I want my voice to be heard someday

I'm a young adult who want(s/ed) to be an artist, a coder, a helper, and a nice person who wanted to change everyone's lives, but I feel no motivation to continue what I love. I find no passion for anything anymore, and it's all my fault. I'm in a never-ending cycle of hatred towards myself and in a cycle of wanting to see the people who had hurt me get their consequences. My interests are as varied as white bread: corporate, childish, soulless, samey; mixed in with the most obscure stuff people that nobody knows about. When I say I want to get into something that is remotely indie, I turn it into my whole personality, then I feel nothing afterwards. I am not good at human interaction, and I have a lot of problems with talking to people face to face, so it started affecting how I talked to others in school. So, I started to use the internet to talk to others.

It all started on Discord, where I decided to make an account after the pandemic started changing our lives and when I started feeling friendless. For the first two years, I was fine, even if a bit cringe. I was progressing in my art goal, albeit in a very different way, and this was when I finally started leaving a mark on the internet, which is what I always wanted to do, until... I got in trouble with a community, which led to a friend of mine leaving me eventually. I always needed an art tutor, but I never really knew how to go about requesting one. I also did not want to pay because if I paid, my parents would've been against it. This was a horrible mistake, as it made others think I was a beggar, when in reality I needed help. A lot of people claiming to be my friends also left me for the stupidest reasons and even spread rumors about myself. This was when I decided enough was enough. I restarted everything about myself online, and my goal to leaving a mark on the internet had completely reset.

There was this thing one person said that stuck out to me: How their interests did not match my interests. This still haunts me to this day, because I have not been able to get into a lot of indie stuff a lot of Gen Z users like, or even popular stuck others like. I can't broaden my interests because everything still feels either samey or ruined by terrible communities or friends.

I wanted to draw the same thing my favorite small online artists drew. I wanted to share the huge passion I had for storytelling and character design. Every single one of my favorite artists felt like they all brought their own version of their own world, but in reality, they all felt very similar to each other to a fascinating degree. It was like a small group of small artists that understood each other, even if they had different approaches. I needed to get in, but if I wanted to get in, I needed my slate to be as clean as possible and to practice a lot.

I used my new, yet still lacking set of art skills to build a new name and new stories, and with it, I promised myself to broaden my horizons. I started making a lot of new friends in a new community that took a while to get used to, but when I did, I started warming up and making it my go-to place. They didn't find my interests boring or samey. However, there was this one friend who wanted to assist me in my path. They were very nice, but what I didn't realize at the time is that they were too nice to me. It wasn't until it was too late when I found their true intentions.

At one point, I started feeling too distanced from the real world. I got into fights with my family members more frequently, almost like if I was being controlled by a puppet. Not even online had my behavior differed from the real world, as I started feeling this uneasy feeling that everyone would start hating me again and seeing everyone in my group starting to suffer mentally horribly, it started making me go insane. Months would turn into days, and the date finally came. I found out what they really wanted to do to me, and so did my parents. However, when it happened, the punishment was way, way off.

I had to leave Discord and my newfound name I wanted to leave a mark as. I could feel my life falling endlessly as my goals slowly vanished, all ties to my friends were cut. My electronics were all confiscated, even my Switch. My family members were not afraid to show their anger towards me and even told me that I should BEG God for forgiveness, because he wouldn't forgive me in a lifetime. Everything fell down to the gutter, but I still tried to put a positive spin on all of this. At least it's all better than what that person was going to do to me, right?

I had changed a lot since the initial punishment. I became more socially active with my family members and had tried a little bit harder to change and find my own self, and some things from the initial punishment were lifted too, but there's still something. I found an artist with a great style, one that felt like they belonged into that small group of small artists I wanted to be like. They literally checked all the boxes in just a week, but there was something different. I wanted to continue my goal, but then, creative block struck, and not just any creative block, an entire 1000 lb weigh in my brain was put. I couldn't draw my own custom things anymore, so I had no choice but to use ChatGPT to keep my creative visions alive, even if severely flawed as methods. Then, I found no passion for coding at all, as I had nobody to give suggestions about my code, then I resorted to having to use Copilot to give me blueprints. I started yearning to use Discord again, but my parents still don't trust me, and I doubt they will give me everything back anytime soon.

I have no control of my own life anymore. I can't go on without having friends or motivation. I can't go on without having free unlimited access to creativity. I feel stuck, and I had a realization. I got myself into this. My entire motive to get going with art was to find ONE friend who valued me and my projects the most, one who could contribute to my own creativity, someone I could rely to. I would search all over the communities I was interested in (which weren't a lot) to find someone if one person refused and bullied me for it. I should've stopped trying to force a friendship with someone.

I don't know what to do anymore. I didn't even feel like writing this that much, but it HAD to come out somehow. I had been trying to build my own online brand for 5 years but ended up hurting myself in the long run. I'm still friendless, still limited, and still getting stalked by that person who ruined everything. Every time I go out to the yard, I have this flashback of that fateful day where everything went wrong. I wanted a hobby and a job I enjoyed so much, and I still want to draw and code, and maybe even blueprint a mall one day, but I don't find myself motivated to do any of those things anymore. Am I still doing something wrong?

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