longer.blue

I figure it might be a good idea to introduce myself properly, my name is Sapphire, I was born in southhampton in 2005 in england and I was born into a family with very little money, I was diagnosed with autism in my younger years, I spent a lot of my free time as a child outside and going between my mothers place and my fathers place, I did not stay in one place for a very long time and never had much of a chance to set any roots until moving to hampshire some time between 2010-2025. During this time I took a really big interest in artwork and human expression, I was massively rambunctious and was violently resistant to every type of authority in a kind of fashion that was hard to miss, in primary school I dragged a bin full of crappy crumpled up disposable plastic cups and threw them onto the floor of my head teachers office, convincing them that week to switch to reusable cups which they did. After completing primary school and moving again I slowly started to develop PTSD from my extreme home life, I dragged through secondry school, spending most of my time depressive, not paying attention and sleeping through my classes, I got my first computer thanks to a charity for young autistic people that gives out computers and money called the family fund. Over my time in secondry school I got a few computers from the family fund, all of very minimal spec, during year 10 I started a computer science course and art and design course in my school as part of curriculum, using what I learned from my computer science course I messed with the computers I had, taking them apart and building a better one with the parts I had from them, I also learned to sauder motherboards when fixing a faulty connection on an old turtle beach headset my dad had. I found an interest in computer science and started learning on my own, eventually quitting computer science at school due to being targetted by one of the teachers who took his anger out on me after his wife cheated on him. I got better at what I was doing, eventually getting enough money saved up to build my own computer from scratch, even repairing a cpu in the process after I broke it. During this time I got my first drawing tablet, learning to draw digitally and animate which was a skill I developed from this point forward. I learned some python, started writing stories and aspiring to build games, during free time I spent a lot of it obsessed with video games, taking a particular liking to subnautica and starbound, studying both as my focuses during my art course. my sense my fashion began to change as I got older, starting out with techwear and slowly evolving into collecting sci fi and medievil style armor. During all this an infection in my ear progressed so badly I had to have an emergency surgery, the violent bullying that I recieved eventually causing my stitches to rupture slightly and losing my hearing in that ear forever. This was around the time of the release of the quest 2 where I got one not long after release thanks to my mother and my father pouring what little money they had to get it for me despite their diffirences. I discovered vrchat and began creating avatars and using 3D software for the first time, finding a huge interest in it and the unity engine, beggining to use both and finding comfort in the vr space where I could hide from my life. I was then temporarily put into a private fostering arrangement for 6 months in dorset where I explored full body tracking solutions, I tried an xbox kinekt and even made a homemade mocap setup which worked even better. I eventually returned back home to hampshire, continuing to develop all of the skills I had started to develop over time. I continued through school, doing my exams and struggling to revise, finding my first boyfreind during this, I barely scraped by on my exams and during the last of them that boyfriend made an attempt on taking my life in the school field. The police got involved but due to the high stress and pressure during that time I was forced to shrug it off and keep moving. I eventually finished secondry school, not passing in a lot of my subjects with the exception of sciences and art, I moved onto college where I did computer sciences and cyber security for 2 months due to not having the grades to do game dev. Some of the teachers from my secondry school came together to push a re-mark of my tests, eventually getting them to a pass just barely in which I abandoned my comp and cyber security course to do media production which I got a distinction and impressed most of the faculty with my VFX, writing, set design and acting skills. Halfway through that course I discovered NeosVr where I spent a lot of my free time to escape from my esculatingly bad home life. somewhere during this time I began to develop psychosis but I pushed forward, eventually finishing that course like I said. I then moved onto game development, doing a level 3 extended course, I met a partner and my alchoholic step father was kicked out of the home after I had a fist fight with him, things were looking better. 3 weeks later my step father was found dead in his apartment hung by a belt and his family refused to let me attend the funeral. Not long later my grandfather also died from cancer, my mother quickly finding a new partner after the loss of my step father and I had frequent arguments with her new partner as he was very cocky and believed he had some kind of power over me, threatening me with violence and destruction of my property over whatsapp. I stayed outside the house, standing there and refusing to eat or drink, turning my back to the house until she set boundries and disallowed him from trying to force me to "be his friend" he came outside the house multiple times to harass me, in which I made fun of him to his face and he recorded me with his phone. he took the recordings back to the house and him and my mother laughed at me and the recordings, I did not return to the house, I stayed outside all night, eventually she called the police and they tried to force me home, I returned home begrudgingly. Later at 17 years old I moved in with my boyfriend where I was belittled and made fun of by him for my outlook on life and my stubborness, the relationship was difficult but it allowed me to learn how to communicate better and how to be nicer to people. Thanks to Personal independence payments and universal credit I was able to move out into my own place by rending a room, first place the landlord was overly attatched so I left, second place the landlord was unwell and tried to violently break into my room during my sleep over an unemptied dishwasher. I then moved in with my dungeons and dragons host where I took up tabletop warhammer and got quite comfortable for a while, eventually moving out into an apartment of my own and stopped doing warhammer. during all this I BARELY scrape a pass on my first year of college, not visiting resonite at all during this time and eventually working from home as my ptsd developed to unmanagble levels, I would intermittently become scared and delusional, hiding, horrified and curled up in corners and wouldnt be able to look after myself properly long term, my friend from college would intermittently visit me to try make sure I was okay but the state of my life was depressing at best. I started to get better and my resolve returned to me, me and my friend founding an indie studio called catscratch interactive and working on games together, I took this very seriously and worked tirelessly, building a following and a community where I took on developers and worked as a team lead for a year, completing my 2nd year of university and securing my diploma and becoming a qualified game developer. after this I lived quietly on benefits on my own for 6 months, working as team lead, I eventually began to struggle to support myself and despite the positive experiences held by everyone at catscratch we all decided to disband the indie studio, wishing eachother luck on our journeys. My father, previously unpresent in my life during all of this, came and bothered me constantly about university, eventually pestering me to move away to dorset to study at my dream university which is where I am now. Due to my difficult case of estrangement I struggled to secure my student loan, living entirely on personal independence payments and without my previously established support network that was now very far away I barely had enough money to eat and often times went without food. I saught emotional support in the people I used to know from NeosVR, making my situation worse. My PTSD progressed and I began to have siezures, I developed an alchohol problem to try and deal with the intense hardship and I did not attend my university despite living on campus. I took a time to pause and look at my situation, not knowing what to do, it was the first time in my life where I genuinely saw no way forward, I hated the person I had become and as a result almost went the way of my stepfather. I hopped directly on to Resonite (NeosVR's rebrand) which I had visited a few times before but this time I stuck arround, exploring the community and coming to know people, making friends and slowly recovering. Eventually I met a specific small community of creative people that took me in and chose to support me, really just be being there for me and this got me off alchohol, it helped me to become stable again and I began to grow as a person again, slowly regaining the skills I had developed over the years. I began to work alongside them with a renewed creative potential, making connections all across the resonite community and becoming a new and nicer person, helping everyone I came across in any way I could. That is where I am now, I'm hoping to reach my potential and attend my university more now, esspecially with my recent temp ban from resonite which will allow me to focus on that.