Saying this as an ethnically Chinese person who is not being racist… I had a eufy robovac and when I discovered it was Chinese-owned and had a video camera installed on it… I immediately got rid of that thing. I don’t trust any technology company owned by China to be able to see into my home.

Thank you! I am tough. The last 3 years have been harder than I could’ve ever fathomed, but I’m still trucking on. There’s a lot more to me than depression, even though it swallows everything sometimes.

I literally fantasize about having enough space in my home for a chest freezer.

This week is the first week I’ve felt halfway close to being a human being in a really long time. My rTMS treatment for depression is finally starting to kick in. This is my 3rd round now and each time I see significant improvements, but they only last 4ish months and I relapse horrifically after.

My most recent relapse lasted 3ish months while I was scrambling to get treatment (and an unsuccessful Ketamine trial). I finally found a hospital willing to treat me, and also give me maintenance treatments so hopefully I don’t relapse again.

It’s just been hell for a while. Last weekend I finally felt the gears in my brain “click”. I am capable of experiencing positive emotions again. I still feel emotionally dead a lot of the time, but at least I don’t want to die anymore (for now).

It feels good to not be in excruciating pain. It feels good to have less disordered thinking. I look back and it feels like I was a different person, I don’t even understand or recognize that person.

Anyways, I’m just… Trying to take a breather. Trying to fully experience the moment. I don’t know how things will go in the long term, but I know the next couple of months will continue to be livable. Trying to be grateful for that, and not think too much about what comes next.

Agreed, in my opinion asking for safe spaces is not entitlement. It’s people who feel most comfortable (safe) with the status quo, who think others are entitled for also wanting to feel safe.

I’d tell me in high school to get treatment for depression instead of white knuckling my way through life and ending up with treatment resistant depression at 28 because I went without for so long.

As a Chinese person I actually think they’re more Korean-inspired, not Chinese. And the devs are Korean, so it doesn’t seem disrespectful.

Thank you so much. I feel your big hug and it’s appreciated. I do have a therapist I see for my depression and ptsd. I will definitely talk about this with her.

Your empathy stretches beyond even the topic at hand. You hit the nail on the head when you say that suffering added on to existing suffering makes everything more complicated.

If I were mentally healthy right now I think I would process my sexual identity more easily. But for 3 years I’ve been struggling with annihilating depression.

Writing this is also a helpful reminder that I’m not in the best spot to figure it all out right now, and that I don’t have to. I can sit with these somewhat complicated feelings for now and wait for when I’m healthier to open the box. At least I’ve acknowledged the box for now, instead of shoving it in the closet (har har).

Thank you again for your empathy and kindness. Really.

I love space but I know I’ll never be an astronaut and go there, yet that doesn’t make my desire to see the stars any less real and valid.

I actually love this and it legitimately makes me feel better lol

Honestly I played it for the first time last year and… It’s good but I don’t understand the hype? The story in 2022 didn’t blow my mind. Definitely fun and I still recommend though.

Exactly on the identity piece, although I do kind of feel like I missed out. I keep thinking about all the times I felt attraction and ran away from it 😅

But I’m with the love of my life too, so, I guess I just move on.

the attention visibly queer and visibly trans people get, at least in my experience, is negative - who gets up in the morning seeking that?

You articulated this particular piece so well for me. I think I’m also struggling because I don’t WANT to be queer. Between the mental health issues and the race and gender and and and I just… I didn’t want to be bi on top of that. This isn’t fun for me. I don’t want one more thing my family is going to invalidate and judge me for. I didn’t want to recognize my suffering on yet another thing.

But people (especially younger people) around me are getting more vocal and comfortable with their sexuality and I was watching Atypical where this teenager was discovering she was bi and I just hit this wall. I had to skip the scene because I couldn’t bear to hear her say, “I’m bi.” It just… Hurt. I both envied her and felt shame I wasn’t her. But it wasn’t the same 15 years ago when I grew up. (which just makes me feel stupid again. 15 years ago is bootycheeks compared to 50 years ago)

The most refreshing thing here has been to be able to respond and be backed up in my response.

Personally the most demoralizing thing about having the conversation taken over is often not being able to respond/take it back. At first I was afraid to say that this is just one more example of white people main character syndrome, because I was like, ugh, I’m going to get a bunch of comments of how I’m the actual racist one for generalizing all white people.

The justaskingquestions crowd makes me feel crazy for getting upset, and then villanizes me for being the upset one. But obviously I’d get more upset than them, they’re the ones erasing me.

So normally I just slink away from these places, whether it’s online, or my (supportive) boyfriend’s shitty white family, or my uni alum groups, or my workplace. And that’s the most demoralizing part, that they can say whatever they want and I have no recourse other than to leave.

So it means a lot to me that I don’t have to leave here. That I can say my piece and have it backed up by the mods, not bullied & downvoted into submission.

I genuinely support people asking in good faith. Some white people just don’t understand and they want to. But by the 2nd or 3rd response it’s very clear which are in good faith and which are simply camouflaging their intolerance. So thank you for shutting the latter down.

Thank you. It’s hard to say more right now because this is a lot to take in… But thank you.

I’ve talked about it a bit with my boyfriend. It’s just hard to talk about it. It’s kind of a new realization for me even though I’ve known it in the back of my mind all along.

And I just can’t help but feel stupid and small for it. Like, “What’s the point? You’re in a straight monogamous relationship. Why are you so attention seeking? Just move on with your life.”

I think I’m the one who needs to accept myself, not other people, reading that last paragraph back to myself lol. I think I’m scared to be bi in a straight monogamous relationship.

I’m so glad that the mods aren’t getting steamrolled into submission. I was having a bad mental health day today and some of these comments really bothered me. Immediately my reddit-trained mind was like, oh, you dumbass snowflake. Touch grass.

But then I was like, fuck, the whole reason I’m on Beehaw is because it’s supposed to be different here. Thanks for continuously affirming my belief in it 👍

I just want to pipe in and and say thank you for caring about diversity. Lots of discourse here about how that’s hostile to white people. In my opinion purposefully misinterpreting “unfortunate” to mean “white people not welcome” is a perfect representation of why WHY diversity matters.

Because as a POC it’s clear to me that there are valid reasons why a white-dominated community can be… Uncomfortable. Like the very comments here that push back and pretend that race isn’t a issue and that POC are racist ones for caring about it. Not bothering at all to understand where it’s coming from and why it matters.

Edit: I didn’t write this at first but I can’t bite my tongue anymore. White people who get hositle over this have suffered from main character syndrome for way too long. You feel unwelcome because some online community simply wants more diversity? Why is it that in your mind one more POC means one less white person? Speaks more about your world view than anything else.

I’ve felt unwelcome my entire life because people resent my intrusion into their white bubbles. The whole point of Beehaw is that it’s inclusive. I’m a snowflake who wants her safe space.

I adore cats and I could not agree with you more. Better the wild cats die than hundreds/thousands of potentially endangered birds.

I stopped drinking 3.5ish years ago. I didn’t have a choice, drinking always made me super sick and vomit. In uni I thought it was normal to “puke and rally” everytime you drank. As I got older I wouldn’t even be able to get very drunk anymore, because I’d vomit before I could even get there.

The final nail in the coffin was I had a heavy night of drinking and was vomiting for a MONTH after. So I finally stopped. 6 months later I had a single shot and vomited for a week.

Since then every now and then I’ll try having 4 (literal) sips of wine, and I’ll have gastric distress every time.

The first year or so was very difficult because I missed social drinking and didn’t really know how to be social otherwise.

Now I’m just used to it. I don’t even miss it anymore. I’ll just chill with friends sober, or high. My friends don’t give me shit for it, and when randos do I’m just super rude and blunt and tell them “it makes me shit myself” and maintain aggressive eye contact until they go away awkwardly.

I don’t know if this will be helpful, but I wrestled a lot with dealing with despair/fear from upheaval as well. Mostly climate like I said, but I used to cry for days thinking about kids starving in Venezuela, for example (that’s a crisis from many many years back).

Studying history actually helped me cope. Just learning about the past like 5000 years of human history and how much upheavals and famine and war and civilization collapses there have been.

I kind of realized that feeling like the world is ending (as we know it) is the NORM rather than the exception for most of human existence.

We’ve been exceptionally lucky in Western countries for the past 300ish years. But that caused us to believe that’s what’s to be expected. It’s not.

It just helped me understand that humans have survived through lots of things. And the turmoil comes with being alive.