Ok, ok, fine, I'll follow the trend and do a proper introduction.
So as you've probably learned by this point, my name is Crystal, formerly known as Apollo, I joined GameWinners officially in June of 2001, but I was very much present before that time, lurking and browsing the cheats sections. Number 22057
. I had been a part of several forums before GW, but none of them really struck a chord with me as a place I wanted to dedicate a lot of time to until GW. I started interacting within the WWF No Mercy forum and slowly but surely spread to more and more forums and very quickly GW went from a place to talk shop about No Mercy to a forum home. It became special, somewhere I could come and chat with friends I enjoyed talking to. I clung to that hard and worked to become a part of the GW fabric. Eventually I got the chance for a mod vote for Classic Systems, I passed and was added in November 2001. I stayed on as a mod, essentially in the background, until 2005 when my issues with depression went from bad to extreme. I kept a small forum project open so I still had a little connection to forums, but inside I was a mess. Online, offline I was shutting down. It took everything I had to put on the smiling face and be happy around anyone that contacted me for a chat. I went to college, earned a degree, wasn't satisfied, so I earned another. I wrapped myself up in coursework so I didn't have to face reality. I wracked up debt because of it, but managed to get my Masters of Science in Information Technology with a concentration on Systems and Information Security. Sounds impressive, it really isn't.
Not long after I started working for a small business as a Java programmer, porting legacy software to new code, it was loan origination software for banks, and not long after that I was helping develop the newest versions. I made a good living, I enjoyed the workload, I had great benefits, but none of it mattered, I was miserable, depressed, fighting within myself each and every day to keep moving forward. I rejoined GW, even got re-promoted to moderator, and then super moderator somehow. Then admin when Ben left, but for all I put back into GW I still felt lost, worthless, empty. I knew things about myself that needed addressed, but I couldn't be open about them. Anyway, long story short I was a bundle of blah waiting to explode and trying my best to put on a happy face while around the forums. My lone accomplishment within GW history was my ability to convince Al to let me convert the forums XenForo, to get us away from antiquated vB3 software that had known exploits. We did that, and within what felt like a couple of months we were given the winding up order from Al. So I guess that makes me responsible for the downfall of our home. Go me? I would linger on the FB group and the Reddit group, but...eh...they're no fun. Five years later I decided enough's enough, started this forum on a whim and now I'm responsible for forcing all of you back into this addiction that is forum life
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Now for the "if I can be serious for a minute" section, I guess. There's a part of me that has been present for as long as I can remember, something I started to recognize very early in life, and yet also learned to hide because I was taught just how badly the nail that sticks out gets hammered. I grew up with a father that was among the nastiest, most bigoted people you could imagine. I had a brother who hated my father (half brother, different dads), and therefore hated me because I was his kid and also wasn't a particularly masculine child...so I got a lot of beatings from him. 5 years old, that was when I first heard the f-word as it pertains to people of a certain orientation. Barely learned the basics of the English language and my brother, 24 at the time, introduces that as a means to torment me. He was a delightful person. He got married, had two kids, treated all of them like absolute garbage, they all left him, are living with someone FAR better as a father figure, and my brother decided to mix drugs and alcohol one night in 2019 and killed himself. Meanwhile, because of my own issues, my own social and general anxiety, my dysthymia and yes, a result of trauma from his abuse and my own inner demons, I developed a persistent suicidal ideation, a need to try and end my life. I made several attempts, but it wasn't until just before my brother dying that I finally had enough. I put the razor to my skin, tried to blank my brain and...nothing. I cried. I went into such a state I essentially cried myself catatonic and spent the night staring at the ceiling wondering why I couldn't. I decided the next day to find a therapist. I talked to my primary care, explained that situation and that I needed help finding someone, I also told her a truth I had been keeping in since childhood, something I knew needed dealt with now or it would be the death of me, and she bluntly told me she couldn't help me. So I started calling every therapist I could find, several told me they aren't taking new patients, but many more told me they don't offer services for what I was looking for. 30 tries later, I found him. My therapist. He's amazing, he's an extremely open person, he understands a decent amount of where I'm coming from, and he introduces coping strategies for a lot of different issues. Then we got down to it, for the first time in my life I told someone who I was. What I was. We spent an hour talking about everything. He helped me find a new primary care doctor, as well, and I made an appointment with him.
December 7th of that year, I finally became truthful with myself. I took the first step on a road I didn't want to take, but had to. I told my doctor, went over my therapy sessions and my therapist's recommendations and walked away with two prescriptions and as a brand new person. I came out to a small group of friends online, then a small group of...now former friends in person. That wasn't pleasant. But I finally came out as trans, as me. The long road started. It's had a lot of ups and downs...a lot of very bad downs...but you keep pushing on. We all have struggles, and I won't deny that the current political climate has made things worse from an anxiety standpoint, where it feels like your entire existence is constantly being invalidated by old men in a chamber blabbering on about a subject they know nothing about. I digress, that was the time where I started officially living a double life. Why, you ask? Well, because as liberated as new me had become by finally living to be me, I had quit my job 5 years prior to look after my mother who is suffering from dementia. It's been 7 years now and she is so far gone that it's hard to just keep her from screaming bloody murder at you most days. I don't wish dementia on anyone, not even my worst enemies, I can think of no worse way to spend your final years, scared and feeling alone because you have no idea what's going on. I know people think it's an amazing thing to quit a high paying job to make minimum wage for 26 hours a week looking after your mother as a certified caregiver, which is in reality a 24/7 job, but it isn't anything special on my part, just what anyone would do for their parent. It hurts having to live with a bigoted father and therefore having to live a double life, because I can't afford a place of my own anymore, but I am medically transitioning (and I can't lie, it is getting very difficult to hide certain things from them at this stage, so I can only imagine it's a matter of time before that situation explodes) and present as my real self to select people and to the internet (my sisters both know and are both supportive, my wider family are supportive, I've gained a lot of new friends since coming out, and found out some of my long terms friends are also trans or have come out of trans in recent times, which is amazing!), so there are moments of normalcy in amongst the chaos. So there you go. That's how boring Apollo became even more boring Crystal. As I've said elsewhere, I'm an open book on the trans stuff, you want to know, ask. I can't speak for all of us, I can just speak for me, but I'll answer.
There we go, me mashed down into a few paragraphs that are rambly and stream of thought-ish...whoo?
