haven't been here in a hot second... long post under the cut, mostly me gushing about my friends lol
for the longest time i felt really lonely. i never felt like i fit with my friends. straight, cis and neurotypical with partners and 2.5 kids. hobbies: dinner dates with other couples, their kids hobbies and "treating themselves" by taking a bath when their partners are away on business trips and the kids are sleeping (and then a snapchat arrives with "treating myself didn't last long haha" and a pic of their toddler awake). i didn't fit into what the "standard" core family adult looked like. my hobbies were looked down on a bit, i was asked at one point if i ever thought to outgrow video games... it was lonely but didn't have much choice than to accept it.
so fall 2023 i follow a guy on TikTok, a cosplayer, and he creates a discord. i decide to join it as soon as it starts and three days later i was asked to become a mod (which later turned to an admin role). and this guy and the other admins, they are what i've been looking for my entire life. this is my found family, these people are the friends i was meant to have all along.
everything i ever wanted in my life, connections, friends, travel - i have. last time i had traveled was in 2011. And then I didn't have any money because of studies and when I did have money - no one to travel with. and now in the past 6 months I have been to the US twice. i've been to cons and cosplayed, went to Disney and Universal. I traveled on my own from Sweden to meet up with my friends in the US. And while we've technically only met twice - it has never felt odd or like I'm seeing strangers. it's like my soul settles down after being restless. despite being very introverted, this last trip to MegaCon i've spent 11 days in the company of them and never once felt drained or like i wanted to be alone.
i have never met more loving and caring people in my life and i finally feel like i belong. i never feel too much or too odd. we are all queer in some ways (a lovely mix of pan/bi, trans and non-binary) and all my "oddities" are accepted because it aligns with what most likely is some kind of undiagnosed neurodivergence (not to self-diagnose but i'm a 90s kid and girls were rarely diagnosed with anything back then). even though im still physically alone, i am not lonely. i hate that we all live so far away from one another but at least i have them in my life.
