It's strange, making a post. I guess I've just been nostalgic for simpler times here and there. This website got brought up with an old friend group and some memories got in. I got nostalgic, remembering the days when I was young and too stupid to figure out how to install ROMs without destroying my computer and causing the wrath of my abusive mother. I remember getting excited when I could 'purchase' a console. But even more, I remember how excited I was posting all over the place. Even when people were less than pleasant to me, which... fair. Can't say I'm happy about it, but can't say I don't get it. As a kid it wasn't anything I wasn't used to, anyway. Bullied in school, bullied at home, bullied online- but online was a place with video games and people who put up with me better than real life did, so the choice was kinda obvious. Traumatized me, of course, but reminded me of the good in the world - I have the inbox message from my now-best friend begging me to come back to the chatroom I was bullied out of because I was a stupid kid surrounded by teenagers with issuesNow I'm 26, laying in bed, wishing I had been diagnosed with ADHD and autism sooner so I might have gotten the help I need without relying on the comfort of fickle strangers on the internet.

I'm still with my abusive mother, but I'm moving out in a month. For good, this time. I got away from her for college and it was the best four years of my life, minus the debt... now I'm finally breaking free from a dead end job and moving in with my sister so I can finally move on with my life.

I got a girlfriend, too. She's the most wonderful thing that happened to me in the years of broken hearts and misguided attempts at 'relationships' in my teenage years. Yet I'm still terrified that I'll somehow screw it up. I've done lots of screwing up and I'm sure I'll screw up more, but... that's life, I guess.

I hope I'm not the only one who remembers ~sakura~. I think that was the first time I really had to confront death and how unfair life was. It's strange- I don't remember much of anything from this forum despite how glued to it I was (then again, I repress a lot of my childhood years, thanks mom). But I remembered ~sakura~. Because I was a kid, I was so confident there'd be a miracle and she'd come back. It's not like she was my best friend or anything, but she was someone familiar. Someone kind in an unforgiving world. So why, why did she have to be taken from it? Of course, I've had plenty of experiences seeing death since then- my grandpa, some of my uncles, my sister's cat who I had known since preschool... And I live on, wondering what happens when I die. What might have happened if I died, for some reason or another.

I'm gonna be honest with you all, I don't know who this post is for. Maybe it's for the friends I made, or the people who always got annoyed with me for tooling around the forums. Honestly, I think I'm just screaming into the void, wondering if someone might answer. Totally chill if no one does. Might be better that way too, I'm not sure if I'll come back to this thread tomorrow or in another fifteen years.

Super cool that David has kept this running, by the way. I figured I owed this place that much, being the last forum that I think exists from my childhood (minus the Roblox forums but I'd rather take my chances here than with actual children).

I'm gonna go to bed now and probably forget I wrote this. It was a hard day and I just wanna put it all behind me. But I'll be okay. There's always a light at the end of the tunnel; we just don't always see it, so we don't believe it's there.

If you're reading this, whether you skimmed or read every word (thank you, by the way), whether you remember me from the past or never heard of me until now, whether you hated my guts because I was a stupid and annoying child or you still cared about me despite all of that.

I believe in you. Because I've learned the hard way that a lot of people don't believe in each other.

But even though I've been jaded, I won't stop believing that there's good in everyone so long as they try. There are evil people out there, yes, but we don't have to be like that.

Please remember to be kind to everyone you meet, even if they get on your nerves a little (though if they do something that really insults you, punch their lights out if they aren't listening to reason). You never know what someone else is going through- they might be an undiagnosed child with nowhere to call 'home', as the two places they went to every day were nothing but hellish.

I believe in you.

Thank you for reading my story.