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 Posted: Thu Oct 07, 2010 7:36 pm
About Me Not that I really need another journal, but here goes... My name is Tae, and you may have encountered some of my posts elsewhere in the guild. I am 23 years old, and a Canadian. When I first joined the guild (according to my intro post, which I dug up here) I was 19 and just starting my second semester of university. After I finished high school, I chose to do university-level French immersion rather than a degree programme. I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to do with my life, but I knew that a second language would be an asset, regardless of what I chose to do later. Total immersion is probably the best way of learning a language, so that was what I did. Now, I work in French in a call centre, and I do presales, licensing, and technical routing for a large software company. The story of how I ended up living in this particular apartment with these particular people is long, complicated, and probably boring, so I'll spare you the details and try to be brief. I live with Steve and Josh. Steve is 28, and Josh is 16. Josh's sister (and her girlfriend) used to be my roommates, along with Steve, but they moved out back in June after living with us for a year and a half. Josh moved in with us almost a year ago, after his parents essentially kicked him out for being gay. I have more or less been responsible for him ever since, and he's like a younger brother to me now. Before I wrap up this rambling post, I sort of feel like addressing a couple of things: Ugh. I tried to write this ten different ways, and it all ends up being too wordy. ******** it: I'm not the OMG YAY GAY RAINBOWS AND HUGS LOL type. Blunt, sarcastic, cynical, flippant...check, check, check, and check. I may even come off as being mean, although I can assure you I would never actually personally attack a user in this guild. (If you post nonsense or bullshit, though, I might attack your post, though.) That being said: If you need assistance with anything, have questions, guild-related or not, I am here to help, so feel free to ask. I don't like random friend requests or PMs just saying "hi", but anything else is fair game. I think that sums it up for the moment.
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Posted: Thu Oct 21, 2010 6:43 pm
So we've started this whole Rainbow Party event thing, which is pretty cool. It's to promote more activity within the guild, which is great, and I'm excited about it, and I've decided it's a good note on which to leave.
Yeah. I've been here for a few years, most of it as a crew-member, and I really do love the guild. I wish it well.
I just don't fit in here, and that's fine. A few posts in particular, recently, helped me make the decision. I don't regret my responses to them, but I do find it regrettable that this guild has so often been an outlet for people to rag on straights, bisexuals/bicurious people, and those who are religious (to name just a few of the popular whipping boys).
In light of the recent "It Gets Better" stuff....
Well, I agree. It does. The people who say your teen years are the best years of your life? They're either delusional or full of s**t. :/ Being a teenager and being in high school sucked, sooo much.
Don't get me wrong, there are always going to be idiots out there, but it's so much easier to avoid them once you're a bit older. In my experience, the people who were cruel to me in high school were miserable, unhappy people to begin with. They may have hid it behind a guise of arrogance or popularity, but they had serious issues. Happy people don't go out of their way to make other people miserable.
And I highly doubt they're any happier now. Oh well. Maybe some of them have grown up and are embarrassed about the way they acted; I hope so.
I usually prefer to keep my personal life private, but let me just say this: to all the know-nothing, uncompassionate, ignorant jackasses who feel that they have the right to try and belittle and shame those who've considered, attempted, or committed suicide....
Go to hell.
Seriously. Don't rant to me about selfishness or cowardice. Until you've lived with a debilitating mental illness, take your worthless opinion and shove it.
Is suicide a good option? Of course it isn't. No one is saying it is. There are always other options, and if you get help and hang in there, it will get better.
So, tell me: Do you think that it's something a person does because they are capable of thinking rationally? It's an act of desperation.
When you are beaten down emotionally, by depression or your peers, or your circumstances, your brain may not be able to imagine a solution to your problems. They seem insurmountable. You are haunted by feelings of worthlessness; it's hard, if not nearly impossible, to imagine that anyone will truly care if you are gone, when you feel that worthless. You become convinced that, in fact, your loved ones would be better off without you, or that (if they did love you), they'd understand how much pain you were in.
You can't tell a cancer patient to just "cheer up, don't let your out-of-control cell reproduction get to you" and expect them to be cured. Likewise, you can't tell someone who is in the middle of a severe depressive episode to just suck it up. They are ILL. Their thought-process is not working properly. They need MEDICAL HELP, not your condemnation.
I have bipolar disorder. My symptoms started appearing in my early teens, and have been exacerbated by other circumstances. As recently as this summer, I was in the hospital for several months.
Aside from my very close friends, I haven't been able to tell anyone, including my coworkers, why I was away for so long. Do you have any idea what kind of stigma there is against people who are mentally ill? Even moreso if you admit to having been suicidal... Most people don't treat you the same. Some people are afraid of you, and some people think you're making it up. Others dismiss you as being defective or pitiful.
If I had tuberculosis and needed to get medical help in order to recover, no one would begrudge me that. "You're ill, take the time you need to get better."
But how do you suppose people would react if I told them I had to get help because I had been stuck in a particularly bad, particularly long depressive episode and was suicidal?
I've heard over and over and over again that people who consider or attempt suicide are weak, cowardly, pathetic, selfish, stupid, desperate for attention, and despicable.
It's hard enough to ask for help as it is; thinking that everyone believes you're a weak, pathetic, selfish idiot doesn't make one more inclined to seek help, geniuses.
Anyway, whatever. I took responsibility for my health and am making the most I can of the cards I've been dealt. I'm not sure how long I'll leave this entry up for; I have never felt terribly comfortable talking to strangers about my problems (No ******** wonder...) and I'm sure my "legacy" is negative enough as it is.
I've just wanted to get that particular grievance off my chest for quite some time, and it feels good. Cheers, guildies.
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Posted: Tue Jun 26, 2012 8:22 pm
It's been almost 2 years since my intro post. Not that much has changed.
I still work in the same place, and Josh still lives with me. We're in a different apartment, though, and as of the end of the month, it'll just be the two of us.
We moved here in February, along with Andrew, who was my boyfriend at the time. (He and I had been together for some time, but ended up coming to the conclusion that although there was mutual love between us, it was platonic rather than romantic. We're still great friends, though, and he's moving out at the end of the month.)
All in all, things have been really stable, and as boring as that is, I'm kind of relieved. Stable is good.
To reiterate something I talked about in an earlier post, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder when I was a teenager, but (for a variety of reasons) I never received or participated in any kind of consistent treatment.
Later, in my earlier 20s, I sought help again, and after months of waiting, I was able to start seeing a doctor. He confirmed the diagnosis. I was finally receiving consistent, regular help rather than just being given pills and left to my own devices. Still, my health wasn't especially stable, and I was placed on a wait-list for an in-patient program for youth with mental illnesses. I ended up spending most of a summer in the hospital, and although I hated it at the time, in retrospect I am glad that I went.
I am still seeing the same doctor, although less frequently, and he's been a huge help during the rough patches.
On the subject on mental illness, there are two big things that bother me, and they kind of conflict with each other.
First, as I've said before, there is a lot of stigma towards those with mental health issues. No one wants to be thought of as "crazy", or worse...dangerous.
My second peeve? People who self-diagnose themselves as having a mental illness (or just plain lie about it), and then use it as an excuse for bad behaviour.
You see, I have a coworker who has been going on at length about how she's bipolar. She says she's happy one moment and then angry the next, back and forth all day, and uses this as an excuse for being rude to customers. She says she can't work more than 8 hours, because otherwise she starts hearing voices and will "go crazy".
I have no idea if she really has bipolar disorder; I'm not her doctor. But it kills me that she spouts all this nonsense and basically makes "the rest of us" look bad. Selfish, I know...
Like, yes, dealing with the disorder can be challenging. Sometimes, despite my best efforts, it affects my work. I had to take a couple of days off during a really bad episode, not too long ago. But I do not use it as an excuse for being a jackass, and I don't broadcast my illness to everyone who will listen. (But of course, why should someone have to keep their mental illness a secret? That's what I meant about the conflict.)
In any case, that's enough ranting for now.
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Posted: Tue Jun 26, 2012 9:50 pm
I think your coworker is out of line. cat_3nodding
I'm pretty sure companies can take actions for people mistreating their customers- especially if she's not actually bipolar or schizophrenic.
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Posted: Tue Jun 26, 2012 10:32 pm
She has yet to actually get caught being rude by someone who would do anything about it. (We take French calls, and our supervisor barely speaks French. Our calls aren't monitored very often. If anyone higher up actually spoke passable French, she never would have gotten hired to begin with, because her grammar and accent are atrocious. That's another matter, though.)
She lies all the time, about everything, so I don't think anyone actually believes she's bipolar, and I suspect it's just a matter of time before she gets fired.
Something isn't right with her, though. She doesn't just make up believable (or even semi-believable) lies, and she doesn't just do it to get herself out of trouble. She says she knows Skrillex, for example, and that she had a water-gun fight with Hedley (a Canadian pop-rock band) on their tour bus, after which they asked her to be their band mother...? Or, she'll interrupt a mundane conversation about cats and litter-boxes to say that she has two litter-boxes and that she changes them twice a day.
It's at the point now where no one really speaks to her because they're tired of being lied to. So she just interrupts other peoples' conversations, talking over them, with weird fabrications relating to whatever was being discussed. If someone was talking about pasta, then she has to cut in with how awesome she is at cooking spaghetti, and how she eats it all the time. The subject of poverty comes up? She was homeless for a year and survived on "sugar-water and vitamins". Someone has a sponsor child? She had one, too, but he was killed in a gang-war in Rwanda.
...Seriously, I kid you not.
So yeah, I agree that she is out of line. sweatdrop
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Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2012 6:28 pm
It's been a hell of a day. Josh's mom found out that he's been dressing in girl clothes, and absolutely lost it. To clarify, the teenager that lives with me, that I've been taking care of for years now, likes to wear pretty things. We've discussed the subject several times, and he has assured me that he identifies as a boy, and he doesn't want to be a girl. He just likes wearing dresses, doing his makeup, and wearing "shiny things". Whatever, doesn't bother me any. I worry more about how other people will react to him, because there are a lot of hateful people out there. He gets weird or nasty looks sometimes, but so far, he hasn't had any major incidents. He insisted on dressing up for school a couple of times, but they don't care so long as he's not breaking the dress code. So, no short skirts and no spaghetti straps. razz From what I can tell, his social life hasn't suffered; quite the opposite, actually. He frequently has a group of friends over, and they do each others hair and makeup, and swap clothes. Everything's generally been fine, until he went to his parents' place for dinner. I guess his dad wasn't home (thankfully), but his mom was shocked and appalled and just...went straight into hysterics. Next thing I know, I have Tabitha screaming at me on the phone. "What have you done to my son?!?! Is this your idea of responsible guardianship? He's a ******** CROSSDRESSER! What is wrong with you, what are you thinking???" And so on, and so on... It was all I could do to stay calm. I told her that it's entirely Josh's decision, and if he wants to express himself that way, I do understand her concerns, but I support him. I also suggested that she and Josh make an appointment with his psychologist to talk about all of this. She was having none of it. Ugh. I think I'll make the appointment anyway, and if she wants to talk, she can talk to the professional. It makes me second-guess myself, though. What if someone hurts him? Am I being irresponsible? I have one year left before he's done high school. My grade 12 year was one of the worst in my life. I want his to be tolerable, at least. Edit: For ******** sake. The cherry sitting atop the awful sundae that is today is this trash. It's a long rant from an ex-gay (who doesn't use the term ex-gay...just someone who found god and abandoned the "homosexual" lifestyle and) that's dressed up to sound compassionate. Quote: "The gay lifestyle is driven by sex, not love. ... God didn’t make me gay…. but He did allow it. Could he have stopped it? Absolutely, but He didn’t. Why? God has allowed a lot things to take place since time began that are not good. He has allowed evil. He has allowed sin. He has allowed murder. He has allowed rape. He has allowed homosexual desires….. and they are all apart of His greater plan. Get this, the worst sins ever committed were against God Himself, Jesus Christ, as He was beaten and crucified on a Cross. He allowed that. ... You don’t have to be gay, even if you struggle with same sex desires. Your temptations don’t define you. Jesus defines you…and if you believe in Him, He says you are holy, blameless, pure and beautiful…. no matter what sin you struggle with. ... God wants you to value Him more than anything else in this life… and that may include your desire for a romantic relationship right now (if it’s a same-sex relationship you desire). " There's so much more than that, but that's more than enough to give you an idea of what the article is about. I don't seek this garbage out. However, when it shows up on my newsfeed on Facebook, posted by someone who I thought was a friend, it's hard to ignore. sad We've known each other since kindergarten. We were close friends in highschool. I went to his ******** wedding. He invited my boyfriend, too! What the ******** don't know how to address this. It's so incredibly hurtful, but I don't know what, if anything, I can say to him. I know I'll just sound defensive. Just, ********...
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Posted: Tue Jul 10, 2012 10:02 pm
Taeryyn It makes me second-guess myself, though. What if someone hurts him? Am I being irresponsible? Where I live, supporting LGBT youth in their identity is a requirement by law for Foster Parents- I know it isn't the same for you, but I think having a supportive guardian is great. cat_3nodding Quote: There's so much more than that, but that's more than enough to give you an idea of what the article is about.
I don't seek this garbage out. However, when it shows up on my newsfeed on Facebook, posted by someone who I thought was a friend, it's hard to ignore. sad We've known each other since kindergarten. We were close friends in highschool. I went to his ******** wedding. He invited my boyfriend, too! What the ******** don't know how to address this. It's so incredibly hurtful, but I don't know what, if anything, I can say to him. I know I'll just sound defensive.
Just, ******** class="clear"> I left FB because I got sick of that stuff- I called people on it and was prepared to loose those friendships, but I know why people might make other choices than that.
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Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2012 5:10 pm
Esiris I left FB because I got sick of that stuff- I called people on it and was prepared to loose those friendships, but I know why people might make other choices than that. A mutual friend reposted the link along with her own comment. Quote: Dear Matt Moore, Kindly refrain from projecting your own problems and insecurities onto the rest of the LGBT community. Your own negative experience does not give you the right to make untrue claims like, "The gay lifestyle is driven by sex, not love." Thanks! PS: Lumping the "sin" of same-sex attraction in with crimes like rape and murder is not only incredibly ignorant and hurtful, but downright ridiculous. I'm glad Jesus loves you, because you seem to hate yourself a whole lot, and that makes me sad. Less than 5 minutes later, the guy who originally liked the link had removed it from his profile. I'm not sure if he just didn't realize it was offensive, or what.
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Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2012 6:59 pm
Taeryyn Esiris I left FB because I got sick of that stuff- I called people on it and was prepared to loose those friendships, but I know why people might make other choices than that. A mutual friend reposted the link along with her own comment. Quote: Dear Matt Moore, Kindly refrain from projecting your own problems and insecurities onto the rest of the LGBT community. Your own negative experience does not give you the right to make untrue claims like, "The gay lifestyle is driven by sex, not love." Thanks! PS: Lumping the "sin" of same-sex attraction in with crimes like rape and murder is not only incredibly ignorant and hurtful, but downright ridiculous. I'm glad Jesus loves you, because you seem to hate yourself a whole lot, and that makes me sad. Less than 5 minutes later, the guy who originally liked the link had removed it from his profile. I'm not sure if he just didn't realize it was offensive, or what. That's good! I'm glad someone stood up for what was right!
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Posted: Fri Jul 27, 2012 5:25 am
De plus en plus il me semble que c'est plus possible de m'amuser icitte. Il faut que je sois sur les nerfs chaque crisse de minute. Sinon, voilà le gros bataille.
Il est quasiment impossible de me choquer, mais comme ce n'est pas le cas pour le reste du monde, je m'inquiète constamment. Il faut que je sois autoritaire, un role que je n'ai jamais aimer.
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Posted: Thu Aug 02, 2012 9:30 pm
Woohoo, I finally have my laptop back. The darn thing is less than a year old, and the screen (or display cable, maybe?) totally went haywire all of a sudden. It wasn't pretty, and it made the whole machine pretty much useless.
I sent it back to the OEM, and they fixed it. :3 Woot. At no charge to me, so that's even better.
In other news...
Awhile back, I became friends with a coworker. It turned out that we both like to run, so we got in the habit of going running together most mornings before work. That branched out into other hang-outs, since he's a pretty cool guy. Mostly we'd get together and watch hockey or play video games.
I ended up developing a bit of a crush on him, but was pretty careful to keep it to myself, since he was straight. Still, I was happy that we seemed to be becoming such good friends.
Then, he just...stopped talking to me. It was really out of the blue. I didn't think anything was up the first few times he bailed on me. Then, he stopped even making excuses as to why he wasn't running anymore. I didn't push the issue, and left the ball in his court. I was kind of hurt, since I wasn't sure what I'd done, but I figured that if he didn't wanna talk to me, then I'd leave it at that.
Weeks later, he messaged me out of the blue on Canada Day, and asked if I was going to watch the fireworks. I said I hadn't planned on it, but asked if he was going. He said that he was, and he asked if we could go for a walk first.
So we walked, and talked. Apparently he'd been struggling because he's not exactly straight, and he has a whole lot of self-loathing issues. Being around me made it worse.
He said it's hard, because he likes me, but that in turn makes him angry because he doesn't want to. The fact that I have no problem with being queer also makes him feel resentful, or something, even though he knows it shouldn't.
It wasn't really a fun conversation, but I appreciated his candor, and I was glad to know what had happened.
Anyway, we've gotten back into our routine since then, and go running 4 or 5 times a week. He's still struggling, but things seem to be looking up. He's decided to come out to his parents soon, but he admitted that he's pretty sure they've already guessed, and don't have a problem with it. (That's a relief!) I'm pretty careful to keep things strictly platonic between us, though. I suspect the last thing he needs right now is that kind of complication, and frankly, I don't really want to get burned. I'd rather be his friend than anything else for now.
*************
Goddamnit, I'm an idiot. A fool and his money are soon parted. Wow.
I just threw away $137 because I got the dates for my flights ******** up, and booked a hotel in Helsinki for a night when I'll be flying from Montreal to Frankfurt. :/ Non-refundable, too. <********.
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Posted: Wed Aug 08, 2012 9:41 am
I've come to the conclusion that I've got too many items that I don't use. I really should try and use them all, just for the hell of it. Not all at the same time. Besides being impossible, that would kinda resemble this:  Which still only uses a tiny fraction of my inventory, which has about 2700 items for my avatar:  I've probably got stuff I've never even used. :s
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Posted: Wed Aug 08, 2012 10:11 am
Your current avatar is really "dapper" cat_wink , but I have to say- that other avatar is so cluttered it's mindboggling!
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