First off, I'm 16 years old and I'm male. Also, this will likely be very long.

The following is a post I made in the past that I really didn't get replies to, with slight edits to reflect my current mentality, and to protect the identity of people I've mentioned.

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Lately, I've been going through very hard times and am generally just unhappy with my life. Through all of elementary and middle school, and most of my life at home, I've lived through hell. At my first school, I have been viewed as the smart kid who gets good grades and knows a lot, but I've never been able to pull of straight A's or anything like that. I tried being nice and communicating with people, but for whatever reason I was made fun of by a lot of people, backstabbed by many, and pissed off with a lot of people as well. At times, I would break into crying habits in school or into fits of rage where I end up swearing and getting punished by my teachers. There was no social worker or anything of the sort at that school, so I just had to suck it up and deal with it. At that school, I did have one friend that I shared very geeky interests with (Pokemon for example, and he also got me to like Sonic the Hedgehog a little), but overall he was a moron. When I talked to him about getting him into stuff I liked, like video games or something imaginative that I found fun, he would frequently misunderstand or would get pissed over nothing, or he would try those things in half-assed attempts. One time I got extremely mad at him over something that I can't remember since it's been so long, but I forgave him and we were friends for a while. Over the next few years we kinda kept in touch, but then we stopped talking to each other.

Later when my family moved and I've gone to 5th grade, things seemed better. Since I was new, no one knew me and I had a chance to reinvent myself. It worked somewhat, I made a few friends within a few weeks of school, but my excessive kindness and overall wanting to belong started to get on their nerves apparently and I started to be made fun of yet again. Despite that, I somehow kept forgiving them. I even came over to a few of their houses to have fun, and to a certain extent they had a good time with me. However, I had a bad habit of swearing at their, but I would do it rather discreetly so their parents didn't hear. I was rather successful at it too. At school though, when the teasing got so excessive I couldn't take it, I would swear and get myself in trouble again. My classroom also had a policy that when you miss a day of homework, you would get detention for lunch and have to get your parents to sign a form. There were several incidents where that happened, and my parents were quite angry with me about it. They would also get very angry with me when I don't get high B's or A's (I got a 75% on a test once, and my mom bitched at me for several hours). I understand she wants me to do well, but I'm not perfect.

Eventually throughout that year, many people knew me and consequently, I had a lot more enemies that teased me. One day, it was so bad that I was pretty much humiliated by my entire grade level when we were outside for recess, that I ended up staying outside a while when they have already gone inside to cry, but the teachers fetched me and I told them what happened. Since then, I've been shown to the school's social worker, and have been labeled by the school district as a problem child that needed social counseling. I've told things like wanting to be popular so I had no enemies, or to be perfect so everyone would admire me. I wanted to be perfect mainly because I've been criticized a lot by my family if I made mistakes at home, and at school I sometimes would burst into tears when I was unable to do certain tasks (like simple art, cutting out colored paper shapes and making a drawing of it because I found those things hard), and if I did excessively bad on a test or quiz I would cry a little as well. Overall, most of my childhood was wasted by being an oversensitive crybaby. From my experiences that year, I broke off my ties with the people I thought were my friends.

In middle school, it wasn't much different. A lot of the same people were with me, although a handful of new ones. I made friends with this one guy who was your general popular guy - witty, funny, good looking, athletic (he played football), and I thought he was a nice guy. Near the beginning of the year, he invited me to his house, but I didn't feel like I could trust him so I declined. Over the year, we would talk more often as we had mostly the same classes, and we liked each other pretty well. Despite that, I had more groups of people at school that would tease me, and the same habit of getting very angry in class would ensue. At times crying as well. 6th grade was particularly bad, because last year, people would ask me things about where I come from (Poland), and one popular question was "were there black people there." Truthfully, I would answer them "no" because where I lived, there really weren't. I wasn't saying it to be racist but just to answer their question. Although, it was sort of hard to get used to people of different nationalities and races in America since in Poland, everyone is Polish and there is absolutely no variation in the demography. When I was angry with some kids that they got sent to the social worker to help talk things out, one kid mentioned that I told them there were no black people in Poland. So for that year, my social worker labeled me as a racist and tried to change that. Of course, she would help me with my other problems of being teased, wanting to be popular, and my perfectionism. Still though, I despised her labeling me like that, as well as my classmates who always teased me for the dumbest reasons. I had a habit that if I saw something funny, I would crack up a little and then kids started to ask me if I had AIDS, because to them it was defined as a disease that makes a person gay and one of it's major symptoms was having a laugh for what appears to be no apparent reason. They would always ask, no matter how much I denied it. Also with that, I thought AIDS really made people gay and that they were scum of the earth.

When that year was over, I joined an online forum over the summer about one of the games I used to play, and one of their members turned out to be gay. When he mentioned it, I posted hoping he was joking. At that moment, most of the members jump to his defense and I'm told that I'm wrong for thinking what I did about gays and what I've been lied to about AIDS. Being the excessively kind person I was, I was very apologetic and things managed to work out, and learned that gay people are no different than straight people, other than what they do in bed, heh. Also learned that AIDS is completely unrelated, and it's an STD that can affect both. I was a member of that forum board for about a year or two before I lost interest to other things. More on that later.

The next year, I stopped being friends with that guy from last year because he was reunited with his old friends in all his classes, so I was conveniently disposed of as I was no longer needed. I also had a new social worker, and I started to see a trend that the school had new social workers every year. This one was even worse though. He was some family man who seemed to believe in blind optimism and really did nothing to help me with my problems. Whenever I had concerns about something, he would interrupt me with the command, "Smile." He's a social worker, you're supposed to listen to people and help them, not shrug off their concerns and spout your mouth about how perfect your family life is. Through that year, I really had no friends other than classmates. I had good grades and all, and would spend my life out of school at home playing video games to pass the time. One day, my brother came home from work with a new game that would at times take over my life: World of Warcraft. I usually never played games my brother liked because we were polar opposites, but this one was really cool and I liked it a lot when I tried it. Since then, I've stopped playing my other games and devoted most of my time on the computer to WoW to level my character. Over 7 months, I reached the level cap at the time (60), and was still doing well in school. I had good grades in my classes, and also with my interest in WoW I made two new friends. We'll call them A and B. B showed genuine interest because he liked the Warcraft games and lore, and I did too. I haven't played the games, but I watched my brother play them and knew some things about the lore and stuff. However, I was really obsessed about it and he got pissed at me for talking about that all the time. A on the other hand was a moron. He said stupid things all the time, made annoying facial and hand gestures, plus he lied about playing WoW and well, I got mad over it. However, I'd say that that was one of my good years in school due to the lack of trouble overall. Since I had so much free time, I took another move that in the long term would drive my life downhill - I started raiding on WoW. In there, it was like a separate universe to me where people actually did like me for who I am. WoW was fun to play, and it also made me socially happy. I happened to be a good player as well, so I stuck with that raiding guild for about 2 years and I had great times. Still though, I was obsessed with the raid scene in the game that next year in school, I did very bad.

Eighth grade rolled along, and I thought I would pull off another monotonous year of having no friends (even though I befriended A and B last year) and devoting my life to schoolwork. With WoW in the mix though, I often daydreamed about wanting to get home and play that game, and my schoolwork suffered. I skipped many homework assignments, didn't understand concepts in class, and got bad grades overall. With WoW, I pretended things were ok, but with how life was treating me and bad encounters with certain people on that game, I became more withdrawn and antisocial. B managed to start playing WoW too because I got him hooked on it, but when he started a character he'd often ask me for help and I got very annoyed to be honest because of how often he asked, that I would make alternative characters and wouldn't disclose the name to him so I wouldn't be asked to help. Despite all those problems, I would raid as many nights as I could because that's what gave me fun and helped me keep my mind off reality, which unfortunately was a mistake. With my guildmates in the game, I made friends with one of them because he was overall a nice guy, and I started to invite him to talk to me on the guild's Ventrilo server. I also befriended his girlfriend who was a similar person. It turned out we had many things in common, even though they were a lot older than me (they were about 20, I was 14) and lived far away from me. I talked with the dude mainly, and I trusted him, so I told him my problems in life and he listened to me without judging me, and supported me through it. With his help, I overcame some things like my shyness to an extent, and gave me motivation to bring my grades back up. That year in school, I pulled off mostly B's, which put me off accelerated classes for the Freshman Year of high school. However, that didn't bother me.

High school of Freshman year was probably the best year of school I've ever had. I didn't think I'd make friends with people that for that year were of great value to me and we did things together a lot. I did well in my classes and rarely missed out on homework (thanks to study hall mainly), while being able to keep up raiding on WoW without difficulties. One day at lunch, this guy, we'll call him C, who was also a Freshman, decided to sit with me, and we found out that we had a common interest in WoW. I told him that I had a max level character and raided, and he was impressed. He told me he played the game at his friend's house a couple of times and was going to get it for himself. Eventually, C introduced me to his friend that got him into WoW, named D, and later D's brother, E. D was a Junior and also had a 60 in the game, but hasn't played for a while because of a job and being bored with the game. The other issue was that my character was Alliance side, and his was Horde, so we couldn't interact with each other in game. Good thing though was that he also had Ventrilo, so when we played we talked to each other through that. We found out we had things in common, but we were rather silent from time to time because I couldn't keep a good conversation going even if I wanted to. When I told him that, he said it was cool and he wouldn't penalize me for it, but over time that would change. I met some of his friends too, but despite having similar interests as well, they were acquaintances really, which I kick myself to this day for not taking advantage of getting to know them. Had I done that, I would have a broader range of interests and more people to talk to. D's brother, E, was also a Freshman like me and C. He and C played together on a server that D eventually transferred one his characters to and leveled there. Much later, I quit playing WoW for a while because I had a lot of time constraints (along with school, I joined the swim team and had piano on Fridays). When I started to play again, I rolled a Horde character so I could play with my friends. Two of D's friends, F and G (who are also older than me) also played WoW and I met them. F was kinda dumb most and was the group's comic relief, but sometimes knew when to get serious, while G was another intelligent guy that I unfortunately did not know very well. Before that though, I asked D one time if I could come over to his house because of some drama I had at my own house, and he agreed. After school, I came home with him and E, and I met his family, who are really nice people. I showed D and E my WoW character, as a result they showed me theirs and we played around a little, and had an overall good time. D showed me some of his music because I mentioned I didn't have much of a taste but wanted to hear good music. He showed me his rock/metal stuff which I thought I really liked. When I heard Dragonforce in his collection, I liked it very much and many other songs from his collection. While I was there, his family invited me for dinner too, and well, I just had a great time and felt I've finally found people in my life I could depend on and trust. D and I also liked to play Dungeons and Dragons, and every few weeks he would invite me, F, and G over and we'd play together and have fun for the whole day, which we spent on intermissionary stuff like playing console games and whatnot. Simply, Freshman year was one of the best years of my life, and I really wish I could re-experience it now to recall what I was like, and how I could change back.

Now over the summer, me, D, F, G, and E had 70's (the level cap of the Burning Crusade expansion) on a server we played together, and we decided to raid. To them it was the first time, but for me it was going back to things I've quit a while ago. The first few weeks we had a good time, but later I started to regress a little, going back to whining when things didn't go right and saying wrong things which would tarnish my friendships with them. Over the summer, they gained a new interest as well that they didn't clue me in on, which I think also contributed to the loss of friendship. That interest was 4chan, the rather strange forum board of random, nonsensical images that had a discussion community based around that was made up of inside jokes that none of my friends told me about and I couldn't figure out due to the site's complexity, or as it seemed to me. Since we were raiding, D stopped organizing Dungeons and Dragons, and he also stopped inviting me to hang out with him and others. I still cared about D, but I felt him starting to resent me, as a result I did too. He wouldn't say hi to me when I came on in game, or when I came on our private Ventrilo server. On MySpace, I saw his comment from one of his friend's profiles to come on Ventrilo to save him from me, which further proved the fact he started to not like me. Basically he thought I was annoying. Also, the new school year separated us a lot, we rarely crossed paths in the halls and didn't have any classes together, let alone lunch. To put it simply, we didn't see each other as often, we changed, and we're not the friends we used to be anymore. I mentioned it to E tonight (Nov. 24, 2007), but he didn't reply, so I don't know how things are going to turn out, or if I now ruined my friendship with him. I guess that's what I get for clinging onto him like a lovesick puppy.

With school life, there was home life. Because I had to speak English so often, my skill in Polish dwindled and I found speaking the language harder. I can't make grammatically correct or coherent sentences lately, and I've forgotten certain words. I'm sad about what's happened with my social life, and I can't have my parents help me because I can't communicate with them. My older brother is also someone I resented a lot. When we were young, he criticized me a lot and was my parents' favorite, which influenced my feelings of being inferior and being a perfectionist. Also, my parents kept me cooped in the house in front of the TV or computer, while my brother would be exposed to meaningful things like lifestyle activities (yard work, and helping dad work for examples). I regret not doing these things, because if I had I'd have a lot more common sense and probably would find life more enjoyable. Now that my brother's dropped out of high school his Junior year, he's 19 right now and promised my parents he'd get a GED and go to college for a while, but he likely never will. He hangs out with his druggie friends most of the time, steals money from me and my parents, and when he tries to get a job, he would get ripped off, or would lose it by not coming to work for whatever reason he'd make up, mainly saying he's too tired. He's been to prison several times too, and had a near-death experience as well. With the change in my brother, my parents shifted their utmost attention to me since I'm their only hope for being a success. They're also not the best people to have parents - they are very opinionated and often racist, but they keep these things private with me, and they love me a lot. Though, they have rather poor jobs due to us being of immigrant status - my dad delivers pizza for a restaurant, and my mom cleans houses. With that, I don't invite people over to my house because of how bad my family is and my rather small house compared to my friends', and I don't want to shame them.

Being an immigrant in the US also sucks. For me, it means that I can't have any of the things that other people my age are able to easily acquire. I can't have a car or a driver's license until I'm at least 18, I can't receive college loans or scholarship money, I can't have important things other people are able to have. My friends told me that I'd have 2 years to go before I could take the test and become a citizen, since in Illinois you have to live in the country for 9 years before being eligible it seems. When I tell my parents about this, they go off-track about some petition that my aunt filed for my dad, and for our family as a result, Despite living here since 2000, the petition wasn't filed until 2001 and we're still waiting to get feedback, which they said may not be for another 6 years. I don't know how it works, but well I can't argue anything. Also, that means I'll be 22 before I get to have stuff I want. While that's the least worries of mine right now, there's one more thing:

Ironically, through the AIDS teasing experience in middle school and that revelation on the forum, I'm gay myself. I've never been able to find any attraction in women at all, while with men I can get incredibly aroused. I feel ashamed by this, because when I met D, I thought he was really hot. I won't go into details, but from time to time he was my object of fantasy when I'd masturbate. Every time I finish, I feel disgusted with myself because he's my friend, and it was just wrong in every sense of the word to think about him that way. Luckily, I never managed to get aroused by him in real life. Some of his friends I also found attractive, and same deal with them. This is hard for me in family life as well, since my family is all Christians and our church lately has been preaching how controversial homosexuals are and how they are an overall disgrace for "turning away the word of God." To me, that's just bullshit, and as a result I've decided to turn my back on the religion because according to the Bible, I'm not welcome, and that's fine, I'm not going to let my life be ruled by something that doesn't exist anyway. To people who believe in the religion, take no offense because I respect the beliefs of others, but with my life experience, Christianity doesn't make me comfortable at all.

I think that's it for the most part. I really hate my life in many ways. To people who I think are friends, I end up being someone disposable, causing me to question if there really is a thing called friendship. To my family, I get pressured a lot to do well in school, and lately I've been slacking off a little, but I plan to change that by dropping one of my classes for a study hall. To this day still, I play World of Warcraft with those so-called "friends" of mine, because I honestly have nothing better to do. I don't go on their Ventrilo server anymore however since I'm not well liked anymore. I'm no longer friends with A, but we are acquaintances and say hi to each other in the halls. By some stretch of luck, B is still friends with me all these years, and we still talk to each other from time to time, even though I have no classes with him or any of my other friends.

I feel really hopeless right now and uncertain where life is going to take me. I apologize for the length too, but I had to get all my thoughts out and seek help somehow.

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A number of things has changed since then. D and I made up, but I was never close to him again really. We just pass each other in the halls still, and I'm glad that he at least acknowledges my presence when he sees me, with a smile typically. I still have a crush on him though, and those moments would make me feel warm inside. My thoughts about him make me feel guilty though. I don't have a clear idea about his sexuality. I assume he's straight, and he's had several ex-girlfriends, even a gay friend (but he lives elsewhere, and I don't know him). Though, whenever he was crossed with the idea of him being gay, he would get very offended by it. That was back then though. During a Tennis meet I had today, I found out that recently he got a date for this weekend from a conversation I overheard, and our coach (being female) and some of the guys wanted to know who his date was. He wouldn't tell, and they started to joke that he's taking a guy out on a date. He kinda laughed it off though, but these people were his classmates and one was a close friend. I didn't attempt to go along with the joking since I have a bad history of being misunderstood. I'm aware that the fact I overheard a conversation is a bad thing to do, but I thought that it would add needed substance for you support leaders to give me a better response.

D's brother, E, continued to be friends with me after I talked to him on WoW so long ago. Still, I never had classes with him, so we couldn't talk. We shared the same lunch period, but he sat at a table with friends of his and their friends, which were some people I didn't get along with. It was full too, so I couldn't sit down and chat. So overtime, my friendship with him and C, who is friends with D and E, would fade, and we kinda consider each other just acquaintances now.

Instead, I would spend lunch with B, whom I'm still friends with miraculously. Thing is, a lot of people don't like him, so I can't really associate myself with him too often. He doesn't know about my feelings for D or my sexuality, as he's Christian and had a few bad experiences concerning homosexuality, I don't feel like he's a person to tell these things. Also, since I suggested an idea I had for possibly an anime series, my friend became sort of hell-bent on making it into reality. Everyday, or every other day, he asks if I have ideas for the anime, or he inputs his own ideas into it, he always expresses disappointment when I have nothing. It's because I feel like I have too much crap to deal with to make up new ideas, and I can't talk to him about how I feel since in the past when I tried, he was always annoyed with it. I wish I could further develop my idea. I really like Japanese things, but I really doubt anyone likes them to the extent I do. It seems people find it annoying that you like anime, like the Japanese language, pick up the language just by watching anime, learn Hiregana/Katakana, and even listen to Japanese music, sometimes even transliterating songs as well. I do these things, but I don't know if I should be happy or embarrassed about it. I have been able to get some ideas for my concept going, so I don't feel complete resentment towards B anymore, yet we still maintain a business partner type friendship and nothing more.

Aside from B, I feel like I don't have friends really. D may be an exception since he greets me when we make eye contact. More on him later. F and G stopped talking to me and acknowledging me, and I don't know why. I think they hate me, but that's only because I don't know any better than to like or hate a person that I know or knew in the past. I'm still an acquaintance of A, but we don't talk about important things really. Now, a classmate of mine, let's call him H, kind of jokes around with the idea of me being a loner. He does it by making me look odd in my class, and at tennis he teases me with talk about friends and doing things with my classmates/teammates that suggest fooling around in a friendly way. I tend to shrug/laugh these things off in an odd way, but considering how lonely I am, it hurts. I don't really have anything in common with anyone I know, so I don't bother striking up conversations about things they probably don't know things about. As an example, I know some people who like anime, but most of them don't know anything outside of Bleach, Death Note, and Naruto, so imagine my frustration when I try to discuss something I've seen with another person, but they've never heard of it.

I'm feeling depressed, sad, lonely because of the events that I have listed above. I feel guilty about my feelings for D, and I want to somehow talk to him about those things, but it's hard since he's around his good friends pretty much all the time and he seems to do things every weekend, and I don't want to get others involved. I can't tell him through WoW as the two of us no longer play that game. We have each other's phone numbers, but it would come across as creepy for me to call/text him now. We haven't called each other for months now. I'm thinking of simply confessing to him. He's a Senior now and the end of the year is rapidly closing, so I'm fearing if I don't tell him, I'll feel regret for not telling him and the possibility I may never see him again.

With all that above drama, I have seriously thought about taking my life. In the first three months in 2008, I have seriously considered suicide about seven to eight times. I thought about giving away my possessions and the like, but never actually did anything about it. I'm too cowardly to kill myself since I keep thinking that just maybe things will get better eventually, but the longer I live and nothing seems to change, I go back to being suicidal. I mean if I died, would anything really change? Once the initial shock wears off, it'll be like I never existed. My parents would be in turmoil probably, since their only potential success in the family would be dead, but with me being gay and my family being Christians, I feel that I would get disowned if I came out of the closet. My dad kicked my brother out recently because of heroin abuse, so he'd probably kick me out as easily for being gay. I never had a good relationship with him.

Been typing this for an hour, and as much as I'd like to make a TLDR version, I really can't.

Thoughts, comments, I would really appreciate anything.

Firstly, you're striving to excel and be perfect in all you do, yeah? The two main areas this is pretty obvious in is in your schoolwork, and in your friendships. In regards to your school work, I basically just want to say that you can only do as well as you can, y'know? I don't think it's important for you to be thinking about how well or how badly you done in certain classes two or three years ago from now, because that doesn't really matter. What matters is how you're doing in the here and now, and how you organise yourself so you're performing to the best of your ability. Do you have a regular studying routine? If you set aside time for yourself both in an out of school to get your work, revision and studying done then that WILL reflect in your work in school. If you want to do well then you have to commit to a heavy workload, y'know? This means spending less time playing the online games and whatnot. I mean, it's entirely your decision. You want to do well, then you choose how much time you dedicate to other activities when you know you should be working. I'm not suggesting that you spend ALL your time doing school work (of course not!) but I am saying that you maybe try not to spend so much time doing other things when you know you should be working. In addition to setting aside time daily for school work, I'd also advise that you try having a chat with your teachers if you're not achieving the grades you WANT to achieve. They can help you with that, and try to steer you in the right direction and help you achieve the grades that reflect your ability, yes?

Aside from that, though, you have to do all of this schoolwork because you WANT to, not because you're feeling pressured by outside factors (your parents). I understand how difficult life can be when you're feeling horribly pressured by your parents, but also remember that they DO love you because your their son and as long as you're showing them that you're doing the best you can, then that's all you can possibly do, y'know? And if they're not happy with that then that's their problem and something they'll have to get over personally. I really, really do understand how difficult it can be when you're getting criticised at home and when your parents expect too much of you, but honestly, there's not much you can do other than you're best. I think it's important that you try to accept this and try to be content with who you are and your abilities in your school work. We can only ever do our very best, and there's no use in beating ourselves up about it if we're not flying high all of the time. As long as you're putting in the effort and trying, well, that's honestly good enough.

Another thing that concerned me though was the lack of communication between you and your parents. Would it be possible for you to somehow get lessons in Polish, just to refresh your memory so that you can at least communicate effectively with your parents? Sometimes just being able to have a good chat with your mum and dad about how school is going or how you're feeling about day-to-day life can do the world of good. Thing is, you can only actually do that if you speak the same language, eh? :P Would it be possible for you to somehow do something to get better at speaking Polish, and thus communicate better with your parents?

One other thing - you shouldn't be ashamed of your parents, your home or where they work. You guys are just making your way through life. Your parents are working to keep food on the table and a roof over your head. Honestly, your parents deserve respect for that and it's absolutely NOTHING to be ashamed of. I can understand that feeling to a certain degree, but I'd also just like to point out your friends won't think any less of you because of where you live or what your parents do for a living. At least, they won't if they're true friends, don't you think?

As for your friendships. You know, reading everything you wrote, I kind of got the feeling that maybe, just a wee bit, you expect a little too much from your friendships. Friendships are hard work, and finding people you get on with well is really difficult, but you don't have to question every action in the friendship. And, you don't have to sit back and wait for everyone else to do all the work in friendships either! I'm not saying this to be harsh and I'm not saying anything negative about you personally, but perhaps you'd notice a difference in your friendships if you tried making an effort in them too. Try actively doing things with them outside the school surroundings, ask if they want to hang out, try seeing them on a regular basis so that you build up a strong foundation, y'know? I understand you find it difficult to find friends with the same interests as yours, which must be incredibly annoying, but for those times that you DO find people with one or two similar interests, you can expand on that. If they're interested in anime but don't know certain things, or haven't seen certain things, then what's the problem with you enlightening them? Watching a film with them, telling them about a book, little things like that? That would mean that you get to do something with the new friend and you'd both be involved in something that you enjoy.  You do still have a few people there in school who you know well enough to say hello to, and honestly, there's nothing wrong with striking up a conversation with them and asking them if they want to hang out. Yes, I know it's difficult and not the most ideal situation in the world for you, but sometimes we just have to work for all those things that we really really want in live. Hey, it makes us appreciate them more, don't you think?

On a side note - I think it's maybe important to pick up on the bullying you've experienced throughout your years at school. Firstly, I'm really sorry you've experienced all of that. Kids can be really cruel, right? And I know it can make making friends and keeping friendships really difficult, but it can also mean that the friendships you DO make mean more because they're your friends despite the nasty kids who pick on you and tease you. And with that, I don't think you should avoid certain people just because they're not well liked. You mentioned that you eat lunch with B and are still friends, but, seriously, you don't want to associate with him too much because he's not well liked? See, that's a bit of a problem. If he's your friend then he's your friend regardless of what other people think about him. Seriously. Just something for you to think about.

Another thing I think you should try working on is some stuff from your past. Your childhood growing up was a bit rubbish in terms of your relationships with people in school, having to see a social worker, pressure from your parents and getting really involved in WoW. Yes, these were big things and they influenced your life in a big way, but they're also things that you can pick yourself up from and carry on with. You've not had the best experiences with the social workers and you've been teased a lot throughout school. I understand how terribly difficult these things can be, but I'm wondering how you think it affects you today? Have you moved on from those things, or does the memory of it still hurt you? If you're still hurting about certain things from your past then I do honestly think that's something that needs to be dealt with in order for you to move on with your life, y'know? Accepting that you've not had the best start to your school life and with friends and whatnot, but knowing that it doesn't define your whole life and that the rest of your life won't be a reflection of how difficult things were during those times. Basically, my point is, if you're still hurting about past events, it's essential that you try dealing with them, in order to move on to a happier place.

Ok. The last three things I'm going to talk about are your sexuality, you being an immigrant and your overwhelming depressive feelings at the minute, yeah? If there's anything else you want to me to talk about then feel free to let me know.

Firstly, you're sexuality. I know how hard it can be trying to accept who you are, especially if you're in a family who isn't too approving. You are who you are and first and foremost, I think you should try and come to terms with and accept yourself. It actually sounds like you have, which I think it fantastic, but I just wanted to reinforce that point, basically. Discovering your sexuality can be a really difficult time but, honestly, you have absolutely no reason to be ashamed of your feelings for D. We can't control who we're attracted to and who we want to be with, and you shouldn't punish yourself with guilt or feeling ashamed for those feelings that are outwith your control. You're only human and attraction is natural. I can't really tell you whether or not you should tell D about your attraction to him, because I don't know either of you and I don't know him to be able to guess his reaction. All I can advise is that you do what you think is right. Are you likely to regret not telling him? And will you be able to cope if he rejects you, and if he freaks out? (I'm not saying it's right, but it's always a possibility) You need to think about all the outcomes of telling him, and if you think you could cope with that. I'm also not quite sure what to tell you in regards to your family and how they'd feel about you being gay. If you're willing to risk the fall-out of telling them then, by all means, tell them. But if you think it'd be better to hold out for a while, until you're in a secure position outwith the family home, before telling them, then that's also an option. Just a few things for you to weigh up and think about, yeah?

I can also see that life is being made even more difficult with you being an immigrant at the moment. I understand that you're having to wait for ages for the things you want, but all I can really say in regards to that is that you continue to hold out. There's nothing much you can actually do about it, but wait for the day that you CAN do and have the things you want. It will come. :)

Now, more worryingly, your suicidal thoughts. I can't tell you that one day you'll feel grand and that one day everything will be better, but I CAN tell you that you should hold out. I mean, who knows if life will get better, right? And if there's this wee possibility that one day you might feel better, well, isn't that worth holding on for? Maybe nothing would change if you died and maybe in time it'd be like you never existed. BUT, the same could be said for ALL of us. That certainly doesn't mean we should all go die though, right? Right. As cliché as it sounds, you honestly do have a long, long time ahead of you and who knows how that will be. One thing is for sure - it'll be very up and down. None of us can predict how things are going to be a few years down the line, and honestly, don't you think that's worth hanging on for?

Lastly, with the suicidal thoughts, I do think it'd be beneficial for you to maybe see a professional about it. I mean, it might help. I know - it sounds like I'm reeling something off and suggesting you go to a professional is an obvious kind of things to say, but I think that it WOULD benefit you. Chatting about the stuff from your past and the stuff right now that's hurting and upsetting you - the stuff that's making you feel so bad. Sometimes it can just feel so great to have someone to talk to, don't you think?

Anyway. It's up to you. Should you need anything at all, or if you want to explain more stuff to me in detail, feel free to send me a PM anytime. :]


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and i wanted to ride with Yuri Gagarin
as he circled all around my world