sanity

Sanity is a very precious thing. Most of my life I've tried to be a rather sane human. I follow social most social norms, and I have a decent group of close friends. Something weird happened to me recently. I would have never expected it. I went to see a psychologist, who then diagnosed me with Aspergers. It's pretty weird to think about honestly. You never wake up and think "Oh shit, am I literally retarded?" It just sort of falls into your lap.

I don't believe that I'm autistic. I refuse to believe it.

The inevitable, stereotypical post about depression.

There's probably a million blog posts on thousands of blogs talking about depression. They start out slow, maybe give a sad story and talk about how at the end it was all turned into sunshine. Seriously, fuck that shit. Depression doesn't just 'get better' after a week of hanging out with friends. Snorting a line of coke won't magically cure you, it will just make your brain bleed enough to trick you into feeling a certain way for a little bit. There is no 'cure' for depression.

Earlier this week one of my close friends took his own life. He walked to the store, bought some rope and a ladder. No one questioned his purchase. He went home, and promptly ended his own life. He didn't write a suicide note. He didn't give closure to anyone. He had been struggling with depression for longer then I have. After a certain point you don't turn to consoling for help, you turn to a gun or a rope.

Consoling sucks. Seriously, whoever elects these people into power are batshit crazy. I'll give a little break down of what my "Therapist" did during the meeting:

50%: "Let me go run into the other room and talk to another patient."
20%: "Let me check my iphone, gotta text someone real quick"
20%: "How are you paying for this? Let me make sure you have the right amount of money."
10%: "Why don't you take more Vitamin D?"

Honestly I'm starting to think that the whole thing is a scam. No one takes depression seriously, even though it's a leading cause of death among Americans. I'm disgusted by how the system works.

I used to be a goober.

I started collecting money from online jobs about two years ago. It was a really odd shift. Prior to this I simply did everything for free. I never really thought I could monetize my skill set. Roughly this time two years ago, someone offered me 100$ for a pretty simple job. It took me about three days, (I probably should have charged 500$+ but I had no idea what to ask for back then. ) working about 8 hours a day. I think I just skipped school to work, lol.

I was really excited when I was finished. I provided the client with the information, and he asked what method I'd like to receive the money through. I only thought of two options at this point, western union and the now defunct Liberty Reserve. (I should have learned about Bitcoin earlier...)
I chose to take Western Union, since it would give me the cash IRL. I was still pretty shitty at exchanging during this time. I gave him my full name, and other info for him to send me the money. (I used to be seriously dumb.)

I toiled for three more more days trying to collect the hundred bucks. The first day, I went to two banks that had a giant sign for Western Union. They both only let you send payments, not receive. This made me a solid 8/10 mad. I mean, wtf? Seriously? You're going to advertise that you have a WU center, but don't state that you only let people send money? I didn't even have a car at this time, so they were both very long walks.

I ended up just calling a bunch of places in my town that had WU centers. I found one that let you actually receive payments. It wouldn't be open until tomorrow, so I had some time to think this over. "Oh dear god what if he carded it..." "What if it was a sting?! I'll surly be arrested!" I used to be a wimp. The next morning, even though my mind was screaming at me that this was a bad idea, I walked over to the WU center.

I grabbed the paper that let me receive payments.  I was slowly dying of fear the whole time. It was my first time collecting WU. The sketchy source of the money only made the cold shiver of fear that was running down my spine greater. After I finished filling it out, I gave it to the employee. She grabbed it, smiled, and went into another room with it. "OH SHIT, OH SHIT, I'M FUCKING DONE" Why else would she be going in the room? I stood in the front of the stand, cold with fright. I decided not to bolt, as they already had my information and could just do a controlled arrest at my school. I stuck through, I will collect this fucking hundred dollars. After about ten minutes, she came back out with 100. "Sign here please" After a quick signature, she handed me the 100$.

I bought some magic the gathering cards with it.
10/10, would do again.

I'll always miss you.

I've been online for an ungodly amount of time. I don't think I actually started meeting other players online until I was about six or seven. I remember playing this old-school game called "MillsBerry." God, I miss that game. I remember playing with a few of my other elementary school friends. Each day we would goof around and try to make enough money to buy a floating car. The thing about the game though, is that there is no in game chat system. You can't send messages to another player, either. You could only chose to send one of a few dozen pre-written post cards. They just said "Happy birthday" or "Get better!" or other pre-determined western phrases. Me and my friends never exchanged emails or anything, because hey, we'll just talk at school tomorrow. At this time I was still living with my father, whom was a raging alcoholic. He was a very evil person. I would be welcomed home from school with a beer bottle thrown at my head. My mother was so psychologically damaged that she didn't understand that she was being abused. One day she mustered up the strength to run away from him. She packed a bunch of our clothes, and abruptly picked us up from school. She instructed us to pack whatever we wanted to keep, and we left. I never got to say good bye to my school friends.

We still had one line of communication, though. Millsberry. Once we found a new place to live on the other side of the country, and regained a internet connection, I went ahead and logged into my account. I saw probably a hundred messages from my old friends. They had to chose which of a few dozen messages to send to me. Most of them just said "get well soon." I tried to reply with whatever I could to communicate. We had no way to talk. We could only say "hello" "you're cool" and other simple messages. I was never able to say my email or anything of value. We would continue to exchange these message for several years. About two years ago I came home and became filled with melancholy. The game had shut down. The servers were pulled down, and I had no way to talk to my old friends. I cried.

Hurrah, a blog.

Alright, I'm tired of using my signature on HF to post about what's going on in my life. I've decided to just use a blog. I'll eventually move this over to my own site. I'm feeling too ill to do that right now though. I guess I'll just use this as a way to reach out to my friends, customers, and random people who find this site. I'll do personal updates from what's going on with me, both online and off. Basically it'll be a blog talking about my life as an awkward teenaged hacker. I'll try and make daily updates.