First Post

I am a 31 year old man. The word "man" there doesn't always feel right - not because I feel atypical in regards to gender, but because of the maturity that it implies. I think the reasons why will become clearer to readers and to myself as I write here.

I've wanted to write for a long time. It's something that I was good at in school, but I've never known what to write about outside of the boundaries that are provided by a school assignment. Even if I did know what to write about - my own ideas, for example - I'd be too embarrassed to. I am very afraid of what people think of me. I am opinionated and think deeply about things, but I change my mind a lot and it would feel hard to take something back after posting it publicly.

They say that if you want to write, you should write about what you know. Sometimes I feel as though I know everything, most of the time as if I know nothing. At this age I think I am finally beginning to know myself, and so I'm going to write about myself - anonymously.

I was at a music festival this past weekend with my partner and some friends I don't get to see often enough. I first met these people in university, but I didn't become friends with them until years later while living in Vancouver. They are hands down the soundest group of people I've ever had the privilege of belonging to. What's important to know for this blog post is that they're friends I made as an adult. On the Friday night of this festival, we took mdma together, and I was delighted to become closer with one of the girls in the group with whom I've spent the least one-on-one time with. We started our bonding conversation by acknowledging that we've never had any "sidequests" together, which led to us exchanging many friendly compliments and and lots admiration for one another. It was lovely. She's someone who I was quite afraid of meeting in the beginning because of the social circle she ran with in college and how I perceived them - or rather, how I worried about how they perceived me - but we'll talk about that another time. For now, I want to talk specifically about one thing: having this lovely chat with her gave me the urge to tell the whole group about how I was bullied as a child and teenager.

This is something I think about often. I've made a lot of new friends in my adult years and almost all of them are people who didn't grow up in the same town as me. They have no knowledge of who I was or what I was like in my youth, and I often feel that if they did it would explain some of the behaviours, opinions and feelings I've exhibited in front of them. I spent a lot of my mid-twenties thinking I had conquered my past because I had gained confidence and social status, but I've since learned that it isn't something you can cleanly confine to "back then" - it lives with you forever and shapes who you are. That doesn't have to be a negative thing, but the longer I go on without sharing this with these people, the more I feel they can't truly know me.

It might not be a big deal at the end of the day, but the urge to share it is powerful. For that reason I've decided to start this blog. The next post will document my experience as a target of bullying, or at least the beginning of it. And where we go from there - who knows. If you've read this post, thank you - I hope it read well, and I hope you'll come back to read more.