Why do men even need an authority stat? What do you need to have authority over? Other men?

lol not to be depressing and all but 

ive been on tumblr since circa 2010/2011 and i first started on here bc i saw on an e/a/t/ing disorder forum i religiously lurked that tumblr was the th/i/ns/po watering hole of the internet and i was like 👀 and made an acct and nearly immediately fell into the b&w thinsp0 depression photoblogging community

after a couple months of trying to do a sideblog but failing bc my dashboard was too ~diverse~ and the juxtaposition stressed me out, i made this acct in 2013 (?) bc i wanted to reblog color photos (lmao) and memes and stuff. (also ran a Ridiculously popular sideblog for a time that was 100% fashion editorials and runway detail photos and 0% personal, and im using the word ridiculously here not to mean “very, extremely” but “laughably, comical”, but Thats Not Relevant To The Protagonist’s [my] Journey!) and i sort of gradually started using this one more. 

since they were different accts i had to log out and log in to them all the time so i would be “gone” for increasingly long spans of time until i basically exclusively used this one. i would go months at a time without logging on to my old Depression Account. and those gaps in time just made it so jarring to see that content

well firstly, so many of those blogs disappear on the regular bc tumblr deletes them or the blogger deletes them (usually bc they go into treatment or bc their parents find their blogs lol rip) or they otherwise just become inactive. so eventually none of my “friends” or familiar faces were regularly on there.

secondly, i think something about me changed? its not that i was mentally any more healthy than i had been then (lmfao) but as i got a little more mature i realized that so much of my compulsion to externalize my emotions that way was rooted in some sort of need to feel validated by similar people. it was performative in a really dumb way. i even lied about how severe my behaviors were bc i wanted people to be sure that i wasnt just faking it (which ironically meant that i was !!!!) and at a certain point it just stopped mattering to me if other sick teenagers online thought i was one of them....?

i dont remember when i deleted it, but im pretty sure it was after i finished high school. i was so emotionally attached to it, i didnt want to let it go for some stupid reason. i have not kept in touch with any of my “friends” from that. for some of them, i have no idea if they’re still alive, and i have reason to seriously doubt it. thats kind of unsettling to think about. i wish i knew their full names so i could google them and find out but i also am kinda grateful i dont. i dont want to know. 

idk why ive been thinking so much about it lately but when teenage girls follow me on here i think about myself just a few years ago (but feels like forever ago) and i get so sad :(((( thats so so so young :( :( :( i hope That Community isnt as robust now as it was when i was in it :(