Blue Swirl wrote:

Er, the mental health thread remains open, should anyone need it.

Truthahn1 wrote:

I freaking love cats. Some are cunning and some are thick, just like people. I left mine upstairs when I came down to post this rubbish; best go upstairs and reunite with them... Rosalie has the v-e-t in the morning. :S She's being microchipped though, so then she will really be officially "Rosalie" and officially at this house, and I will buy her a little pink heart with her name on.

Truthahn1 wrote:

I also wanted to clear up a few misunderstandings I think some people have about me and what has been going on recently. I just wanted a chance to clear all of this up, and then I will probably not frequent the forum much any more, having been met with mostly positive people, but also some real negatives. I am also going to the hospital this weekend for assessment, so I will not want the extra stress. My ex and best friend, Fenton, invited me into a group on Halo in order to play some games with him and some of the "great guys from the forum". I then joined this forum after being invited by some members after a fun evening of gaming, and I was assured that I would be welcome. I admit to not knowing at first how the forum worked. I assumed that posts in one thread were part of the conversation of that thread and would not be dragged into other threads. This was perhaps naive of me, but it was a simple mistake. I was speaking in the Love Sucks thread about my ex, because it is something which is in my thoughts a lot at present. I did not say anything negative about him and refused to do so because he might read them (which is why I said he was on the forum, so no one would inadvertently post something negative which might offend), and for his own privacy I did not let everyone know his name. Everything I have said which has mentioned him has been discussed in great detail between the two of us and is not a source of conflict. I would not have said anything on the forum which I did not want him to know. I then, naively as I have said, posted in a different thread a picture which I have always found funny, which other people then assumed was of him. This was a simple mistake and I immediately tried to remove it and rectify the issue, with some difficulty. I had said that I did not want to reveal his identity or interfere with him on here in any way, because that was never my intention in coming on the forums, but some people decided that it would be a juicy bit of gossip and would not let the matter drop. Now, about the posts in other threads. Again, I did not think that what I had posted in the Mental Health thread would be common knowledge to anyone. It is hard to explain to people who do not have this condition, but I often act like two very different people. One of them is the person who I showed in the Mental Health thread and the other is the person with whom many of you play Halo and who has been posting in the majority of the other threads. The comments I made in the Technology thread were supposed to be a little tongue-in-cheek, but also a friendly warning to certain people that you should not just brutally insult people, accuse them of being a slut and telling them that they are stupid, stubborn and wrong and that all of their friends are annoying morons without expecting some kind of reaction. I posted the link to the MH thread in reply to an accusation that I was being "oversensitive", which may have been true, and that is why I sent the link to explain why. I would also like to explain that I have cripplingly low self-esteem and any bluster and apparent obsession with my chest is simply a cover to hide how nervous I have been around new people - better people just think of me as a pair of boobs than a "psycho" or a "retard". I also sometimes struggle to read people even in person, and on the internet it is sometimes just plain impossible to gauge the reaction people will have to something... I can only do my best and apologise or explain myself if people take offence. I was not bothered by the majority of the banter and light insults which are bandied around the forums. I know not to take the majority of these personally, but I did feel that some of the insults (on a completely pointless topic, I might add) were leaning towards the very personal and frankly rude and intentionally hurtful. This is something which I also noticed a lot of other people commenting on, and I saw a number of comments asking that the thread be "sunk". As a n00b, I thought this meant that the thread be closed and, seeing no option for it myself, responsibly asked (for the good of all parties) that the thread be closed. I was not aware that this was "not done" and that I would be accused of receiving "special treatment" and resented for it. I am not a moron, I can cope with an amount of banter like anyone else. I do, however, find it hard to come into a group of established friends and have my every action judged and my every mistake brought up again and again, completely out of context, and with little provocation. I very much enjoy playing Halo with a lot of people on here, and I would like to continue to do so. I don't think that I have offended anyone during our gaming sessions, and I have never received a personal message from anyone professing that they have a problem with anything I had said. If I had, I would of course have apologised and attempted to resolve the situation, but as it was, these comments were all made behind my back, with some people even thinking I should be "banned from the forum" for reasons I still don't know. I will continue to play Halo online, because I love the game. If anyone has a real problem with me, feel free to let me know and I will either do my best to improve myself or avoid you, whichever you prefer. I'm sure there are aspects on here which I have not covered, but I have tried my best to explain the situation, and I suppose that if people decide they wouldn't mind me coming back, I will come back when I am out of the hospital. Kind regards, Elena