The Beginning
Hi. I won’t share my name but you can just call me J. I guess I should start sharing, or opening up about my life. I’m 17, turning 18 in 2 months. I’m the youngest out of 3 siblings. I’m a woman. Obviously. Don’t know if I should mention that. I did anyway. Uh. I was born in Pomona, California. I was raised in Mesa, Arizona. I’m a Leo. I like to write. Especially when depression decides to take unexpected visits. I like to draw, paint, play video games, and sleep. I love sleeping. I think that’s the basics about myself.
Since we got that out of the way. I guess I'll tell you how life began to get worse. How it got progressively worse.
From the time span of when I was born to 6th grade, I thought life was great. Yes, of course, there were some bumps in the road, but life will have those. I was a good student and was never a bad kid. I did well in elementary, my teachers throughout the grades would say I was a good student. I never gave anyone any trouble.
I guess that changed when 6th grade was coming to an end. All my elementary friends were going to a different junior high and I couldn't go to the same junior high because I lived too far. I was sad of course but, there was nothing I could do. I had to suck it up. When it was the first day of school for 7th grade, I was unbelievably nervous. I knew no one. I was nervous about making new friends all over again. I actually had my mom walk me around campus because I didn't want to go alone. Good mom right?
Anyways, I met a few people then and there and after finding my classes, I made few friends already. I was surprised because I thought finding people to be friends with would be more difficult than I thought. After a few days of Junior High, I thought I could get used to this and manage it. I thought it would be like elementary and that I could do as good and get as good grades as in elementary.
If I'm going to be honest with you. I don't where it all went so wrong. If I can guess, I think it all started when I started to realize my attraction towards girls. I'd always look at girls and think they're so pretty and beautiful. I'd look at my best friends and be attracted to them. Then I'd start to wonder why I'm feeling these feelings. I knew I wasn't supposed to be feeling this way towards girls because I was a girl, but I did regardless of my gender. I think what made it worse is that my parents are Christians. My dad is a strong believer and my mom is too. And I knew that if I told them my feelings towards girls, they wouldn't be accepting.
So I started trying to figure out why I was feeling like this. I began to question myself.
Is there something wrong with me? Why was I feeling this way? Was it normal to feel this way? Is it okay to feel this way? Is it weird to like girls?
All the questions I had in my head started to cloud my mind. I started to convince myself that I wasn't supposed to feel this way for girls so I started to lean towards guys. I started to dress more feminine and use makeup even though doing that wasn't who I was. I was a tomboy, wear all black, and show no skin kind of person.
By doing so, I started to attract boys to me. I felt accomplished but at the same time, I knew this wasn't me. I felt uncomfortable on how much I needed to change for a guy to find me attractive. So then I eventually stopped. I stopped dressing more feminine and I stopped putting on makeup. And I soon noticed how quickly I was being left by boys who suddenly didn't find me attractive because I was dressing like me.
That's when I think the self-hatred started. I started to hate why I was like this. I started to hate why I couldn't fit in like the other girls. I started to hate why I was so unnormal. It started to make me slowly hate every little thing about myself. How I would do things unladylike. How I would talk less femininely. How I would want to do things that weren't ladylike. Like how I would want to play football with guys or how I would want to hang out with guys.
I literally started to hate everything I did as a person.
Soon I would start distancing away from other people because I didn't want to even deal with myself.
All of this was in the time span of mid-August to the end of November and the beginning of December of 2015.
If I recall correctly, at the time I was failing my classes. I had either D's or F's and when the report came back to my parents, they were absolutely livid. My dad would be furious with me and my mom would be disappointed with me. What made it worse is that I never told them anything about what was going on with me mentally. I kept it all to myself and kept it bottled up inside.
So when they saw my report card, they couldn't understand why I had such bad grades. They knew I was a good student so they couldn't understand why I just stopped completely. And I couldn't either.
After December and after winter break. I had a new schedule for the 2nd semester. This is when I met a guy named Ryder.
And Ryder plays a big part in my past.
