I need to get this off my chest, and HBHC seems to be the perfect place to let it go. I've read quite a few posts in HBHC, and I thought I'd share my experiences, and why I feel broken.
To start off, when I was around 2, my sister was born, and about a year after, my mother passed away because of cancer. I can't recall which type, but it was a form of cancer. So straight off the bat, I don't know what it's like to have a real mother.
For school life, the first time going to nursery I remember it being really awkward. I only really had one friend during that time. I just kept to myself mostly and drew. I'd always wanted to be an artist like my dad
Drawing was really the only thing I really did. It was really fun.
However, I then started primary school after finishing nursery. Now, I wasn't the skinniest of people, and hadn't got any friends since my friend from nursery had moved houses and schools. So I got bullied a lot. While certainly becoming sad, I found myself becoming incredibly violent towards these bullies. I was bigger and stronger than them, yet they persisted to bully me. Only after beating them up did they stop (apart from a couple) but it didn't help socially. Everyone seemed scared of me, throwing an occasional nasty remark at me. I remember becoming so violent that I actually hit girls (which, by the way, I am incredibly ashamed of doing. As I learned from Rin's route, making a girl cry is the most despicable thing you can do) whenever they bullied me. I remember becoming friends with a Polish guy at one point, and then another Polish guy soon after. Didn't last incredibly long, one of them moved away, and I kept fighting (verbally and physically) with the other. I also remember becoming friends with two incredibly friendly twins (I must mention also, when I wasn't angry I was regarded as a nice person, but a bit dumb). I had fights with them too and I can't remember the reason. Our school then got planned to be knocked down/used for something else, so a new school was built. It was at this new school that I got a knack for drawing again, and did it with every chance I got. This was around Year 4 in primary school, I think. Unfortunately, this school was also where I had a fight with the Polish guy again and actually scratched skin off of his head, leaving a scar, and then becoming known as 'savage' or 'berserk' whenever I got into a fight. It was also around this time where I became really self-conscious about myself and guilty about all the things I'd done to people, eventually developing depression, and then, somehow, leading to somniphobia.
I remember this phobia causing me to cry almost everyday because I was so scared to go to sleep. Eventually I stopped crying, but the fear was still there. This fear turned my life upside down. I practically stopped drawing, became extremely anti-social, and never exercised or did anything productive ever. Just sit on my ass and play video games and eat food all day. I pretty much did this up until high school, 9th year when we got to choose a subject to study. Obviously, I chose art, and actually chose music along with it because it was the most interesting besides art for me. During high school I managed to get into a group of friends and got somewhat more social, but not much. I was still, almost every night, suffering from panic attacks due to fear of sleeping, causing me to be very tired the next day. To be honest, my life pretty much came to a standstill. I had quite a number of friends, sure. And my grades were above average in most classes. But my art skills were not taken seriously at all, my art teachers getting more and more annoyed that even though I was better than pretty much everyone else in the Art class, I wasn't taking anything seriously due to my chronic worrying caused by my somniphobia. And my fitness and diet were terrible. I never got out and all I ate was crap. I thought I'd just end up as a depressed, jobless guy who's actually scared of going to sleep.
I then found good ol' Katawa Shoujo.
At first, when my friend was playing it, I pretty much had the same reaction as everyone else who hears of it. "Pfft, a dating sim with disabled girls? Are you serious, mate?". But, I decided to play it one day, seeing as I had nothing better to do.
The story captivated me instantly, and my first route was Lilly, getting the neutral ending. After, I went for Rin's route, which, I have to say, pretty much changed my life from that point on.
Since getting the good ending for Rin, I've been drawing and creating art like crazy, like I'd been struck by a lightning bolt. I came out with a fantastic final piece of art for my GCSE Art that I'm really proud of and got an 'A'. Funnily enough, it was based on jellyfish, and their bio-luminescence. However, I still had somniphobia. Even after I became really enthusiastic about art and my social level shot up, I still had chronic worrying and was still scared of sleep. And unfortunately, ever since I moved to a new school since my other one got closed down just like my primary school did, my panic attacks are getting worse, and worse. I find myself becoming an incredibly angry person just like when I was younger and wanting to hurt those who take the piss out of me. Thankfully, I refrain from using violence, but that anger is always there and it feels horrible. And now, my panic attacks are getting worse. I worry about if my art is good enough, if the people who care for me actually care for me, if my step-mum and father are proud of me or not, and the worst thing I worry about is if I will ever find love or not. Being alone without someone to love is one of my scariest thoughts. While I enjoy isolating myself and listening to music to ignore others, I still find it scary not being able to love someone. So now, I feel as if my mind is tearing apart and I'm scared that at some point I might go insane.
Right now, as I'm typing this, it's 2am on a school day. I'm having a horrible panic attack about sleeping, and I need something to take my mind off of it. I thought posting my problem here would help, and it has. I've calmed down a bit.
If you took the time to read all this, thank you.
(P.S. I sometimes wish I could go back in time and shout at and punish my younger self because of how many people I hurt. I'm really ashamed of the things I did, but sadly, they can't be 'un-done'.
