How different are you from the you that joined mene?

For me I was still in school end of high school or starting college.
Now I am on the opposite side of the country, I own a house, and am living with my best friend.

Has anybody told me this is where I would be I would not have believed them. What about you?

I’m in a completely different place, both figuratively and literally.

Then: 18 years old, HS/college student, lived in the US, perpetually single, struggling to understand basic Japanese despite 2 years of class study.

Now: 30 years old, stay-at-home mom but was teaching English for the past 8 years, live in Japan, married, reasonably fluent in Japanese, although far from native-level proficient.

I definitely think I’ve grown a lot as a person since then too.

@Poet: Wow! Owning your own home is quite the accomplishment! Sounds like you’re in a great place.

I think the only difference is that I was in college at the time and now I'm working...not much else has changed besides getting a better sleeping habit.

I guess you can't really improve upon perfection XD

Fera - wow quite a change. I spent most of my young adult life trying to find a way to live in Japan. Sadly I am a horrible teacher.

I joined in 2010...so I was in high school (had just transferred schools a few months before, actually). Since then, I've received an Associate's degree and my Bachelor's! But a lot of not so fun stuff happened in between too.
I feel like I'm still kind of the same, though. ☹️ I still live at home, still go on avatar sites (that part isn't bad, though!), still don't really have many friends or know how to socialize. I guess the big things that are different are that I work now and have a boyfriend, lol.

I joined back in 2012 - I was in a not good relationship and trying to come to terms with figuring out how to leave him while wrapping my head around the fact I was going to be a mom.
I'm now in a healthy good relationship - happily married with 3 kiddos. Currently between jobs. But life is much better now than it was when I first joined Mene.
If I had been told this is where I would be 5 1/2 years later, I'd have probably laughed.

Cinderella - socializing is hard... XD

Moon - that is great to hear you're going in a good direction :)

Poet: it's so hard! Especially with social anxiety. I prefer to just keep to myself, but I want to make friends. ☹️

Ugh, real life socializing ;; I suck at it.

Maybe that's why I like these sites so much...I'm better at making friends and chatting through a screen than in real life.

I’m also currently building up a new social group. Most of my friends that I made when I first moved here have since moved countries or at least moved to different cities in Japan, including my Japanese friends since most of them were college students and jobs are mostly in big cities. Right now I’m trying to make friends with other moms with kids my daughter’s age. Fortunately some ladies in my neighborhood have befriended me and we’ve had play dates with our kids.

When I joined I was raising my (then) 2 year old granddaughter in the mountains near Denver. I was happy and enjoying life.
Our living situation changed and granddaughter and I and my disabled adult daughter moved into granddaughter's parents' home in the city while the BF couch surfed at friends' places for about 9 months.
The BF and my disabled daughter and I moved into a retched trailer further into the mountains and granddaughter stayed with her parents...causing me much depression.
I had a heart attack a few months later and received 3 stents in my heart...then a few more months later I had another heart attack and received a triple bypass surgery.
While I recovered I again stayed with my granddaughter's parents.
7 months later we were told we needed to move out...either find a place or go homeless, but to leave their home.
We were in extremely fortunate to find an apartment we could afford in the outskirts of Denver and have been there nearly a year.
I am physically healthy but tire out easily...but I now suffer bad anxiety and depression.
The days that I feel anywhere near "good" are when the granddaughter comes over for sleepovers.
I miss being the happy and confident person I was 4 years ago.
Hopefully someday!

Well Cinderella we menewshans can't hang out with you IRL but you have us here and on discord :D

I actually only have 2 friends myself. My partner, and a friend a few states away.

Ferra - Play dates are a good way to make friends :)
Let them wear each other out while the parents chat and rest XD

Inzane - Just keep on working for that confidence! You'll catch it soon I'm sure :)
I hadn't heard the last part, I'm glad to hear you found a place. It's been a long time since we've chatted.

@Nisty: same! I'm way more outgoing on here. 😊 Plus I have more time to think about what I want to say, which is nice.

@Ferra: sounds like you're having good luck so far! Keep it up! 😁

@Inzane: sounds like you've had a rough and scary few years. ☹️ I sincerely hope things get better for you, and if you ever want to talk, my inbox is open.

@Poet: that's true! I'm very thankful for all of you. 💕
I basically only have two friends as well - my boyfriend and my "best friend" that I'm pretty much drifting away from. All my other friends have moved out of state, not that I was as close to any of them anyway.

What is causing you two to drift away?

I tend to have issues making friends mostly because I have no filter I think. Not in the swearing like a sailor or anything like that but that as I was very not social as a kid, and now being in the medical field I couldn't care less what topic you pick and my questions tend to be quite off the wall XD
I try to keep myself anchored on mene though.

Not sure. Partly we just... don't really talk about anything meaningful, and partly, I've noticed lately that she kind of puts me down a lot. She also talks about other friends of hers behind their backs and I feel like she probably does it about me too, which doesn't feel too good.
I'm the sort of person that grows resentful of people because I do have a filter, and probably too much of one. 😔 I care too much about what people think of me.

Oh that sounds kinda toxic... =/

I've stopped caring... though I had to go through a very dark period in my life in order to get that.

Yeah, exactly. Hence why I'm okay with letting us drift away. 😕

Oh, I'm sorry. I sort of wish I could be like that, but I don't think I want to go through whatever I would need to go through to get to that point, if that makes sense.

It does. Sometimes it's better to be able to experience the good and bad of life. After all that is what makes us human.

Lets see....when I joined Mene some years ago, I was taking care of my disabled mother, working part time at my current job, and hardly doing anything but working and taking care of said mother. Mother has since passed away, I'm now full time at my job, am going out more and doing different things, and am in a better place then I was several years ago.

@Poet: that's a good point. It just feels like life is too hard sometimes.

@Yamka: I'm glad you're doing better now!

I joined at 25 in 2007.

Back then:
- Was taking online classes and trying college again but having some problems.
- Was pretty sheltered lived with my parents.
- Worked part-time minimum wage retail jobs.
- Was drawing a lot, but my proportions were very off, hadn't quite figured things out yet artistically.
- Didn't really understand myself, felt like an overall failure.
- Going through quarter life crisis.

Now: age 37
- Almost have college debt paid off.
- Married for 8 years this month. Own a home. No kids tho.
- Has been around. Has seen some #$^&. Opinions and views have changed. More open-minded.
- Worked for 10 years in retail management. Left that job to do art, design, and web development.
- Don't draw nearly enough but doing fine. That's okay. I'm sort of spread thin.
- Understands myself much better (got a diagnosis for ADHD this year which explains it all)
- Getting close to 40 but eh, I think I'm pretty okay with it.

@Shion: ahhhhh, that gives me so much hope, you have no idea.

Originally Posted by Cinderella

@Shion: ahhhhh, that gives me so much hope, you have no idea.

I thought I'd be stuck living with my parents forever. Like I had no hope. And minimum wage jobs alone weren't enough. I had nobody to move out with. Met my husband and like 3 months after that, I was living with him. I needed out of there. So here we are.

3 months? Wow. It took me almost 11 years to finally be living with itty (after a lot of wrong turns in life)

Well... I joined January 2015.

I was 20 years old. At the time, I was doing really well! I left a mental health forum I used to frequent, so I was looking for another place to make friends unrelated to mental health things, etc.

I was NOT vegetarian in January 2015! However, I wasn't eating red meat or pork. At the time, I had been doing very well when I first joined Mene! I was on an extremely low dose of antipsychotic called Invega and I was doing so well it was likely I would have come off antipsychotics completely!

Basically, I was in a really, really good place when I joined Mene! I was working part time at a job I loved (although I hated my co-workers for the most part) I only started seeking new avatar sites because I was doing so well, I didn't want to be "surrounded" by people who were always in self pity about their mental health.

At the same time, my grandfather passed away when I joined... So I was also trying to find people who could cheer me up. :( At the time I joined, I was diagnosed with a disorder called "schizoaffective" which is basically mood disorder + schizophrenia. That didn't last long though...

In June 2015 I was hospitalized and my diagnosis changed to "schizophrenia" because the doctors realized my so-called "mood disorder" issues were not actually a mood disorder, rather situational depression due to the death of my grandfather :(


Basically, I feel like my life spiraled out of control from there...

Now, year 2019... I'm no longer living in Minnesota, but I am on disability and I live with my parents in an apartment. I've never lived in an apartment before so it's taken some getting used to. My "schizophrenia" got much much worse, I've been hospitalized several times since I joined Mene.

However, I am also free to spend my time doing what I love and what I moved to California to do! I take some acting classes here and there and I have made some new friends.