A few days ago Notion announced, all free accounts can have unlimited nodes on their accounts. I remember I tried it way back around release, or maybe before official release. It’s not an advertisement for them, I get nothing from them and I don’t even want to make a review about the application itself, because it’s irrelevant.
I installed the latest version and logged in. I started to check what I left in there and it was not a big surprise, basically nothing. I tried and left behind, that’s not something that I would use daily. And here comes the big BUT…
I found something. Something that I don’t even remember I wrote, but I did. I’m 100% sure, because of the content. This post is more about to publish that little story from 2017. Without any changes (fixes or anything) you can read below.
Life is freakin’ hard
I don’t know where to start. Now I’m in my early 30s and everything started like 25 yrs ago. I don’t know what happened or what not, but one day I realized there are two kind a people in the world, male and female. I know it sounds silly, but it was a shock. Before that point there was my father, my mother, my little brothers, myself and the rest of the world filled with random people.
I realized I have to wear ugly t-shirts and ugly shoes. I can’t move my arms while I’m talking because it means I’m angry even if I am not. I’m not allowed to use words like “cute” or “fantastic”, but I have to use words like “awesome” or “whoa” (with a low tone). I’m not allowed to grow my hear because then I’m a punk and punks are not tolerated. I should not brush my hear more than once per day, but better to do it only once in two days or less. I have to pick the “right” colored pencil case, I have to prefer given colored and types of cloths otherwise I’ll be punished by others from the group in the kindergarten and later in school.
I was like “what the heck”, it does not make sense, but sure I can live with that… Others can so I can. I went to school and I lost my best friend because she was a girl and there is no such thing like friendship between males and females.
I was always the strange guy who does not talk, but always knows everything and has the weirdest opinions all the time. Sure, I didn’t talk so much because if I did, I was punished. Sure I know a lot of things because instead of social events I was sitting in the library. The last part? I don’t know, my opinion was always reasonable… at least for me. They were consistent while others have opinion switches like every hour? Ok, maybe days. And it wasn’t that they changed their mind, it was most about something strange I couldn’t understand “trend”. It was something that others said and has no meaning.
Everyone said, I should be happy while I’m a kid. No, I was not. And looking back. Sure I was not and couldn’t be at all. Even after these years I still don’t think it was possible. Day by day, I learned how people talk to each other, observed them, draw conclusion, integrated into my mind and next day… well I did the same. Every single day.
I know when someone is angry because I observed thousands of people how they behave when they are angry. Or at least what I though they are angry. They raise their arms, they push their chest a bit forward, tilts their head back a bit, their muscles on their face are hard. If I see these events, it means I will see someone yelling, or smashing something… or someone. That’s the anger.
I don’t know that I ever felt anger when I was young, but later in my life once I had a feeling and the reaction was to hit the closest thing with my fist (it was a wall). I had a very long martial art background and first of all, the wall did not hurt me at all, but the wall, it had to be fixed a bit and because of my background, right after I hit the wall, I paused the time in my head, track back a few seconds and tried to analyze what I did. And indeed, I had all the previously described symptoms. So I realized, I was angry and a few seconds later someone asked me, why am I angry. That moment the only thing I was able to say… well, nothing, I just run away because I did not know why I was angry, I did not even know I’m angry until my harsh act and I was scared what if I hurt someone.
Why I wrote that long section about a single event? I tried to describe how I leaned every single emotions and if I never met with one, I will not able to recognize. Why is it important? Because as am adult, I have to recognize all these things and act based on that to not be punished.
Years passed and I was always the alien in the group. I couldn’t deal with that boy-girl stuff. Why given shoes are cool and others not, but if you have longer hair it’s cool. Why do I have to wear that ugly and uncomfortable shorts on gym classes, if I could get a stretchy suit that just fits on me and don’t have to care about if something caught the edge and tears it and later at home I’ll be punished because I did not take care enough of it and they have to buy a new one. Well, I knew it will not be a new one, it was always a used one from some relatives. Oh and my classmates, some of them hated that stretchy suit and wanted to wear shorts. Why I have to wear them and they can’t?
People are hard. To be fair, a lot of animals are hard to understand, but humans are right at the top of the list. They are so smart and so stupid at the same time. Fortunately when I arrived in high school, I already analyzed thousands of people. It was not that hard to build up a much better place for myself. I started to make things sounds funny before I did them. Like changing the tone on “cute” to sound more like a satiric. At least that was my intention and let them to catch that was a normal word a girl say, but that guy said and with that changed tone. Indeed, it was successful, everyone thought I said the word to make fun of something. Not exactly what I wanted, but good enough. Let’s play around and do the same with other like 40-50 words randomly for months. Every time less and less tone change. After a while no one really did care about words. Everyone used them as they wanted. I started to grow my hear down and said it is because I like that long. No one complained. Once I went into the school in skirt and only a few asked why and the obvious answer with a “why don’t you know” look: because it’s the international skirt day.
No it was not. I did not even know if it exists or not. Not even today. To be honest, that would be awesome ;) That was the first time I realized how strong and dangerous my personality. To express myself, I had to figure out what they expect and do that. It was energy and at the same time, doing something was the same energy consumption, so it was totally up to me how to respond to people based on what was good for me. That time I did things I’m not so proud of and things I hope it was good even if I achieved them with bad tools. And this wall of text is not about it.
So, I was in high school and once someone asked me if I’m gay. I answered like “A what?” and that person looked in my eyes and said again “gay”. What the hell is that. I said “Does it matter, let’s drink a beer instead”. After that beer, I rushed back to school… never wanted to be home and I had access to the IT lab because I already knew more about them than anyone else in the school even the IT teacher… So I rushed back to the school and searched for the word “gay”. Ok, now I know what it means, but why is it relevant, it was still a mystery. I tried to find all the information I could about the topic and figured out there are “gay” and “lesbian” people, depending on their gender. What an epic clusterf*? If a boy loves boys, then he is gay. If a girl loves girls, then she is lesbian. Does not make sense. So if a boy loves girls, then he is lesbian and if a girl loves boys, then she is gay? Nope, they are then “straights” (wut, why not ellipse). It’s more about they love the same gender as they are, but then it still does not make sense, why do we have two words for that. If I say “gay” as described about, it’s obvious if I talk about a girl, then she loves girls and if I talk about a boy then he loves boys. Why do we have two terms for it and they does not marked as synonyms, they are just two well distinguished words.
Later I was sitting at home and I was not able to sleep, usually I slept like two hours per day, I did not need more, sometimes three and if I was sick, I slept like five hours. So I was at home and though about it. I never felt love. Or did I? How does it feel? Tried to remember peoples and their behavior when they said they are in love. Still no clue. Tried to research on the internet and indeed, I had some symptoms before, but some of them were missing. Conclusion, I was never in love. After that day I tried to observe people in school, in coffee shops, in the library, on the main square. I tried to find any connection and realized, indeed I felt love before, and I feel it right now (back in high school), but it was so strange that I never though about it. It’s a feeling that has no use. Once a girl and once a boy. So am I a gay or “straight”? Let’s figure out and find anything. It was the age of Forums instead of big social media platforms and found a post about a word “bi-sexual”… Wow, that means I don’t care if you are a boy or a girl. Finally, that’s me. To be fair I don’t even care if you exist or not in general, but in “the context of love”, I prefer the former one, so given human exists.
I was so naive. I had to be around 15 to know what gay, lesbian, bi-sexual mean. I knew and understand a lot of equations and theorems from famous physicists, I was able to teach older humans what they needed for their math class (it was a good extra money), but I was not able to understands basic emotions and terms. I tried to find sources online but my english knowledge was pretty limited so I found a lot of bullshits and even more information about “gay is bad” but “lesbian is good”. WHAAAT? It’s the same, how can be one of them good and the other one is bad. Skip it, do not try to understand, it’s impossible. It was, but than I realized most of the famous stars are boys and a very few are girls only. Click. Quickly looked at different career choices. 99% of the parliament are boys. There are some countries where it’s 100%. Woooooow. That was something I definitely could recognize, it makes me angry. Why? It has a reason, but it was more important that why gay is bad and lesbian is good. Easy. A “straight” boy prefer to watch two or more girl on top of each other then two or more boys and because they are in lead positions they can say what is good and what is not.
So, still in high school, once I found a forum with a lot of interesting people and they told me there is an umbrella called “LGBT” and it’s “Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, Transgender”. They said it’s more than that, but that’s the name. Some others referred it “LGBTQ” or “LGBTQ+” where the Q was “Queer”. And the plus sign? Well, they closed it quick, all others who are represented under this umbrella, but would be really long to write them all there. It’s ok for me, it makes sense. Finally something logical from a human being. But what is Transgender. They said someone who likes to dress to the other gender than they are… and I was sure, why not, but why it has to be its own name, they are just wearing what they want? No, they can’t, but they want. Ohhhh, I see… no I don’t. I left the forum because it was way more toxic than it was acceptable for me.
Later I ended up on a different forum after someone sent me a link on IRC (yes it was a thing :P and it’s still not dead) and they told me Transgender is not about dressing. I remember just wrote some question-mark and “explain with examples pls”. That given human being (I assume a human being because it was an online forum and did not met other animals capable of communication through computers before) gave me a description. A really long one and as I read that wall of text, I started to cry. I did not understand why, but I was not able to read the monitor without wiping my ears all the time. I felt something strange. I felt something similar when I was around 3yrs old and asked for something from my parents and there was a box with the perfect size for it. And suddenly I remembered the box had something else and without thinking even for one more nanosecond, I closed the forum post. I did not wan to ruin that feeling because I knew, the next thing will be the punishment for that feeling. Excited. I was excited and being excited was bad. After a few minutes, I could feel and store that in my memory, re-opened and continued with that post. I felt happiness, sadness, excitement, anger, and a lot of other things. I don’t even know what I really felt. But after that day I was 100% sure, I’m not an alien, just an autistic (I know that from other sources that are not mentioned here before) girl. That’s it. I’m a girl and put your head up into your a$$ if you are not happy with that.
Before that, I wished I was born as a girl. After that… I’m a girl and still I wish I was born as a girl with a body of a girl.