"YOUR FEAR OF LOOKING STUPID IS HOLDING YOU BACK" rant

WOOOO OVERSHARING ON THE INTERNET!!!!

(((((((TRIGGER WARNING))))))

suicide (brief mention, nothing in detail), not accepting parents, general mental health talk, self harm (sh)

this may or may not be coherent im just getting it all out of my brain

i used 2 care so much abt what people thought of me. mostly as a trans kid in the closet. this isnt all about being trans, its just how it started for me. i realized i am trans sometime in 6th grade, so i was probably like 10-11? i was young for my grade lolol. i had learned what being non-binary and trans was in 5th grade after moving to portland oregon, which is probably the most accepting and amazing place ever. its just so normalized here compared to many other places, so i got to learn abt lgbtq+ and personal identity pretty young. i came out to my parents pretty much as soon as i realized exactly what was a comfortable label for me, which was a trans boy. they took it so badly i didnt tell anyone else except for one friend, who helped me feel as comfortable as possible and encouraged me a lot to push my parents boundaries for my own comfort. not being accepted by my parents really made me feel like there was something wrong with me and made me start to really hate who i was. after coming out, they were hesitant to let me present in any way masculine. i remember specifically reallllyyy wanting to buzz my head and they refused to let me. they being my mom really, i cant remember my dad caring as much. eventually i just told them im going to buzz it. no asking, just that i was doing it. and they said ok. buzzing my head made me look like a prepubescent boy, and a lot of people started calling me he because of it. it was such a good feeling. that is the only time i have ever passed as a boy. 

further in the future, i was placed in a residential treatment facility. my view of myself was TOTALLY different, but all stemmed from self hatred. residential was hell. i had always been terrified of therapists. ive never been more scared of anything. it was about 2 years ago in my freshman year. i was there for a suicide attempt. my suicide attempt was caused by a number of things. i was in an abusive relationship i felt i couldnt get out of (a story for another time, but that definitely caused me a LOT of insecurity), my untreated and undiagnosed schizoaffective bipolar disorder, my sh addiction, my relationship with my dad (also too much to get into now), my internalized hatred towards myself because of my mental health issues and my sexual and gender identity, the list goes on. overall i can just say that i hated who i was. but honestly it had very little to do with my looks. my mania and psychosis made me feel like the hottest bitch alive at all times. i hated who i was as a person, and because of that i kept everyone at arms length. i never told anyone what was going on with me, especially mentally. so therapy was a HUGE no. i would ignore my therapist and only answer surface level questions. eventually, a staff member noticed i was wearing a binder during a body check (where they check your body once a week to make sure youre not self harming). my therapist later asked me about my gender and i just told her everything. long story short, i recame out to my parents and with her help they accepted me. when i got home i started going by jasper and he him pronouns and i have never been happier. 

because of this, i got even more confidence surrounding my looks. a while after i was discharged from the residential. i was fine for a couple months until my relationship with my dad got worse and worse. long story short, i ended up moving out into a friends house. i went into a huge manic episode. i didnt know i was manic, but i was manic for months on end. i also started not caring at all about passing. i didnt care at all about anything lol. i was doing a whole bunch of fucked up shit like sh and drugs/alc. i was extremely impulsive and did things without thinking a lot of the time, like shaving off my eyebrows or cutting/dying my hair or sh. ive always been big on art and drawing, and now that i didnt care so much about passing i decided to try makeup. i started with clown makeup and started posting videos and pictures of me online. i never used to post at all. then i started drag! i got a lot of people commenting on my videos and pictures asking if i was ok, calling me crazy, making fun of me, etc. it didnt effect me at all. i started dressing in more feminine clothing while doing my drag and clown makeup looks too. i would get misgendered and told i cant be a man if i was going to present feminine but nothing got to me at all really. 

then i was sent back to residential lol. i ended up going to three more, for a total of four residentials in the last year and a halfish. i finally gave into therapy and the realization that i simply hate myself, not love myself like i had been convincing myself, and started to get better. i was diagnosed and put on the right medications, and i have been getting so much better. i have started to care more about how i present and what i put out into the world. this means my insecurities have come back in a way, but in a healthy way really. im still learning how to navigate them, especially since having insecurities again is all very new to me and idk how to handle that emotion a lot of the time. i was so free when i "didnt care". letting myself hate everyone and everything made me not care at all. i was more trapped than anything in my own self hatred but god i just had nothing to lose. some parts of me misses being like that. i need to find my healthy middle ground. overall id say im a very confident person most of the time, but theres certain things that are just so silly that i worry over. 

"your fear of looking stupid is holding you back". thats a tiktok audio i have been hearing, and i think about it often. ive been talking about finding that healthy middle ground with a friend briefly (ily harley <333) and honestly that tiktok audio is all i need to think about to bring me back to that carelessness. your fear of looking stupid is holding you back. i think about the most random shit when it comes to that. like dancing like no ones watching in a room full of people, or makeup, or all of the other shit i used to do without thinking twice. i pretty much just bully myself whenever i start to care about what other people think now and just tell myself that i dont have time to be thinking this shit. cause i really dont.

i should have a tedtalk LOL