This year, I went from being underemployed doing gig work to a full time job. Thanks to a furry I met.

My life has improved in every way. Everything fell into place. All I'd had to do was... be me.

I'll regret the wasted time. But I'm glad I started living. It wasn't too late.

Unsurprisingly, I was wrong about everything. My utter lack of social skills from being a shut-in for a decade? Who cares. Show up to the furmeet. No one will judge you.

The love I thought I didn't deserve? I was ready to give it away to others. Because I knew how it felt to live without it.

15 years. And before that was a LDR. It didn't last long.

I look back on my 20s and I just want to sob. What the fuck was I doing? Shutting out the entire world. Pouring myself into art and writing and music. Looking for an escape. Dreaming up other lives to ignore my own.

I felt so worthless.

I just wish I'd had the self-confidence to do it sooner. I feel like I didn't even start living until two years ago. In that time I: got a fursuit, went to my first furcons, started making new friends, and got into a relationship after 15 years of being single.

Well, no one I haven't wanted to find out that I'm secretly a fox on the internet has found that out yet. And if they did, it doesn't matter at this point. I've met more people and made more friends in these two years than my entire fucking lifetime. The scale's tipped all the other way now.

I guess something had had to break eventually. I'd known a course-correction was coming in my 30s because I literally could not imagine continuing as things had been.

I must've made and deleted a Barq like 5 times. Every time I did it, I thought, "what if someone finds out? What will they think?"

when all your friends know you're a furry but you're still in denial of it and trying so desperately to frame your self-image as "normal" because you're actually just ashamed of what you like and believe that suppressing that shame will make you worthy of love

holy fuck DO NOT do that. Please.