DaviM703

(TW: depression, anxiety, suicidality, self-harm) Hi everyone. Happy Mental Health Awareness Month! So, I was looking through the forums, and I'm not sure if there's a thread like this already but I think it would be good for us to have a place to talk about mental health. I don't talk about this much but I've struggled a lot with mental health for many years. It started in middle school when I was having trouble figuring out what I wanted and thought I should be getting into a romantic relationship since that was what I had been told to want at that age. It got worse when some of my best friends got into relationships, and I started feeling more isolated as a result. I became depressed and started feeling the need for more contact with single friends, which ended up being too much for them. I was having trouble at my school as a result so I ended up going to a short-term program early in high school designed to help students going through something, then another program for students with mental health issues where I stayed for the rest of high school. During this time I felt isolated and felt like I couldn't fit into any group of people without wanting a romantic relationship, which I figured out around this time that I didn't. A little after this, I had another friend who withdrew herself from me when she got a boyfriend, and I became suicidal and went to the hospital for it around this time. A little later, I had a highly toxic friendship with someone who first acted like she wanted to talk to me all the time and then suddenly withdrew from me a lot but still kept manipulating me into staying best friends with her and not actively seeking other friends. She would cut herself and send me pictures to manipulate me in various ways, and I started cutting myself around this time as well. My mom and therapist kept telling me in an invalidating way that they thought this friendship was secretly a romantic relationship, which certainly didn't help my mental health either. Eventually this person just stopped talking to me, which hurt at the time but I honestly think it was the best thing for both me and her. For a while I was still damaged by that friendship in a way that made it hard to maintain other friendships, but I think not being as close to anyone outside my family for a while was actually helpful with that. Soon after that I started going to my local community college, where I found some support, especially from one of my professors, but still didn't have a lot of connections for a lot of the time, which I avoided noticing by focusing on my classes. I still have anxiety and sometimes depression, but it's gotten a lot better than in high school, and I haven't been self-harming since starting college, though I still have the scars which I have been wearing long sleeves to hide even though they're not that noticeable anymore. I think discussions about this are important and not had enough. I would just like everyone to remember that mental health is nothing to be ashamed of and it's okay to get help if you ever need it.

I'm out to pretty much everyone including my family, and they are generally accepting now but they previously didn't believe me because of how I had seemed to know that I wanted a romantic relationship before, not getting that that came from the external influences of the media and what they had taught me. My parents have definitely become more accepting of me than they once were, and I think they have also adjusted their views of romantic relationships and marriage a little bit so they don't see them as an essential part of life for everyone.

I'm out to pretty much everyone at my school, because pretty much everyone there is accepting and I want to promote visibility in any way I can.

There is a Facebook group called Aromantic Talk. It mainly works by someone posting something and others can comment on it. I don't think it's really a chat but maybe a chat could be created in it.

That's definitely possible. I'm pretty sure I'm not totally asexual, but I'm really not interested in kissing, at least not on the mouth, for any reason. And don't feel like you have to tolerate anything that makes you uncomfortable. There are definitely people who feel the same way as you. There are whole cultures where kissing is uncommon and even that view it negatively (Source: http://www.soc.ucsb.edu/sexinfo/article/some-culturally-based-differences-sexual-activity), which I think shows that kissing doesn't have to be a part of sex.

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One good one is Me, Myself, and I by G-Eazy and Bebe Rexha.

Another one I would suggest adding is Me, Myself, and I by G-Eazy and Bebe Rexha.

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I love hugs and cuddling if it's with the right people. I said sometimes for kisses because I'm fine with little kisses but not on my mouth, and I'll give little kisses on the head to people I cuddle with.

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