i will not share any of my names on here for anonymity reasons; but you can call me whatever you want. i have no control over you, as it should be. but they say that naming things makes you look at them with more compassion, and i want you to see me as a person with thoughts and emotions, so name me as you see fit. now, let's get to the question at the top of this page.
i was born and raised in the swedish countryside. i'm autistic, but nobody suspected it at the time. i did not go to daycare, instead i went with my parents to their office jobs, and played on the computers there. i don't remember a whole lot from this time, except knowing that i should keep to myself and avoid bothering those with more imporant things to do. my older sister and other family members were my only friends until around age 5. that was when my mother wanted to introduce me to the daughter of one of her friends. this daughter was the same age as me. the issue was that i didn't want any friends. the thought of having to socialize with someone my age was scary to me. i couldn't grasp the social codes and cues that seemed so innate to other children. but we became friends and i got over it to an extent. then at the age of 6, i started school. this was a horrifying experience. i made a friend, a girl who lived close to me, but i was afraid of the boys my age, and every child older than me. the kids there were mean to me quite a lot, so i guess it was warranted, sort of. i used to get sick and vomit almost every day on the bus on my way to school, so they thought i was gross because of it. i was chubby and shy. quiet. a pushover if you will, and i still am. at least now i've stopped being chubby, instead i worry about every calorie i consume, more on that later. when i was 7, i got transferred to a bigger school, and despite having a few friends, the fear persisted. it did at home too.
my parents never divorced, and i'm not exactly sure why. my father drank a lot when i was growing up. he probably still does. i still remember being too young to understand why he was suddenly acting so weird a couple evenings every week. nobody cared to explain anything to me. that was kind of a trend with my parents, not explaining things. sometimes he'd touch me in strange places despite me telling him not to. i still don't know what his intentions were with smacking my ass all the time, but i know how it made me feel. i remember not understanding that it was a problem, because nobody treated it as such. not him, not my mother. she let him do whatever he wanted to me and my sister. sometimes i wonder if she feared him like i did. she should still have stepped in, but i wonder either way. then there was all the yelling and arguing, when he was hungover and hated everyone and everything. so i learned how to move silently as not to provoke him. to just stay out of his way as much as i could. to hide away and not bring any attention to myself. i protected and parented myself. my parents didn't seem to mind. to them i was just a quiet and easy child to deal with. i suffered in silence and didn't ask any questions. i forgot about the worst instances of touching, for a few years. then it hit me like a truck, from nowhere. to try and deal with it in a way that seemed accessible to me at the time, about age 12, i became hypersexual, and started watching porn. this was a bad idea, but i didn't know that back then. i wanted someone to take care of me, because i was tired of doing it myself. i wanted someone to want me. boys my age didn't want me, so instead i started talking to older guys and men on the internet. i felt fun i guess. exciting, because i knew that i wasn't supposed to.
i don't remember many specific events before my 14th birthday and a little bit before that, but what i do know is that i felt ugly. so ugly. i had to fix it. i tried to stop eating, but i hadn't figured out the methods and tricks yet, so i wasn't very good at it, so i only lost a little bit of weight, if any at all. i got drunk for the first time when i was 13. it was whiskey. it was january. i was outside but i didn't feel cold. me and my mother had a habit of watching true crime documentaries together, even when i was too young to see them. my parents thought that as long as i wasn't watching alone, pretty much nothing was off limits. either way, a couple of months before my 14th birthday, i saw a documentary about the columbine shooting, and it interested me like nothing before it ever had. i felt the need to get to know the shooters. to know why they did it. i never really wanted to do it myself, despite not having the easiest time at school. i made a tumblr account on the day before my 14th birthday so i could find likeminded people, and i asked my mother for a book about one of the shooters as a birthday gift. i got it, and i cried rivers while reading it. i fell in love with him through pictures, videos, his writing and what the people who knew him said about him. he was long dead, yes, but i felt like i knew him, and i missed him. in my mind, he was the only boy for me, and when i had lived exactly as many days as he did, i'd kill myself. i didn't. i'm not 17 anymore, thank god. but i obsessed over him for years. now i look back on it and cringe a little, but i understand why i was the way i was. he felt lonely, and so did i. i hoped that he would see me and visit me in my dreams. that he would be the one to accept me with open arms into the afterlife and heal my sliced up wrists because he'd know that it was for him i had lived and died. again, i do not feel this way anymore, and i don't excuse the acts of violence he committed. i was just weird. he was an outsider and so was i.
moving on from that, i met a girl on tumblr when i was 14. we're still friends. i have still not met her, but next year i'm attending her wedding. time flies. when i was 14, i had my first kiss with a 17 year old boy who i dated very briefly. he was mean to me. i turned 15. at this point i had been sending pictures of myself, barely clothed, to guys my age and men decades older than me. i kept at it umtil i met a boy i liked. his parents were jehovah's witnesses, and i wore a pentagram necklace at all times. i think he dated me because he thought i was cool. he didn't really care about me all that much, but i loved him. we attempted to take each others' virginities, but i was nervous and it hurt too much. we never tried again. then came january. i started talking to a guy i met online, just being friendly. at the timem i didn't know how old he was. then i found out that he was 28, but that didn't matter to me, because we were just friends. my boyfriend told me that i was too much for him to handle, and that he didn't love me anymore. he wanted me to seek help for my depression, self-harm and disordered eating, but i wasn't ready, so he left. i was heartbroken.
i told my 28 year old friend about it. he said that he felt bad for me. we started talking more after that. he was a cocaine addict, but i didn't care. he was nice to me, so i didn't judge him. we met up on a spring day. early afternoon. i was 16, barely. he had booked a hotel room. we did coke together there. it was my first time. i was scared of him. he got on top of me suddenly, and put his hands around my throat. i thought he was going to kill me, and so did he i think. there was nothing i could do but look into his eyes and pretend that i wasn't scared. it worked. he let go. he kissed me that day, before i left to be picked up by my parents, still high. they didn't notice. my heart was racing all night. is slept 2 hours, in a cold sweat. cocaine is not that fun. i came back to him, like a fool, the day after. i felt obligated to do so, and i skipped gym class. we kissed, he bought me cigarettes and got on his train back home. i went back to school. i met with him again the next weekend. he got me drunk and took my clothes off. i didn't want it, but i was too scared to say no, so i said nothing at all. i still can't decide whether or not i was raped, but i know that it hurt. i met with him again the day after, he cut my leg with a knife, and then never i never saw him again. we kept in contact over the phone. he isolated me from everyone else. he wanted me to be his girl and talk to him all the time. he kept me up all night. i was burned out, but i still graduated 9th grade with good grades.the summer passed. i started attending a new school. got a crush on one of my female classmates, and quite frankly i was sick of him, so i told him that i wanted to break up with him. that's whenthe death threats started. he'd call me all day and all night. i had to tell my school counselor about it, and she told my parents. i couldn't do it. i dropped out not long after, from the stress. i couldn't sleep. i was scared all the time. i started seeing a counselor, she was very nice but it didn't help. i was so convinced that i was going to die, that i started to believe that i was dead.
i stopped talking to people. there was a boy i had come in to contact with via a site for people with alternative styles, but i stopped talking to him too. it was just too much, so i fell out of contact with everyone. i stopped going out, other than to see my counselor. then came the news year. a few weeks passed. my abuser stopped contacting me, but that didn't matter. i was still scared. then the boy from the site contacted me again, and i replied. he asked if i was alive, and i told him about how the past few months of my life had been. we started talking on the phone for hours every day. he was nice to me, and i fell in love with him. this would turn out to be a mutual feeling. he lived a few hours away from me, but he took the train to come see me the week i turned 17. we had a great time. consensual sex and so on. he understood me. i cried when he had to go back home. in fact, i cried every single time we had to leave each other for at least an entire year. one time, i was crying on the train back to my hometown, and i was scrolling tumblr in an attempt to distract myself. it wasn't really working as well as i hoped, but i saw someone with a profile picture from a movie i had seen, and we seemed to share similar interests, so i commented on one of their posts. on that day, i met the person who would become my best friend. without them, i would have been dead by now. later that year i got diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (asd) and began to understand myself better. eventually i just stopped coming back home, and instead moved in with his father's family. they didn't mind. they liked me, and i was glad to have escaped my parents. i lived there until the year i turned 19, but by then me and him had gotten our own apartment. we were having some issues in our relationship that had started before we moved out, such as my sex drive dying, and we figured that getting our own place would fix it. we were wrong. we stopped being intimate with each other. i let my eating disorder escalate to the point where i was underweight and too weak to walk up or down the stairs to our apartment building, so i was stuck at home for almost 2 months. we were both unhappy. i had started to suspect that i might have borderline personality disorder (bpd), due to the strong emotional reactions i often had to trivial things. both of us suffered from poor mental health, and it took a toll on our realtionship. in may of 2023, i saw a doctor for my eating habits and mental issues. he referred me to a psychiatric clinic that i started going to in september of that year. on the same day aas the doctor's appointment, i started bing eating almost daily, and gained all the weight back. i was at a normal bmi, but unhappy with my looks. i thought that eating more and having more energy to do things would help our relationship, but it didn't. i felt disgusted by my appearance and didn't want him to see or touch me. i ended up disliking the psychologist who i had gotten assigned to me. she didn't understand me, and i felt like she didn't want to.
christmas came. new year's came and went. i started seeing a different psychologist whom i ended up loving. she diagnosed me with post-traumatic stress disorder (ptsd), an eating disorder, and depression. i broke things off with my boyfriend. not because i wanted to, but we were bringing each other down, and i couldn't take it anymore. i felt guilty for not wanting to be intimate. i felt guilty for having gender identity problems (i identify as something between a girl and nothing at all). i felt like i shouldn't keep him tethered to me if i couldn't give him what he needed. he started staying with his mother more and more, so i was alone with my own thoughts for most of the time. i thought i was a lesbian for a while. then i fell in love with a man on the internet, who ended up ghosting me, and it broke me for a month. that is possibly the single most embarrasing thing i've ever felt. i hoped that he would reach out to me again, but he never did.
i spent my birthday drinking alone in my bathtub. the only person i spoke to was the man behind the counter at the liqour store. i was afraid to leave my teenage years. i felt that my youth and my identity would disappear overnight and take my beauty with them. that i would suddenly be expected to be well-funtioning, and that my problems would suddenly go from making me worthy of compassion, to making me pathetic. i thought that i would no longer be desireable or interesting. i was afraid. so very, very afraid. i vowed that i would kill myself not a day after my 25th birthday. that way i would at least know for one day what it's like to have a brain that has cooked to completion in the cerebrospinal fluid. so there i was, with makeup on, wearing a vintage nightgown, passed out face down in my bathtub, vomit in my hair and burning on my skin. i wasn't planning on getting that drunk, but i hadn't been drunk since the day i was sexually assaulted at the hotel almost 4 years prior, so i had no idea what my limits were. i must have been in the bathtub for 3 hours at least, unable to get myself out or even see straight. eventually i was able to take my nightgown off and wash the vomit out of my hair. then i got out and put a pizza in the oven. i felt like shit, but i was sober when i went to bed. it was okay. i see my therapist every other week. she's worked wonders with me. i'm no longer afraid of bald men, not even the ones with goatees. i still don't answer the phone when i don't know who's calling, but then again i naver did. i'm able to go outside by myself and walk around town after 9 pm without fear. i've started journaling. i can sit with my thoughts without wanting to die. i've stopped looking for parental figures in men who want to fuck me. i've stopped looking for someone else to complete me. i am a full person. i just have to wait and see where all the pieces fit. i don't know whether or not i'm going to die when i'm 25. but i do know that i want to make things. movies, art, maybe even music. i want to write and talk to others who think like me. i want to experience things in life. i want to learn things. i want to know how things feel. i yearn for knowledge and understanding. i know that i can't have it all, and it tears me apart, but that doesn't mean i'm not going to try. (1/6/24)
in october of 2024 my ex boyfriend moved out officially. the apartment was mine. after that we managed to stay as good friends for most of the time. i took over a cat from a former neighbor, she was moving and he couldn't come with, so he moved in with me. we had known each other for a good while before he moved in, and he liked me a lot. i had a hard time with it all. being woken up through the night, and not being able to come and go as i pleased when he was outside. sometimes i haf to leave the door unlocked while away, so that someone would be able to let him in. it was weighing me down, and i cried about it often. november came and i started social rehabilitation in the neighboring town. that too was hard on me, but i persisted through the beginner weeks. six weeks, two days a week. then we went on winter break. i needed it. christmas wasn't very noteworthy. i celebrated it with my ex and his families. on new year's, my cat disappeared, but came back the following day. the fireworks must have scared him, poor baby. january rolls in, i want to die. no sleep, no peace. i go to my activities at social rehab, mostly talk to the women, because, contrary to what is stated above in a previous paragraph, i was and am still very much afraid of men. anyway. a couple of weeks go by and i think nothing of anything. one friday, a new man was there. a bit older than me. i had only seen him once before, and felt weird about the prescence of a man in the room. this is no longer the case, but at this time, the friday activities were populated almost exclusively by women, and i much preferred that. but there he was. i tried not to interact with him, but as it turned out we live close to each other, so he asked if i wanted a ride home. i did not. it scared me. the following friday, a staff member wanted to speak to me, so i sat down at the table where he happened to also be sitting, and i ended up talking to him as well. he was nice. i stopped being as scared. that time, another person needed a ride from him, so i decided to go along. it went well, not scary. the friday after that was much of the same, but that time we were alone in the car for most of the way home. it was fine. i felt like i could speak freely with him.
i started looking forward to fridays just so i could spend time with him. put more effort into my appearance, just so he would notice. one time, we were alone at one of the tables, talking about insecurities. i told him that i used to really want a nose job, but that i had since changed my mind. he said i had a beautiful face. he meant it. i was happy. he asked if i would like to go for a walk with him some time, and i said that i would. he gave me his contact information, but i was too scared to reach out. then, i got sick. was sick for a good three weeks, turned 21, came back. i told him when i saw him again that i would love to go on a walk with him, but that i was too scared to break the ice and actually message him. he understood. in the evening he messaged me, saying that he had hoped i'd show up, and was glad that i did. we decided that we would go somewhere the following day. said and done. we walked around a lake, and we had a great time. he drove me back home, but i didn't get out of the car right away. i wanted to spend more time with him. we must have been outside of my apartment building for two and a half hours, when i remembered that i had no food at home, so we went to the store instead. he carried my groceries out to the car. we then drove back to my building and sat there for another hour and a half. my frozen potato wedges thawed in my lap. i was so cold, but i didn't mind. he told me he'd had such a good time, and asked if he could give me a hug. i accepted. he held me for quite a long time. it felt more than friendly, but that was okay. at the time i would never have acknowledged it, but the thought of him with someone else had already started to make me feel sick. we went on another walk the following week, but that time i told him to just not drive me home for a good while after. we sat in his car, on the parking lot by the lake. at that point, i was in love with him, but refused to admit it to myself. i was scared to fall in love. scared of being looked at. scared of being touched. of being hurt. of hurting him and of the person i become when i love somebody. not too long after that, early april, i invited him over. i was so nervous. he gave me a massage and my body shut down. i wasn't used to being touched by someone i knew was attracted to me, and my brain was telling me that something horrible was about to happen. that i would not be able to stop it. nothing horrible happened. the back massage was planned beforehand, and no inappropriate touching was involved, but still it was far too much for me at the time. i acted weird the rest of the day. i wanted him to understand, but i did not understand myself, so i couldn't. it got awkward, after he had left i sat on the couch, shaking. something was happening in my head and i could not comprehend or deal with it.
a few days later, we go with our social rehab group to look at a school. i would call it hippie college. it is for adults and their approach is unconventional i suppose. i was anxious to face him that morning. we decided to go there by car, so on the way there it was just me and him. to my surprise, it did not feel awkward. my brain let go of the idea that he would be a danger to me. i was thankful. school grounds were cold as hell. my wool sweater was just not cutting it, so he let me borrow his jacket, and i liked that. i gave it back when it was time for us to part ways. he gave me a hug in front of the group, and i liked that too. that he would be willing to show me affection in public. now to the main event. this was the day after our school visit. thursday evening, my chest was hurting. my ex boyfriend came over for coffee, this was a commom occurence. almost daily. i figured i just needed a cup and the pain would go away. it did not. he left, and i tried to wait out the pain, but it got increasingly worse. it had started before eight, and i decided to step into the shower to i guess, wash it away, at around nine. it seemed to work, but the effect did mot last long. tried drinking some tea, did not work. this was starting to really scare me. at some point i started texting the guy i was still just referring to as my friend at this time, asking for some advice. he said that he would come and take me to the emergency room. and he did. we got there after ten, and remained there until four in the morning. not once did he complain. he helped me when i needed to get up from examination table. he sat by me in a chair and he pet me. he caressed my face and my hair and told me how well i was doing. how everything was going to be okay. he let me lean my head on his hip when i wanted to sit, and when i got cold, he let me curl up next to him. usually, i'm very much afraid of hospitals, or any medical setting really. not that time. he was gentle with me in a way that not even my parents have been. that night i told him about many of the things that have happened to me in my life. he did not judge me. he was not disgusted. he just understood. we found out that we had to come back before noon the same day for a lung x-ray. they suspected i had a blood clot. so we did. when we walked out the doors that night, he gave me a big hug and a kiss on the cheek. he never complained about the lack of sleep that day. he never told me to stop complaining about the IV i had in my arm for several hours. he just wanted me to be okay. i did not have a blood clot. it was just the worst panic attack i have had to date. that week had just been too much for me.
it went on like that. we continued to see each other. send each other long messages. i started sitting on his lap sometimes, just to try it out and see how it felt. i liked it, but more than that, i think i needed it. sometimes it would fill me with melancholy. like something i had been deprived of in my childhood. strong arms that hold but do not hurt. it was what i had always been lacking. i was in love with him, but i also saw him as some kind of father figure. i told him this and he didn't mind. i was glad. i thought that maybe he would think it was gross in some way, but no. either way, it felt both good and terrifying to desperately hold on to him, arms around his neck. his arms around me, hand in my hair. he would run his fingers along my spine through my jacket. many times we sat like that on benches and rocks in the woods in different places. it always made me sad, but i never stopped wanting it. i could not believe that my decade of father-searching had finally come to fruition. the thought of it being taken away from me scared me, but so did the fact that i needed it. i had been without it for so long that i functioned without it, but that had changed. i didn't want him to know that i felt like a small child or injured animal in his arms. but it turned out he didn't mind that either. he liked me the way i was. and i liked him. a lot. every step felt massive. i didn't let him kiss me on the lips. having someone's face so close to mine scared me. it took me a while to be okay with lying close to each other. and even then i would only have it be on the couch, not the bed. fully clothed. eventually i let him put my hands under his shirt. then i let him touch me over mine. little by little, i stopped being so scared. he wanted us to do everyting my pace, but i refused to take initiative, so it was in his hands after all. and he didn't rush me. i got used to seeing him with his shirt off. touching his skin. it was smooth. i let him touch mine. it felt alright. i didn't know if i would ever want to go all the way, if that was the case, he would be okay with it.
i applied to hippie college. got in. felt nothing. i was stressed about everything. i still couldn't sleep or leave home when i wanted, because of the cat. i loved him dearly, but it was eating me alive. i knew he was going to have to be rehomed, but i did not want to give him to just anyone. one evening, my ex boyfriend was over for coffee. we got to talking about relationships. he had told me that he was looking forward to more time of our friendship, and that he felt we had made great progress in getting over each other. i was relieved. felt it was time to confess, let him know that my friend, whom he had never met, may be more than just a friend. i tried to do it in a tactful manner. and i think i did, but he freaked out anyway. i wanted to give him some time. tried to talk him through his insults towards me and my partner-to-be. i had patience, but it did not matter. he told me i had to choose between them, but that just felt silly. so he made the choice not to be my friend anymore. he felt as though i had wasted four years of his life. that is quite harsh, and i disagree. i miss having him as my friend sometimes, but i know i will get over it in time. it had to be like this. it's not really being friends if he can only do it when he feels like he owns part of me. it is what it is. he no longer says hello to me when we run into each other. it doesn't make me sad, but it is awkward, as we are neighbors. but it's for the best. he doesn't need to know what goes on in my life. it would crush him. he and i both were under the impression for the better part of a year that i was asexual. it turned out that i was not. eventually i started to enjoy being kissed and kissing back, even on the lips. scandalous, i know. the day came when we decided to go all the way. it hurt. a lot. but he was very respectful about it, and i had expected it to hurt. he made everything feel like it was my first time. falling in love, holding hands, kissing, being intimate. it's a very strange feeling. sex has never before been connected to love for me. it was to be avoided because it made me feel dirty. it's not like that anymore. now i can have it and still feel deserving of respect. and more importantly, receiving respect. i know he would never do anything to me that i don't want. my family has met him. they like him. i have met his family. they like me. it's going well. i never want to be with anyone else. i want to be nothing more than i want to be his girl. forever.
i rehomed my cat to my neighbor, but still i cannot sleep at night. school has been killing me. all the people and the long hours. i'm considering dropping out again and going down a different path. it seems that studying full time is not for me, and it never really has been. i'm just much more fragile now than i were when i was a child and young teenager. i must have been made of fucking stone back then, the way i could get through everything. since i hit the wall at sixteen the path i was on has seemingly been permanently blocked. and that's okay. i just need to find one that fits. or that i can pretend fits without it causing my death, i suppose. you can't have everything, as they say. the lord giveth and the lord taketh. i try not to ask for much. i don't need much. i just want to be able to live in a way that doesn't make me suffer as much. i can take a little suffering. a lot even, but not for long. (25/8/25)