• Python
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    1111 months ago

    I always had to hide the fact that I like to draw at home.

    First because I was doing kinda cringy anime drawings and didn’t want the ridicule, but at some point I actually got pretty good in a “classical art” sense. I couldn’t let my family find out even more after that, because my mother had already claimed drawing as “her thing”. She would have been absolutely awful to me due to jealousy (because that’s exactly what happens every time).

    She wasn’t even good at it, she just traced designs from the Internet because she has never been willing to take the critique & feedback that is necessary to actually become good at art. Her stuff literally looked like AI art nowadays, completely soulless and disinterested. She was always just after the praise of having drawn something, no matter the integrity of her work.

    At least it was easy to hide my interest. I’m still baffled how people can be such control freaks but also care so little? Like they found my graphic tablet in the back of my closet at some point, but totally accepted the excuse of “oh that’s just a thing to digitally sign pdfs”

  • @[email protected]
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    611 months ago

    Worst is when you realise so many others have the same passion, but they are misogynistic assholes about it so I can’t really enjoy it anymore…

  • @[email protected]
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    2911 months ago

    I too grew up in a southern military family. Interests other than football or otherwise hurting other people? That’s a paddlin

  • Rozaŭtuno
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    1911 months ago

    Thanks op, I really needed that psychic damage out of the blue.

  • @[email protected]
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    411 months ago

    Normal is defined, in this case, as what the majority of people experience. As opposed to what the majority of people think everyone else is experiencing. Meaning it’s normal to be ridculed by your family for trying to be yourself.

  • @[email protected]
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    411 months ago

    I loooove having hobbies. Unfortunately I can’t make a lot of them part of my identity or try and perform them publicly cause if my family catches wind of it it’ll suddenly become my least favorite thing to do.

  • @[email protected]
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    2311 months ago

    I don’t know about y’all but when I was in school there were only three kinds of kids; bullies, victims, and the ones who weren’t noteworthy enough to be victims most of the time. Nobody was immune to mockery, but at least occasionally people would have friends to stick up for them.

    • no banana
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      811 months ago

      After years of the school doing nothing, I punched my bully. That got me in trouble and I had to switch schools.

    • WalrusDragonOnABike [they/them]
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      1211 months ago

      Honestly wonder if I was just too oblivious to be bullied? Like, if you tried, I might just be too confused by what they were trying to accomplish that they just feel like they’re the one being made fun of? Like, I thought being gay was cool, so its not like you could use that as an insult for me. It would just be stolen valor. Guess it could fall into the group of “weren’t noteworthy enough to be victims.”

      There’s the stereotype of the quiet kid who eventually does a mass school shooting. That might also discourage would-be bullies, but doubt it.

      • Mossy Feathers (She/Her)
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        911 months ago

        I had people try to bully me. I was tall enough that most kids thought I was strong (I wasn’t, I struggled to build muscle even when I was a gymnast, but they didn’t know that), so they almost never tried anything physical. Furthermore, I was kinda too ADHD (or possibly autistic) for insults to work. They just didn’t register as something I was supposed to be offended by. In my head, that was just someone’s opinion or someone teasing (in hindsight they weren’t, but at the time I thought they were); for the former, “opinions are like assholes, everyone has one and most of them are full of shit” while I interpreted the latter as someone just trying to play around.

        People tended to just give up when they realized that they couldn’t find my buttons but I could find theirs very quickly.

        • WalrusDragonOnABike [they/them]
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          211 months ago

          I was tall enough that most kids thought I was strong (I wasn’t, I struggled to build muscle even when I was a gymnast, but they didn’t know that), so they almost never tried anything physical.

          As a small child, I was probably decently capable of holding my own enough to deter physical bulling. Starting in 8th grade, I was a good size to deter bulling and not big enough people took it as a challenge. So, never had anyone pull anything physical with me as far as I know.

          Also, was weirdly on good terms with a diverse crowd for reasons unknown to me. /shrug

  • Fleppensteyn
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    2611 months ago

    I still feel I need to hide when I am interested in something. Am I not the only one?

    • MacN'Cheezus
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      1811 months ago

      Definitely not, and the solution is to stop hanging out with people who ridicule or mock you for your interests and hobbies, and find those who admire and/or encourage you instead.

        • MacN'Cheezus
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          411 months ago

          Once you’re an adult, you have no obligation to spend any time with your parents if they do not appreciate you for who you are.

          Unless you still live at home, that is, in which case, you should probably fix that first.

      • @[email protected]
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        711 months ago

        You can’t just find different friends. You just meet people by chance, so you have to be loyal to people no matter how much of an asshole they are.

        • MacN'Cheezus
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          811 months ago

          What if I told you you do not have to be loyal to people who don’t respect you?

          • @[email protected]
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            011 months ago

            A very small part of people who I call friends are people, who I actually care about. I’m just forced to communicate with others to get important info I need for school.

            • MacN'Cheezus
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              311 months ago

              Well, people you HAVE to see for professional reasons aren’t your friends, and you shouldn’t really care what they think about your hobbies or interests.

              • @[email protected]
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                111 months ago

                At school, it’s different, than at work, as children/teens (including me) are generally less mature, which means most of them don’t help you or inform you unless they benefit from it. TLDR: I make people think they are my friends because I’m forced to.

                • MacN'Cheezus
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                  11 months ago

                  Okay, I understand that, and that’s fine, everyone has people like that in their lives at some point.

                  But if you KNOW they aren’t really your friends, why would you complain that they don’t act like they are?

                  You can just ignore the first part of my advice (about not spending time with them) because it doesn’t apply to this situation, but you should probably still try and find people who you can actually be friends with based on your hobbies and interests.

        • Flying Squid
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          311 months ago

          Apart from what other people have pointed out- what if one of your friends does great harm to another of your friends? How do you stay loyal to both of them?

          • @[email protected]
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            011 months ago

            You pretend to be on the side of both of them, but it could fall apart very quickly. So I don’t do it anymore. I just make my own arguments and side with the victim.

            • Flying Squid
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              211 months ago

              So you were lying to your friends about having their back? That makes you the bad friend.

              • @[email protected]
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                11 months ago

                Yes, that’s kind off true. I don’t lie to them about having their back, I lie to them about my opinion as I try to avoid conflict. I don’t do it against my actual friends, just to people I’m forced to communicate with to function in society.

                • Flying Squid
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                  311 months ago

                  What is the difference between your friends and your actual friends? Because I thought we were talking about your friends and I also thought that friends are actual friends.

        • @[email protected]
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          711 months ago

          Nah this is completely wrong, move your body to somewhere else where there are different people. Interact with them. That’s it, you have a different social circle now. Find a new hobby or pick up an old one in a different place, decline to hang out with people who ridicule you and invite people who do not.

        • @[email protected]
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          511 months ago

          You should be loyal to people, they might also be afraid to show their interest in the stuff you like. But don’t stick to them “no matter what”. That can bring you into dark places.

          Enforcing boundaries helps, talking about things helps, but sucking it up and abandoning people seemingly willy-nilly will leave you alone and angsty pretty fast. So will just taking everything from an asshole.

          I don’t have an answer to finding friends yet. Try going to social stuff about the things you like. If you have stuff you deliberately hide then try not to go to those things first, as the shame might make you lash out at potential friends. Wait till you can come to terms with yourself.

          • @[email protected]
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            11 months ago

            This is actually inspirational, but the point of the post is, that you are on terms with yourself, but you know they won’t respect you.

    • Flying Squid
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      811 months ago

      Just yesterday, my teenage daughter (not trying to say anything about your maturity level here) said to me that she didn’t like it when I talked about anime because she thought the word was embarrassing. She really likes anime, but she is embarrassed about it because even though she knows anime is fairly mainstream now, she likes more obscure stuff.

      I told her that apart from it being a perfectly acceptable word to describe the art form both in and outside Japan, if you spend time worrying about what people think of your interests, you’re wasting time you could spend on those interests- and actually stopping yourself from doing it. And then while you’re doing it, you’re wasting time feeling bad for enjoying yourself when you could just be enjoying yourself.

      On top of that, if a friend is going to judge you for your interests, maybe they’re not really a friend. And everyone else? Fuck them. They have to share the Earth with you regardless and if they don’t like it, that’s their problem.

  • Echo Dot
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    911 months ago

    I remember I had to fain interest in various sports which supposedly I’m supposed to care about. What do I have for the local team won or lost?