's clothes. i started making some friends, and trying new hobbies. in 2015 i came out in a staggered fashion as transgender. it was really tough for a while, and i didn't have many people on my side. but eventually, my parents came around, and my high school became less resistant, and i graduated that high school last year. almost exactly eleven months ago, i started testosterone, which was the best decision of my life, and came out as gay (to most people. parents still don't know, lol). i started college, moved out of my parents' house, got a job.
i feel like a person now. not only that, i'm a generally happy person. i'm a strong and functional and optimistic adult. i still have my issues, but they're very manageable. in a nutshell, i'm okay. and i owe a lot to this website, because while it was definitely a coping mechanism, it also gave me a lot of tools i ended up needing to get better. it taught me that lgbt people existed, when i'd grown up in a very insular environment and knew nothing about anything in that arena. it gave me my passion for art-- i'm now a studio arts major, and i actually make money selling my art to people, and i found out i loved art by drawing cats on the internet! it reinstated my love of writing. it taught me how to communicate with friends, even if that communication was in an early-2000s-era chatroom over state and country lines.
you guys, and this website as a whole, still hold treasured places in my heart. i don't really know why i felt compelled to write all this, i just sorta did. if we used to talk back in the day, definitely shoot me a message somewhere!!! my tumblr is nest, and my twitter is nesterists. i'm active on both. i'd love to reconnect with you guys. i promise i'm a lot cooler now.
<3,
eli
