Before you delete this immediately, because I know you will:

I'm a grade 11 male in Ohio. When I was 11, my dad died in a car accident. He got t-boned by a semi. I got to see my mom crying for the first time. Ever. It broke me. Shortly after, I found out I was prediabetic from eating for comfort. I developed social anxiety and hid myself from everyone. I didn't know who I was anymore.

When I was 12, I found something interesting. Normally, when I found an interesting community, I hid because I was afraid of embarrassing myself. But this was different. They wanted me to be part of the community. That'd never happened before. You can probably infer what this community was. It was a heartwarming feeling. After a while, they helped me feel human again. They gave me confidence to go outside and try to communicate with other people for once.

I'm not mad about this subreddit. I'm not disappointed either. I guess "somber" is the only word I can think of. The SRD community made me a genuinely better human. Yes, the community is often smug and arrogant. So is everyone else. In my mind, it's smug because it's enlightened. We look at the same damn faces everyday. Eyes, nose, yada yada. If you've seen one, you've seem them all. But SRD users are like a fuckin confetti cannon of difference.

I just hoped I gave a little bit of insight into this whole thing. I wish it wasn't like this, I wish the internet as a whole had a sliver of human decency. I guess that's what I get for being an idealist lol.

Oh, and if you post this message in any subreddit, please leave my name in the post. Link me to it, in fact. It'll let me know that my post meant enough to someone for it to end up somewhere else.