On July 25th, I had a suicidal crisis after not having one for years. It was the culmination of a few factors, but the biggest reasons were: the Anniversary Effect (July 25, 2016 is the day I got kicked out at age 16), a lot of difficulties with my family, depression, and a very close friendship that fell apart due to differences in views about feminism and gender politics of all things…

Back in May, I was having the time of my life. I was making a lot of money on unemployment and traveling across the United States — and eventually, I’d made it back to New York City. I hadn’t been since May 2019, and being back felt like the culmination of much hard work. I had overcome the many difficulties that life in the pandemic threw at me, was recovering well after being stalked and doxxed, and even was coming to terms with my physical and mental disabilities. I was making huge strides with my circumcision grief and, honestly, I felt happier and more healed than I had in many months.

That all changed suddenly on May 26th. A totally innocent conversation with a very close friend turned into a massive falling out. One night while I relaxed in my Airbnb, we were chatting on Discoed and saw a cringey Reddit post about “falling in love with a woman” from some guy we know and dislike. My friend (who I’ll call SJ) mentioned that he had a “healthy dose of misogyny and objectifying women” — I found this kinda odd to say but didn’t think much of. Another friend and I said we hadn’t seen him ever be misogynistic. SJ then replied that “he definitely objectifies women a bit without realizing it, though not more so than most people I suppose.” I was confused by this and told SJ that most people didn’t objectify women, but she just doubled down. I replied that her experience as a homeless woman might give her a perspective of the shittier elements of society, and told her about how I’ve dealt with some really shitty things in life — and how it’s good to also remember that the average person is usually pretty decent and that you can find good people anywhere, to keep you afloat after dealing with the bad people. I made it clear that I didn’t think generalizations were healthy or appropriate, but in the kindest way I could.

SJ reacted by going invisible on Discord, removing me from Location Sharing (after the stalking incidents, we had it on for our travels since we were very close) and deliberately ignoring me. Eventually it turned into her telling me she needed space for a while, and her wife blocking me and telling me she wanted nothing to do with me. It ended with SJ leaving my server (which she co-admined). Over the next two months, she would very confusingly go back and forth about things, and in our long blowup conversations it came up that it was indeed about the gender stuff and how I reacted to it. In my personal life outside of my friendship with her, I became VERY paranoid and began lashing out at others. I was almost convinced that she would turn out like my stalker - a friend turned enemy, who would betray me. I took that paranoia out on other spaces I helped moderate, and overall it was just a very ugly situation.

Eventually though, things were going really well and had made a turn for the better. I’d gone far out of my way to set my biases aside and just hear SJ out - she replied by letting me know that she really appreciated it, and she apologized to me and let me know that I deserved a good and thorough response from her when she could get around to it.
…So color me surprised when July 10th, I suddenly get a notification that SJ quit r/Runaway and removed me as a mod from her subreddits and removed me as a friend, without a single word spoken. I confronted her about it and she just told me that “you honestly aren’t the same person I thought you were when I met you” and that she didn’t want to be in contact anymore aside from passive conversations in servers we mod together (…that I helped her get into as a staff member, too.)

It mindfucked me. The last year has been marked by so much loss for me… I’d left a really toxic friend group that had really bad influences on me, I had issues come up with my close friends IRL, and I tried to reconnect/rekindle things with my abusive parents and it went horribly. When I met her late last year and we became such close friends so quickly, I thought I had found someone truly dependable. SJ helped me through so much, including the stalking incidents or my sexual assault trauma. She was super involved with and helpful to my passion project, r/runaway/ She was truly a good friend… and then just like that, she left without a word. I became deeply depressed and was convinced that I was a burden to all of my friends and that people secretly hated me. That my autism would make it impossible to fit in.

On that day, I was utterly depressed. Everything had combined to make an ugly beast of mental illness and cognitive dissonance. I’d lost a ton of my savings due to emergency dental work, I was back to couchsurfing with family, I couldn’t find the energy to dedicate to my activism in youth advocacy or male advocacy, and most of all — I was convinced that if I tried to tell my friends these things, I would just be “trauma dumping” or inducing compassion fatigue in them.

I couldn’t take it, and I left to go on a walk and cried my eyes out. All I could think about was not wanting to live anymore, and thinking I was a failure. But I also felt so deeply selfish for feeling suicidal, because I knew my friends and family did care and would be devastated if I did that. So… I bit the bullet, and I suddenly told my last close friend from the traveler group that I was suicidal and needed help.

I’ve gone on a long rambling vent, so to sum up what happened next — he was so fucking kind and helpful to me, and he made me realize that a lot of my fears about the future or the ways I felt weren’t abnormal at all. He helped me find the courage to quite literally send a message to all of my friends letting them know where I was at mentally and emotionally and stop hiding it.
Everyone was so fucking kind and it makes me cry just thinking about it. Many reached out to me to reassure me and just be there for me. My godmother was super understanding, and I opened up to my therapist about my depression and suicidality.

I’ve been doing much better since then. I’ve started exploring the world of virtual reality as a new hobby, and I’ve met many amazing people in the metaverse. I’ve been far more open about my mental health to people and I’ve been checking in with my therapist and my friends regularly now. While my future is uncertain and I sometimes am struggling still, I’ll never forget that my friends stopped me from going down a dark fucking path when I sounded the alarm. And though I might’ve lost some close friends within this last chaotic year… that doesn’t reflect on my value as a person, and the friends who are left are wonderful people.