Source: at://did:plc:v2j2g5pdghrwazhbw6gvxtdp/app.bsky.feed.post/3lkyffi3lqk2d
Here is a slice of time in my life that I have since left: when I was in high school I was different. I was highly intelligent, and yet, I wasn’t aiming for Valedictorian or always had to get As over everything else.
2025-03-22 18:50:05.538 / 3lkyffi3lqk2d
I created my own clique of ‘rejects’ (not exactly) consisting of all sorts: satanists, football players, artists, wrestlers, band kids, weeaboos, stoners, furries, drama kids, loners, geeks, nerds, or at least the best approximations in our small Colorado mountain town environment.
2025-03-22 18:50:05.539 / 3lkyffi46cc2d
It was ultimately for anybody who felt out of place and was open. Not perfect, but attempted. With my singular compassionate vision only I could provide, I was the leader. Our group became influential enough it was able to get a fairly unpopular member elected head boy/girl.
2025-03-22 18:50:05.540 / 3lkyffi4aas2d
I was not a cool kid (hahaha) slumming it. I was skinny, somewhat effeminate, hung out with girls (and guys), didn’t seem to care about the usual anything, didn’t follow trends, didn’t conform, didn’t drink, didn’t do drugs, didn’t have sex (though I tried), and …
2025-03-22 18:50:05.541 / 3lkyffi4c7c2d
for the last 2 years I wore a tail every day (even in gym and the locker room, it was a true extension of me), and a black duster with zero care about the Trenchcoat Mafia. This was before social media existed. There was no immediate ever-tappable ever-present sea of people to be an audience.
2025-03-22 18:50:05.542 / 3lkyffi4d6k2d
I, as a kid, actively encouraged other kids en masse to dream and pursue things they most likely would have kept to themselves, languishing in disconnected solitude. I kept telling them it would be better as the Internet grew. I was half right.
2025-03-22 18:50:05.543 / 3lkyffi4f522d
Why am I saying all of this? It’s not some ode or homage to the different. It’s not as a monument to me, I don’t need one. This is all heartbreak to me. I could maybe do without it, but then I’d be worse off. That’s life.
2025-03-22 18:50:05.544 / 3lkyffi4h3k2d
In my eventual frustrations with others, and theirs with me, as happens, I destroyed all of it. I obliterated everything I had created, all that good was gone in one phone call. Everything split, and it was over. I left a big crater in several others’ lives and my own.
2025-03-22 18:50:05.545 / 3lkyffi4i2s2d
This is to point out that in all of that I was barely if ever bothered by others. I wasn’t made fun of to my face or picked on. I was picked on in 6th grade, and definitely in 7th grade, and a bit in 8th grade but that’s where it started to taper off.
2025-03-22 18:50:05.546 / 3lkyffi4jzc2d
It wasn’t because I was necessarily accepted, or did anything cool or amazing. It was because picking on and bothering me always offered not only diminishing returns but could also be socially or personally (to the psyche) dangerous. I never got into a physical fight. I didn’t need to.
2025-03-22 18:50:05.547 / 3lkyffi4kyk2d
I haven’t changed. I was just like this, in approach, in high school. I haven’t lost it. This is how I’ve always been and will continue to be. I don’t apologize for who I am, and I don’t claim to meet expectations.
2025-03-22 18:50:05.548 / 3lkyffi4mx22d
You may laugh at all this and that’s fine. You laugh now. I have nothing to prove. This isn’t bravado. It’s advice.
2025-03-22 18:50:05.549 / 3lkyffi4nwc2d
Here’s the bravado, but I say it as an extension of this generosity: at some point in every relationship that’s sour, or turned sour, I stop having reason to forgive. So I don’t. I also never forget.
2025-03-22 18:50:05.550 / 3lkyffi4ovk2d
My judgment doesn’t change, and I’m more hardcore than the loudest self-righteous troll will ever be. I do not waffle. I’m perfectly fine with how I am. There is no appeal.
2025-03-22 18:50:05.551 / 3lkyffi4pus2d
I’m saying this now not as a defense, but as a hopeful transmission of suggested expectation. If you know what to expect and you choose to do things that will bring about certain reactions, you really have no room to blame me for what you did to yourself.
2025-03-22 18:50:05.552 / 3lkyffi4rtc2d
There are no exceptions, no ingroup, and no outgroup; no loved ones and acquaintances; no excuses. I’ve said this before, to lots of people, and almost every time they don’t believe me and then try to make it my problem they chose to not believe me. They always fail.
2025-03-22 18:50:05.553 / 3lkyffi4ssk2d
I’m telling you who I am. It’s not my problem if you ignore it thinking I’m lying. That’s on you. Don’t be “nice,” while telling me you hate “nice,” and then ask forgiveness from everyone for being too “nice.” That’s not actually kind, it’s dishonest.
2025-03-22 18:50:05.554 / 3lkyffi4trs2d
Don’t indicate you believe and respect me, never discouraging my actions, never criticizing my judgment, instead offering adulations, and then turn around and reveal to everyone it was a charade of mistaken kindness and understanding.
2025-03-22 18:50:05.555 / 3lkyffi4ur22d
That alludes to an underlying deliberate cruelty in your actions: you stole my affections and admirations, something I hold incredibly dear, and then appeal to everyone who would ever want to abuse me, demonize me, and hurt me, morally siding with them as if it’s the better good.
2025-03-22 18:50:05.556 / 3lkyffi4vqc2d
I’m the bad guy, so people tend not to notice what’s happening. Me only existing in a way that others can be my victim only serves to encourage them to forget I’m also a person behind a screen while affording that to you.
2025-03-22 18:50:05.557 / 3lkyffi4xos2d
All of this would be classic 00s style gen x meets geek convention engineered cruelty if it were to happen. It’s not recognized as such now because the cultural understanding and values have changed. Now things have more “nuance” and I’m exactly the kind of person to be a perfect target.
2025-03-22 18:50:05.558 / 3lkyffi4yo22d
At some point actions speak louder than words. It doesn’t matter if you say you don’t mean to be cruel. It’s not much use after the fact. It doesn’t make me feel better that’s for sure.
2025-03-22 18:50:05.559 / 3lkyffi4znc2d
And at some point, it’s a very bad sign if every other week you have to remind others that you really do indeed care about people. Except for 2 people, anyone who’s actually met me and interacted with me beyond a screen does not question that I care about people or am in touch with my feelings.
2025-03-22 18:50:05.560 / 3lkyffi52mk2d
I don’t have this problem, despite what those 2 people say. No one who knows me believes them. I’m 41 and there’s 2 people total. My exes even love and respect me despite me leaving them.
2025-03-22 18:50:05.561 / 3lkyffi53ls2d
Almost everyone who has interacted with me in real life and truly gotten to know me by listening to my voluminous thoughts and reactions only has good things to say about me and wants me in their life. Just ask them, they’ll tell you. This hasn’t been threatened at all.
2025-03-22 18:50:05.562 / 3lkyffi54l22d
The only reason someone might say you don’t care about others despite your protestations is because your actions are inconsistent with your words. I learned a long time ago that anyone can say anything, but that doesn’t make it true.
2025-03-22 18:50:05.563 / 3lkyffi55kc2d
It’s not a reality others must accept simply because one calls it “boundaries.” What you do is what defines how others see you (which they determine, not you) not some 5 second sentence after the fact.
2025-03-22 18:50:05.564 / 3lkyffi56jk2d
Others may see me as transphobic, and I respect their interpretation. I can still disagree, but I do get it. I think it’s flimsy to base it on one word myself, but hey that’s just me. They may see me as harsh, critical, angry, miserable, unstable, and …
2025-03-22 18:50:05.565 / 3lkyffi57is2d
I can’t really do a lot about their opinion if I can’t see its evidence. But I do respect it. It’s just not my conclusion. You have to show me, not just say it. If you don’t, is it really all that different from calling me a slur and putting me down as some are wont to do?
2025-03-22 18:50:05.566 / 3lkyffi5ai22d
Anybody can call me names but why should I care? Empty discourse only goes so far.
If someone were to act like that, then they are only victims of themselves and their inconsistencies, not my harsh gaze or piercing words.
2025-03-22 18:50:05.567 / 3lkyffi5bhc2d
And at some point, I’m not the one defying safety, dignity, and inclusion, or hiding behind it.
I don’t need to hide behind anything. There’s always been people who consider me evil, a parasite, a non-contributor, a fool, a monster, a sociopath, and a pain in the ass because of what I say and do.
2025-03-22 18:50:05.568 / 3lkyffi5cgk2d
It started incredibly early and I quickly realized it was pointless to care. I knew that I was not those things. I couldn’t see the evidence, and they couldn’t provide any, so… what?
I’ve never worried about being wrong. I see me discovering I’m wrong as a blessing, not an attack. I can correct it.
2025-03-22 18:50:05.569 / 3lkyffi5dfs2d
I’m proud of who I am and what I do. I do not apologize for it. There’s nothing to apologize for. There’s nothing to be ashamed of. I’m not inconsistent, and I’m open to new perspectives. I respect others. I listen to them and everything they say or do, always, without fail.
2025-03-22 18:50:05.570 / 3lkyffi5ef22d
I approach things honestly and with full authenticity. I tell people exactly what I think, in so many fucking words. I acknowledge when I’m wrong. I say sorry when it’s due. And all of that always seems to be the problem.
2025-03-22 18:50:05.571 / 3lkyffi5fec2d
I am not ugly in relations. I have not been ugly, mean, cruel, or abusive in my estimations in a very long time in any online based (or otherwise) conversation. Why should that be dismissed if others can say the same thing and be believed? Or are they?
2025-03-22 18:50:05.572 / 3lkyffi5gdk2d
I have not been ugly in any recent fight. I have not lacked empathy in any recent conversation. Any quote out there is missing that dreaded “context,” everyone complains about. I was fed up and sarcastically mocking how I was treated.
2025-03-22 18:50:05.573 / 3lkyffi5gdl2d
That appears to have been, in my estimation alone, the ultimate aim so that it could be quoted with impunity. I did say it, but there’s a lot left out. That’s not something I’d normally say, and everything I say has a meticulous reason to it. I implore you to ask why I would say that.
2025-03-22 18:50:05.574 / 3lkyffi5hct2d
My response to any recent conflict was an enormous personal success for me. It was exactly what I had been trying to achieve for the last 23 years in therapy. Incidents that happened before were far more devastating.
2025-03-22 18:50:05.575 / 3lkyffi5ic32d
They resulted in decades of pain for me and others. It altered lives permanently. I don’t like that so I’ve reined it in. Others haven’t.
There are those who might be inclined to turn my successes into failures living up to the expectations of society, as if somehow it will make me fall in line.
2025-03-22 18:50:05.576 / 3lkyffi5jbd2d
The only way it would effectively get me to fall in any line would be to make me disappear via institutionalization, a constant threat in my life. My mental health would have to be weaponized against me as a vulnerable person, as that’s all there is about me that’s legally objectionable.
2025-03-22 18:50:05.577 / 3lkyffi5kal2d
Someone would have to convince others that I’m so profoundly mentally ill that I present as a dangerous buzzsaw, cutting through others like they’re nothing and with zero consideration any discernment because I lack any acceptable impulse control.
2025-03-22 18:50:05.578 / 3lkyffi5l7t2d
I would have to be made out to be a truly unstable, even sociopathic, anti-social personality that poses a malignant threat to myself and society.
My advice would be, again, not to do any of what I’ve described others as having the potential to do. It’s annoying.
Don’t annoy me.
2025-03-22 18:50:05.579 / 3lkyffi5m732d
ATProto root record: 3lkyffi3lqk2d