Chris's Story

I’ve never been great at writing so no epilogue, sorry. 
I was raised and still live in Lakewood, California. I started playing Pokemon Firered when I was about 5 years old since I got it with a gameboy for Christmas and had loved the series after watching the Pokemon anime on TV and watching my brother play through RSE. I wasn’t in school yet so I didn’t know how to spell my name properly and used “Kris” for my IGN, which I've kept out of tradition until today. 
 For the most part, I was a well behaved kid so my parents never had a reason to discipline me, besides when I did the stupid things kids do like jump on a bed or something and I’d get a soft spanking. Elementary school the first few years was tough since I never had luck making most friends. I was a pretty good student since I got A’s and B’s, always did my homework when I got home so that I could do fun stuff.  It was in  third grade that I made a good friend to talk to Pokemon about since it was the only passion in life I had as a kid. We were great friends, but when we reached fifth grade she and I kind of just stopped talking to each other since we didn’t share a class anymore like we did for the previous two years. In that class I made another friend who I talked about the same stuff with, but also Yugioh and Beyblade. He and I became kind of like best friends until middle school, but I’ll get to that in a bit.  Anyway, in fifth/sixth grade would always have beyblade battles at recess with a few other kids and I remember feeling like a normal kid, aside from being a student. The reason I say normal is because my parents never really let me go to other kids’ houses to play, and most of my childhood I never did anything interesting enough to invite friends to, like going to a movie or an amusement park. I never had kids for neighbors to play with, and my parents never wanted to pay for cable, so my toys+my imagination ended up being my best friends for most of my childhood. 
 It wasn’t until I was 11/12 years old that I decided to start watching Pokemon on a website my brother found for me called pokemonepisodes.org (I think), but you all probably all know it as PEO. That’s where I first became exposed to the weird internet world of Chatango, where I made a torchic account (Hoenn is my favorite region, after all) and met some dude with a trainer Red account whose username I can’t remember. We would talk about the anime, games etc. before I ended up quitting Chatango for about a year.
Adjusting to the new school was rough at first since I didn’t know a lot of the new kids there, but there were some kids from elementary I knew so it wasn’t all bad. For the first half of seventh grade I talked to my same friend from elementary, but it was during that same year that I met a kid in Spanish writing class who always tried to guess what “Chris” was short for, but in reality it isn’t short for anything. It turned out I shared 3 classes with him and some other kids in Spanish class, and over time we started to hang out at lunch, where we talked about stuff not about games. He introduced me to his friend group, and I essentially became one of them. At the same time I ended up ghosting my elementary friend since we didn’t share any classes, and even now I realized how messed up it is I didn’t speak to him much after that. It was one of my first regrets. On the other hand, the group I joined ended up introducing me to my true best friends I hang out with today. I had a few girlfriends here and there, but most ended up moving away or just breaking up with me, so the relationships were short and I wasn’t too affected by them.  
Since my friends and I didn’t hang out too often after school, I mostly stayed on Facebook playing some of the games it had when I was at home. At some point I started watching Pokemon again, and with it I returned to Chatango to a new-ish PEO where I met a bunch of the “Legit” account users. It was pretty chill since I would battle people, albeit not knowing about EVs/IVs yet. It was around this time where I made the account LinkXTheHeroofTime, giving me my first chatango nickname. Eventually Amanda banned me from PEO for something I can’t even remember, and one of the friends i made from there linked me to a league with a leader named Sparklez or something like that. Things went pretty fine there until some sort of drama happened and the chat ended up dying, along with the league. That was where I lost most of the friends I’d made to chatango since they became inactive and it felt kind of lonely. However, a user named Scizorlkmn was a gym leader there and had a link to his league in his account, which was called Tower of Legends. So I joined the community at Tower, losing pretty much every Pokemon battle I had with people since I hadn't properly trained any Pokemon ever. I remember often getting bullied for it, and the amount of edgy responses I made as a pre-teen only made the shit-talking worse. This pushed me to go explore new chats, and I started a very cringe roleplay phase at eeveeclan and some other pokemon roleplay chat, while still going to Tower sometimes.  I also found my way to Nexus, where I met people like Ramp, Resh, Joltypoo, and some others. I got my ass kicked challenging one of the people in their League, and they also bullied me, calling me a retard/that I was shit noob, etc. Eventually Tower got hacked and turned into some old man porn website, so a few of the people in Tower found and went to Frosty’s league(s). Around that time I learned how to EV train and breed Pokemon so it wasn’t as bad, despite some of the arguments and shit talking going on still. At some point after Frost had attempted to make 3 leagues or so people began to leave and went to Nova. I stuck around trying to promote the league he made, until he quit Chatango and I made my way to nova a few months after Mado and Mitch made it. Suffice to say, the first 2 years were what made me, for the first time, feel like a failure in life since Pokemon was so important to me, but so many people talked me down about it   
It was in eighth grade where my life started to truly flip upside down. School life remained pretty normal, and things were hype online  with the reveal of Pokemon X and Y. At home, however, my mother had found out my dad was using money we had borrowed for gambling with some “friends”, and they would get into these intense fights where they yelled/cried/almost seemed like they wanted to kill each other.  I had never seen them fight so roughly and I understood why my mom was mad, but not why it was so serious. Chatango was supposed to be somewhat of an escape from all of it, but the bullying going on there combined with the issues going on began to make me depressed. 
 My mother’s anger became more clear to me around Christmtas time. My dad, brother, and I went to spend it with my dad’s family who lives kind of far away. What we didn’t know is that my grandmother had invited my half-brother to her house so I could meet him. It had turned out that my dad had cheated on my mom during the same year she was pregnant with me, knocked up some whore, and my mom never wanted me to find out about it. Naturally, my head was spinning and I was left in disgust with what my father had done and lied to me about. I had thought my parents were happy together, but they were actually only living with one another so they could support my brother and I until we left home. Essentially, my entire life felt like a lie at the time. Anyhow, after the awkward, heart-breaking Christmas, my brother and I told my mom about it. The arguing got worse after that, and lasted a few months. My mother contemplated kicking my dad out of the house, and at some point my dad actually tried committing suicide because he couldn’t put up reliving the drama he’d left behind. Throughout that time, my depression kicked in. Every day it felt hard to get out of bed, I stopped eating and became very unhealthy, and all day at school I felt a burden of having to know all the awful things going on. I wanted to run away from home, maybe live with my aunt at least since she is like a second mom to me if she let me. On the brighter side of things, the normality of school and the new friendships I made allowed me to enjoy the small things, like promoting from eighth grade into high school on the honor roll. By that time, my mom and dad hadn’t been speaking a lot, but the arguments seemed to calm down and things felt semi-normal for once in that year. 
  Most of high school was nice at school since I began to be a little bit more social and made friends in the classes I was in. Since my middle and high school were in the same place I continued to hang out with my main friend group. Classes got harder since I decided to take some advanced placement and honors classes throughout the years, but I did decent overall since I still got A’s and B’s and passed most of the exams that we were required to take. Since I’d gotten an Xbox 360 for Christmas, I began to try new games like Halo 4, Battlefield, Destiny, Castle Crashers, and Minecraft, all of which I enjoyed playing with my friends online. At some point I joined and was kicked out of a clan on Halo, but I remember it being fun to be part of a gaming community.  
It was during freshman year that I met this girl named Laura in a Spanish literature class. Though we didn’t talk much, I developed a crush on her and eventually asked her out. We dated for about a year and a half before I found out she was cheating with me with one of the dudes who lived near me and went to school with us. As it was my first long-term relationship, I was left very heartbroken and betrayed. My depression only got worse combined with the drama I was a part of at Nova, and all the negative things in life felt like this weight I would never be able to lift. It was around that time that I considered committing suicide after feeling like I wanted to so many times before since it seemed like the only way I’d be free of all the awful things happening in my life. 
It wasn’t until late junior year that I truly got over Laura, and decided I wouldn’t date again for a while. After nearly facing suicide, I re-evaluated life and found that I had a future to live for in my small successes I’d made at school. Despite the family drama, I knew my family loved me and I loved them. Doing something as cowardly and stupid as commiting suicide would just hurt them and waste my potential as a person. So while the depression stayed along with the difficulty and stress of honors classes, I slowly began to acquire a more positive personality. With that, junior and senior year were pretty chill. I went to all the small dances/prom with my friends, as well as other school events, and graduated.Things were okay.   
Since my memory is bad, I don’t remember all the smaller details of what happened at nova so I’ll just summarize how I felt on most of the major occasions. For the record, I switched from link accounts to the Lateritious account around this time, but only wanted to be called Chris since it made me more comfortable in chat and I wanted to try to be a decent person like I was at school. I just find it kind of silly how agitated I used to get over people calling me Link for that small reason lol.  
 I was sad to see people I considered friends disappear over the years, like Vene, Trueness, Winter Phantom, Legitblack… the list could go on. My first years at nova I took literally everything to the heart, so when people like Reks, 0mi or Mox were being assholes to me it only reminded me about the bullying I’d experienced in Tower and other chats before, so it very much hurt me emotionally. I got along with Tiff and enjoyed playing Pokemon with her, so it was disappointing when a lot of people decided to bring out her nasty side and she ended up treating me like I was never her friend. By trying to fix things with her and Nova, I only made her come back to the chat to get bullied even more and she practically never returned after that, so I was left with regret.
 The whole Alissa/Codie exposure was amusing since when Codie was Alissa, he had been such a bitch of a person to deal with and was stressful. 0mi ended up being some stupid kid of a troll, and I’m ashamed I ever fell for his troll bait. Even worse, when he pretended to be my friend I actually thought he was, only for him to go back to being a troll and thus, backstabbed me. 
Though he denies it, Char often trolled me, codie, surge, and some others whenever the Skype crew was around and it just added on to the stress/sadness of using Chatango. The arrival of kitty was weird at first, but I grew sympathy for her when people bullied her. I always hated how Char power abused by  “joke” banning her, and hated it more when I ruined my one chance of being a good mod by trying to keep her unbanned, only to unban some other weirdo on accident. At some point kitty did start to annoy me, however, with her constant crushes on older men after many novians advised her to stick to people her age, and when she called me Aiden for some reason. That was around the time even I started to bully her a little and felt like such a hypocrite, especially when Goomer joined Nova and became besties with her on most occasions. What happened between them is sad and gross, but nothing could be done since they were already communicating on Discord, so I’ll leave it at that.
 The switch from Nova to whatever Sara’s chat was called was brief and weird, but I remember Sara being kind of cocky and mean so all I could remember was her being likeforce at the time and me not liking her. Speaking of Force, I stayed very salty with them after losing that one battle against them in the Tower, and they were elitist assholes so I hated them for a while before I got over it lol. 
The arrival of Spin to nova was chaotic. I beat him in a few battles and he was salty about me using Mega Charizard, so he wasn’t friendly with me right away. For a while his saltiness in Pokemon and Yugioh caused him to start a bunch of arguments with many people, which lasted hours, keeping the chat quite disruptive. Though I didn’t enjoy them, the amount of arguments made me miss him less when he “quit” the first time.    
Tina trying to power grab nova while also being a slut with every dude in nova made me like her less, so I was glad to argue with her and make her hate me somehow. It was kind of a stressful experience, but at least she got banned for her own foolish actions. 
The exposure of Emmy left me quite sad/betrayed since I always saw her as a chill friend and didn’t know her dark history. She was basically the last straw with catfish after Codie, Dani, Angel, and did it, so my trust issues just grew worse with any “woman” on Chatango. Though, with the story I’ve typed up to this point I guess trust issues are natural to me lol. 
I had my differences with Talon since Tower, so there was a point where I hated him so much I wanted him banned permanently since I thought he was such a bad influence on the chat and didn’t deserve to get away with so much. Him being banned to Hydrostorm made me realize he was part of nova so he was never really gonna be banned long, and on some level I did see a form of friendship with him even if he probably didn’t feel the same way about me. On the bright side I got to meet the hydro people, which brough Tam and Yiff to Nova. 
When it comes to the Tam/Zero or Tam/char arguments I don’t agree with Tam blindly accusing people of things without some form of evidence since it is unfair. At the same time I always valued Tam as a friend, so I chose to defend her when she made a point I agreed with, and am now quite sad she’s gone. 
I’ve  done a lot of bad things I can’t even keep track of. Pretending to be different accounts in the “0minzation,” faking the hacking of my account to get rid of people I didn’t like, trolling, revealing trusted secrets in public, posting images of people, or just being a bully myself. None of it is anything I’m proud of and they’re all actions that have burdened me simply because the only reason I had for doing them was out of malice. Deep down I think I just wanted to inflict pain/chaos on people so they could feel as shitty as I did throughout depression and all the drama in my life. Regardless I realized there really was no excuse and I was a hypocrite for hating people for things they’ve done when I did the same things myself. I’ve now realized people don’t care about the past as much though, so I’m less bothered by it all despite still feeling that lingering regret.
College has been no walk in the park. I’ve made no long-term friendships, and I’ve done pretty average in most of my classes. Since my goal was to become a doctor, I feel like I failed myself in not getting the grades necessary to become one. I’ve worked hard, but also know I’ve been lazy when I shouldn’t have and need to improve. For now, I’m simply going to work towards being a physician’s assistant or a registered nurse, as I have high hopes for a future in one of those careers. I like to think I’m not depressed anymore, but the small failures I’ve had make me sad and disappointed in myself to the point where I second guess most of what I do. I’m not sure what that means, but I’d like to keep a positive outlook towards most things. It still feels awkward that my parents didn’t truly love each other for basically my entire life and are still only living in the same house for us. Sadly there’s not much I can do, but when they do separate I think I'll be okay with it. I worry about mom since she seems to want love again, but is held back by us. She’s also become depressed, like most women her age, and I just I hope I can be there for her since it never felt like anyone was there for me when I was at my worst. As for dad, I don’t think i’ll ever forgive him, or even my grandma for setting up that meeting with my half brother I never knew about, but on some level I love them both still and can’t bring myself to hate them. 
Nova has been pretty calm compared for most of my college experience aside from some arguments between Spin/Tam/Yiff between themselves, or with other nova members. I did appreciate Tam and Yiff as friends, despite some of the things they said or did, which is why it hurts that they left. It just reminds me of all those other people who left nova years ago for one reason or another. I do blame Spin, which is why I’ve been such a jerk to him. His selfishness and tendency to make himself the victim of every issue is annoying, but it doesn’t mean I have to give him shit for it forever either. What’s done is done. 

Well, I think that’s the end of my story for now. Congrats to anyone who made it to the end. I didn’t proofread this so sorry for any typos. I hope me sharing my experiences helps people understand me a little better. Walking down memory lane was nice.  With that I leave you with one phrase to remember: The past can never be forgotten. :/

It was fun to read about your Chatango journey. It seemed like you didn't have a good chat to settle in until you found Novastorm. 

It was also interesting to hear your planned career path. The careers you'd mentioned involve caring for others so it says a lot about your character. Not just anyone goes into those kinds of jobs. Very respectable field.
 
I just wanted to say I think it was really fucked up what your dad and grandmother did. Like what were they even thinking!? "Hey son come meet the other child I had whilst cheating on your mom" like wtf was that mentality? Not only was it a betrayal, but he also chose to reveal that betrayal on Christmas. I can understand why that bothered you so much.

Interesting read. Thanks for sharing your life with us. I especially liked the part where you went off on a tangent about random chatango people.

Well first off I'm sorry to here about your problems dealing with the conflict between ur parents growing up. I can't really empathize with that situation granted i never had a parental couple but I can imagine it being really stressful. Other than that you seemed to have a pretty normalish childhood kinda like mine with bumps every now and then which is pretty great to hear. One thing about life though Link is that the more you submit to depression the worse you'll end off. Try your best to move forward with your head held high and with confidence and I promise you will feel and do better.

As for your chatango experience I still disagree with doing anything harmful to you because back then I was a lot nicer and tame than after my return from army. One thing about you Link is that you took offense to like most jokes as well as other minor harmless things. I apologize if I have somehow offended you in the past but I really barely messed with anyone back then so I really don't remember it. If you can jog my memory as to what i exactly did then I could probably explain how i meant no harm towards you. I do understand however that due to your upbringing you probably were really traumatized which shaped these drastic views of the past. The only thing I will admit to though is my wrongdoing to Kitty, however I don't know how my actions effected your mod position.

I'm happy to finally see your full honest position regarding Tamantha however defending her because you're her friend is not helping her. If you were really her friend you'd bring it up to her where her fault lies but I understand if you probably are scared because of the potential consequences that follow from that decision. I personally wouldn't like if my friends never brought to my attention anything wrong I do because I wouldn't see them as real friends so allowing me to continue making that mistake.

Also inflicting pain upon those who's inflicted pain upon you is not solving anything either. You're just containing and expressing ill will and that is unhealthy. You can dislike a person but don't go out of your way to do harm to them because you hate what they do. We must always try to prioritize healing over destruction.