If Happiness/Won’t Come to Me/Hand Me the Nitrous Gas

It’s a ghost town here now, and the active users that dominate are quickly coalescing into that kind of smug pack of libertarians with too much time and energy for expostulating that dominates reddit.

It’s wild to think that my awkward, ill-fitted teen years were probably the safest and most liked I’ve ever been and I only had to pay for it with my personality and giving up the truth. I mostly am unconcerned about being unlikeable. I get it. People expect conformity and social smoothing, and I only get worse at both. My social signalling and posturing only gets worse as I age, and I have less and less patience for low-effort positions and empathy gaps presented as strengths. It only gets worse as I have finally found the words, the history and the facts of my gender. It only gets worse and more dangerous and it’s really not just online, is it. It’s fine that no one is ever going to like me anywhere, not really. If danger didn’t come with it, I would really mind very little.

I’m willing to socialize less and less in person, too, because the drain is so profound. I suppose it’s only a matter of time before I implode like Shirley Jackson did and the townsfolk finally come for me.