TotalDramaTony
District 13
- Joined
- Aug 12, 2013
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My 2015
Hey guys! It's Tony aka TotalDramaTony, and I wanted to make a thread to reflect back on my 2015, and it has been quite a roller coaster. This thread is for me to share my story with the MCGamer community, a community I am proud to say I have been a part of for more than 2 years. This story of my 2015, probably the hardest year of my life thus far, is a story that I hope can inspire some of you guys, and let you all know, anything is possible, you can get through anything and everything, as long as you don't give up.
How it Started
My 2015 began with me and some good friends on the staff team just having fun, and we had a little clique going on, however, this clique was not a good one. We were a pretty negative bunch of people, we were not terrible, but were far off from humble and kind individuals. In addition to being in the wrong group of people, I was also battling intense depression. I have been facing depression for so many years, literally since childhood, but the mistake I made, was I did not want anyone to know. I am the type of person that would rather help you with all of your life problems, than even allow myself to tell you one thing wrong with me. I put others before myself, and I was a complete people pleaser. I would change things about myself, to suit the needs and wants of others. If someone wanted a friend who was more like them, I would transform into them, just to make them happy, which is why I was definitely in the wrong group of people. This being one of my weaknesses, made the hard end of a crush I had the month before even worse. He knows who he is, and if you see this, I still want you to know, it's okay, I forgive you. Basically, me and him, we were getting really close, but then, he broke my heart and led me on, and it hurt so much. I have been facing my own insecurities for so long, and this was a huge slap to the face from life, and it felt like a message from the universe telling me, you are too worthless and you are not good enough and never will be. My mind was running amok, and I was so depressed after this. Every night, I would just cry myself to sleep, and this happened for weeks. I wanted to resign, I wanted to quit everything, even life. I told some people how I was feeling and they helped, thank you so much to those people. My depression was killing me, and I had to continue working on myself. I was already seeing a therapist and a psychiatrist, but needed more help, so they increased the dosage of my anti-depressants at the time. This is how the year began. I was a moderator, I seemed so happy on the outside, and no one would have guessed, but truth is, I was destroyed, and it only got crazier.Hey guys! It's Tony aka TotalDramaTony, and I wanted to make a thread to reflect back on my 2015, and it has been quite a roller coaster. This thread is for me to share my story with the MCGamer community, a community I am proud to say I have been a part of for more than 2 years. This story of my 2015, probably the hardest year of my life thus far, is a story that I hope can inspire some of you guys, and let you all know, anything is possible, you can get through anything and everything, as long as you don't give up.
How it Started
Once Spring Sprung
When Spring came around, things were not good. I got very angry with everyone. Staff members, community members, my family, my friends, no one was safe. I hated myself so much, so I spent my life hating everyone else. Then I started to realize, this is not how I want to live, and no one should live this way, so I tried to find the root of my problems. I thought it was one of my friends, I thought he was so negative, and such a horrible influence, that if I got him out of my life completely, it would solve my issues. I got rid of him, and that solved nothing. All I did, was lose three of my best friends, and felt even worse. My depression was terrible, and it was traumatic to say the least. I thought I did a good thing, but I soon regretted it, and regretted life again. I wanted nothing to do, but end it all, but every time I think that way, something stops me. Every time I get down on myself and think I'm useless, and worthless, and I can not do anything right and never will, there's a voice, that tells me the opposite. It is so faint, and so hard to hear, but it's there. Up to this point, I had only considered ending it all, but never actually did it, or anything to myself. At this point, I realized I made mistakes, and the first step I wanted to take to solve my dilemma was to apologize to anyone I had ever hurt, talked smack about, or was evil to. I found as many as I could, and apologized to them all. It made me feel better, but I still held animosity to my friend, and my mental health was still no where near where it needed to be. I took the next couple months to focus on my own health and myself. I worked on learning and understanding my mistakes, I then tried to grow more from them, and luckily, it was happening.
Pre-Summer Struggles
After recovering from the pit I fell into, I started to focus more on my life. One big thing I focused on was school. When I first starting falling into deep depression back in 2014, my grades slipped, I did not talk to my friends, and soon lost all of the ones I did have in high school. I was supposed to get my license, apply for college, get good grades in school, but nothing was happening, it was another terrible way to start the year, but I managed. I applied to all the colleges I wanted to apply to, but I got denied by a lot of them, (I am now proudly going to Wheaton College MA) and I got my learner's permit in February. I still had so much to catch up on IRL, I was taking AP classes and had a lot of stuff to prepare for since College was coming up. I visited the college I wanted to go to in Massachusetts, I drove 4 hours with my parents to get there from New York, and I decided that I liked it there, I placed my deposit and it was set I was going there. I took care of college, and was getting driving lessons and learning how to drive, so that was getting done too, (On a real note, I am a pretty good driver on the real) I was also doing good in school again which was amazing. I took my AP exams with confidence and I killed them! I was dedicated in my classes even though it didn't start that way. At first in my Senior year of high school, I tumbled in school, I was doing too poorly to stay in AP Calculus AB, so I had to leave the class for regular Calculus. I was also doing not so greatly in my other classes like AP Bio and AP American Government & Politics. However, after losing a lot of my friends in the Spring of 2015, I found more time to focus on myself. I spent the time that I normally would have spent hanging out with them, o my work. I was excelling so much that for Calculus, my teacher recommended I take the AP exam even though I was in a class that was below the difficulty level of the exam. I took the challenge, and I studied extra hard. I had to learn concepts that would not be taught in the regular class because the regular one did not go over them since they were no the AP Class. For those of you who don't know, AP is the advanced placement class, so the smarty pants people. I wanted to focus on my grades again, they were always so important to me, being one of the best students, not the best, just one of, was something I always wanted to be, but depression made it hard. Always self-doubting and just slipping further and further, that had been stopping me for so long, and it was going to stop. I focused on school, and now that I had no real solid friend group anymore to distract me, I could get it done. I did it, I worked hard, and I got a 5 in AP Gov, 4 in Calculus AB, and a 4 in AP Bio. I worked so hard and was so proud of myself, it was one of the first real times I realized how much potential I had to be great and I was going to keep working at it. Soon after I had freed up my schedule from school, I found all the down time could be spent in moderating. I was already an okay moderator, but I never caught that many hackers before, or worked that hard. I like never touched the forums, and all I really did was TeamSpeak moderation. I had already improved in school, so I figured I would improve in moderation too, and I did.
Becoming the Mod Prodigy
I wanted to improve as a moderator, and I heard that Vanicle | Vanessa who was Sr. Mod at the time, did them, so I asked for one, and she gave me my activity, and areas to improve, and so I tried. My forums needed a lot of work, so I thought I would give it a shot. I had like 23 messages when I was mod for a year, and at this point I was mod for about 16 months with 200ish messages. She advised me to do more on the forums, and to get better all around, so I did. I was an old moderator, not many people lasted long as a mod like I did, so I wanted to be a mod that everyone would think was cool, and I wanted to be that wise Yoda figure in the staff team. I improved my TeamSpeak moderation, I caught way more hackers, and punished way more rule breakers, and even played a little more SG and I talked more in the hub to talk to more community members. I also was a little more active in Slack, which is the Staff team's communication application. I also started working more in events, I participated in Cleansweep up until it went down due to the anti-cheat banning everyone lol. I ran US OMN, I was helping out as Clan Staff, a Spanish translator, and Game-mode Spotlight. I was working on so many events and work, but the thing I was weakest in was Forums. So, one day, I decided to learn how to forum. I went around the forums, and found very old Forum Moderation Guides, and I went to each and every section of the forums, I read on them and learned more about what they were all for. I then re-read the rules of the MCGamer Network and understood what all the forum rules exactly meant. I learned so much, and I started applying all that knowledge. At the time, very few mods actively moderated the forums, and I soon joined this small group. I then became intensely involved in Clans and their threads, this is where all my messages came from. Before I started cleaning those threads out, only Vanessa and maybe a couple more people were doing those, and she recommended I help her. I did help her, and I soon became a very active forum moderator. I was never the top poster, I was never one of those kind of people that post on every single thread, but I don't think that's what being a forumer is all about. It's just being an active poster, and discussing things that you feel like you can really discuss, and discuss them naturally. I would only post on a few threads here and there, but not all of them, however, even though, to me, I was a forum Queen because of how many hours and total time I spent on the forums moderating, people still made fun of me, and said I was not a real forumer. I didn't care what they said, because all that matters is what I think of myself. I was beginning to experience how vicious some people on the forums were, but I am from New York, I grew up pretty roughly, I could take em
lol It's all good now, some people just were a little rude, but hey, that's people, some are nice, some are mean, and it's just the way people work. Anyways, I was working hard in school and MCGamer, and it soon payed offBecoming Who I Am
I had been working hard on the forums and in all areas of moderation for about two solid months. Then school ended, I graduated high school, and I was ready to move on with my life. High school was the roughest time of my life, and I felt like I was truly turning the page of my book and moving on. The next day following the day of my graduation, Gay Marriage was declared legal and allowed in all 50 states by the U.S. Supreme Court. I was soooo happy! I had identified as Bisexual, but soon thereafter, I discovered I am Gay instead, and I am happy, this is what I really am and I was ready to live, laugh and love, with a guy instead of a girl, but to me, it made no difference, as long as I was happy, I was gonna be and do what I wanted to. I did not come out to anyone except my friends at the time however. The best part of this part of my story is the next day. The day after gay marriage was declared legal, two days after graduation, there was a moderator meeting, and I was pulled up out of the meeting channel, and got offered Trial Senior Moderator! I flipped and had so much excitement and happiness, this was something I always wanted to be, and it was happening, and it was amazing. I felt like a youthful minor league baseball player from the city, moving up in the world to the big leagues. It was an amazing feeling, I felt so proud of myself. That meeting, when they congratulated me, I made sure to thank Vanessa, because without her help and wisdom and k,kindness, I don't think I would have been good enough to be promoted. Shout out to you Vanessa! I was so happy right now, graduated school, was able to come out to myself, and became a Sr. Mod, what more could I want?! Well, it didn't end this nicely unfortunately.
Summer as Sr. Mod
I was now a Trial Senior Mod, my trial began June 26th, 2015, and I was ready to prove myself worthy to pass. A lot of people forget that just because you received trial, does not mean you are guaranteed to pass. You are given 4 weeks to prove yourself worthy, you need to show that you are a hard-worker, you are fair, just, reasonable and most importantly a respectable and professional person. Some really good people throughout MCGamer's history have become trials, but failed due to this reason or another, it's all a secret, but it;s not just about your charisma and personality, it;s not just about your work ethic, it's everything all at once. If you are deemed incapable of suiting the potion, you are removed, and to me, that would have been the death of me, I did not fail and I was not going to fail. I worked harder than I ever have before. I did literally pounds of work. I did everything I was expected to do and more. I was handling every aspect you need to be as a Sr. Mod. The expediencies of a Sr. Mod back then are different than the ones now, it was actually very difficult back then, but I aced. it. As you guys can see, I passed my trial, I did not do it without a hitch though, I still had more things to work on, but for the most part, I was good enough to stay. I was working so hard during my trial, and I was going to keep on doing it. I worked hard. All my time went into MCGamer, my message count exploded, and my Sr. Mod work ethic skyrocketed. I thought I was happy, but then more changed in my life, and... I fell in love...
Not Again...
So I fell in love with a new guy. He was very funny, and we had a looot in common. I knew of him, but never was close to him enough to realize what an amazing guy he was. I thought I was over the trauma from the last relationship I was in, considering that was almost a year ago. I got close to him, and told him everyday he was amazing and how much he meant to the world and me, and it would be more than once a day. I literally loved him. I thought it could be something that would last a long time, but... I was wrong, again. I then told him, I loved him, but he said, it could not happen, and it unfortunately would never happen. I was devastated, and it felt like, I was not good enough. It felt like I really was never good enough. No matter what happened in this year, it didn't matter if I graduated high school with good grades, it didn't matter that I passed my trial, nothing mattered, I was not good enough. I felt like there was no point. I lost my hope, and thought it was over. I felt nothing but rejection, and the feeling of never ever being good enough, this feeling killed me, and it took a form in real life. The night I talked to him about, July 27th, a date I will always remember, two weeks after my 18th birthday, I attempted suicide. I tried to slit my wrists, but, as you can see, I am still here to tell the story, so I survived. I immediately got out of that situation. I told my mother two days later. At this point, I got off anti-depressants and therapy months ago, I felt like I was cured, I thought it was over and done with. However, each night before that dreadful night, I cried myself to sleep, and it was terrible. I realized then, that depression is something that I have not beaten, and it may not be beatable at all, but I needed to keep fighting against those thoughts, and save myself. I told my Mom, but did not see therapy again, I should have. I told some close people on the staff team, and my best friend, they all agreed I needed help, but I foolishly did not listen.
The Aftermath & College
I went to college soon after, on August 29th, and it was really hard, battling depression on top of such a climactic change, freshman year of college, one of, if not, the hardest year of college in terms of how scary it can get. However, I went it, and it was amazing. My depression, self-doubt and insecurities robbed me of so many things from my childhood, but college was not going to be a repeat, I was not going to allow it to be, so I wanted to go in, being the fun-loving extrovert I knew I always was deep down. I went into college, and had so much fun. I met so many people, made so many friends, and tried out so many new things. It was amazing, and it has been the most fun I had in a long time. Depression struck me in the first week there, I cut again, but very little. Ever since, I stopped, and I curbed it for 4 months. I thought I never would have to face that ever again, once again, I thought I was cured. After all the hardship I faced, I was a survivor, and after being put through all this torture, I realized my purpose on this Earth. I want to be the friend, and I want to be the wise one, for other kids who are going through what I went through. I had no idea what I wanted to do for a career until the end of Senior year of high school, I got an idea, and I realized that clinical psychology was the area of study I wanted to focus on. As I went through college, I made more friends and experienced more and more, and am now dead set on my future job as being that therapist/counselor figure for those kids that needed someone. More specifically, I want to focus on helping kids of the LGBT+ community. They arguably face some of the hardest lives, and they grow up facing a lot of struggles that I want to help them out of, and let them know it will be okay, and they can make it, just like I did. I want to be their voice, the voice that stops them from hurting themselves, the same voice that stopped me from doing anything to myself for a long time. I discovered that this was to be my career from working with the staff on MCGamer. A lot of them have also had very hard lives, and I had always tried to help them get through it all, and give them hope. This hope, I wanted to give to kids everywhere, this is one of the big reasons I am still staff. However, after all the good stuff, I was still struggling and my depression once again got me.
The Closing of 2015
I got a new roommate in college because me and my old one were not getting along, we I moved out to a new room, and had a new roommate. We got along well, and he needed some advice for some things he was dealing with, so I decided to give him lessons I learned from my past. I ended up telling him my whole story, and in doing so, it reactivated something within me. I had truly forgotten how miserable I was before college, and I was only focused on the joys, I thought I was cured, but I wasn't and the depression came back. I soon began to cut again after I told him my story. Thinking about it, and over thinking about it and remembering how useless I was, and worthless, it was like I was thrown back into a nightmare world and it was getting me again. I cut again, and thought the worst in myself, even though so much changed. I had a life irl again, I had fun, I was going to be doing rugby next semester, I was gonna get in shape and not be overweight anymore. I was getting good grades, I was becoming happier, why the setback? I realized depression may never really leave me, but it definitely wont be solved if I do not see a therapist and get help. I talked to a very wise friend from college, and she told me to put down the scissors, and stop cutting and go and get help. She explained it to me like this. The first step is going to someone and saying you're depressed, and even if you are not self-harming, take depression seriously, and see help. Put away the knives/scissors/whatever, and protect yourself. The third step, is see professional help and allow myself to get help. I am going to be getting help, and seeing professionals to get the help I need. I have a lot to live for, I have a lot of people that do care, and I have a lot of good in me, no matter what anyone says. IT's hard to always live and look at things positively, but I try my best, and this thread, not only a story of my life for MCGamer and 2015 in general, but a message to everyone. It may be hard to take compliments, it may be hard to see the good in yourself, and see what about you is lovable, but trust me, there is greatness in you and me. Surround yourself with those who will love and support you, get the help you need, and if you ever need someone to give you any advice ever, me and so many people would be willing to help you. I have been there, I know how hard it is. Two days to writing this thread, I cut my wrist again, and I did it again a week ago, and a week before that. It's hard for me to see the food in myself and see why people say I'm good. It's hard for me to see myself as more than good enough, it's hard to believe I am lovable, but trust me, it can happen. I will keep on working until I succeed in being able to love myself for what I am and keep on working. I have a lot to live for. I am losing a lot of weight, last year I was 280 pounds, and only 5'10", now I am 230, and my goal is 170, so I still have a ways to go, but I am so close. I am doing rugby next semester and I have way more adventures and parties to go to, and so much more fun to have. I have MCGamer to help manage with the other Sr. Staff, and I have the mod team to lead, I have a lot to do, and I have a lot to be happy and grateful for. I came out to both my parents, and although my mom had a little bit of a harder time taking it, they are both okay with it. Even with Drag! I became a drag queen, and I can't wait to keep on pursuing that, I have so much fun dancing and lip syncing and having a blast. There's a lot for me to live for, and so do all of you. You have so much you don't even know is around the corner. Allow yourselves to be loved, and allow yourself to love yourself. Love yourselves, because you ARE beautiful! See the what is to be loved in yourself love yourself! It's hard, I know it is, but one day, you will see the truth behind my words.
Concluding Words
"If you can't love yourself, how in the hell are you gonna love somebody else?" - RuPaul
All in all, this is the longest thread I have ever made I think, so GG to me lol 5k words, and plenty more I could say, but yeah, this is what I have went through in this long year, and I hope my story has inspired you guys, and taught you something that you can apply to your own lives. I want you all to be happy, even if you think I hate you because I declined your mod app, or banned you on TeamSpeak, I don't want you to live the way I did, I genuinely want you all to be happy. Be respectful to yourself and one another, and love yourself. Never think you are not worth anything, never think you are useless, never think you are unlovable this is all false, you can be happy, and move on and break free as long as you put your feet in motion, and strive for a better future. Even if your head gets full of darkness, remember that there is a voice that wants you to live and to survive and it can happen, let yourself live, it's so worth. Life is precious, it's so precious, more than any stone known to man. If you feel like you have no voice, find me, I will be your voice, or find your best friend, or someone, your parent, sibling, someone, they do not want you to be gone from their lives, they want you with them, they need you, don't ever underestimate the power of love. You are loved, never ever forget that. You are supported, you are amazing and beautiful the way you are, never ever forget that.
This thread has a lot of purpose for me. It is not only something to show the community my personal side, but a way for me to come to terms and accept what has happened to me, and once I accept what happened in my life, then I will be able to move on from it. Yes I cut myself, yes I have been depressed, yes I wanted to kill myself. It happened, I hit rock bottom, but I know now, I need to get better, because I do want to live and be happy, I will survive. I will move on, and I will get better. I believe we can all get better, but only if we are as dedicated to getting better as much as humanly possible. This New Year's resolution is going to be, to get better, and it will happen. I feel like now that I've told you all my story, I can not give up, and I will not, I will keep on trying, I promise, and I do not promise much in life. This New Year, it will be the year of major and much-needed improvement.
Well on that long, long, long note, cheers to a New Year guys, and may this year be one that will be good for us all, and I hope me and all of you guys get better and be happier than we are now. I love you guys! MCGamer has given me the experience of a lifetime, good or bad, it is one I would nevger trade for anything ever, I love MCGamer, and all of you to bits! Happy New Year's and see you all around the Forums
Well, that's all I have to say, see you guys around!And to those of you who actually read the whole thing
