Can confirm. Am messy alcoholic. It has caused more problems than it solved.

Some are naturally pretty awful too. Give people the space to change and become a better version of themselves.

Others play an excellent game of appearing cool until their identity feels threatened by someone and their inner awfulness reaches the surface.

The people you meet, cool or not, are not the finished product cause there's no such thing, we're always changing, and it's especially hard to consciously change old ingrained patterns.

We're all shaped by our world into who we are, some get lucky, some not. If not, you can't count on anyone to change you for the better except you.

I have a great friend who's also a trained make up artist, and her mum used to dress the stars in movies in the '70s, she's been amazing. My employer was always like the big brother I never had but he seems to be struggling with it now. I really appreciate that, thankyou.

Yeah it's all about community, we're lost on our own, most of us anyway.

I have an idea of what I want, not so much how to get there. I've been making sculptures for the last 20 years, that's been my lifeblood. I feel deeply connected to the things I make, which helps, but it's not enough in the long run. It's human connection and partnership I need to find.

I'm similar, in some ways I'm very masculine, others quite femme, though it's my feminine side that's the hardest to express. I've been having my beard lasered off cause it's such a huge barrier to feeling like myself. Still very heavy stubble around my mouth and I hate it, makes me look like the thug I am definitely not. And that in turn seems to influence the kind of potential partners I attract.

> I'm a 27yo French countryside punk, what do I know? :)

All of the things ;0)

Thanks! I'm finding it really difficult tbh, how to know what is authentically me and what is the result of all those years of the world telling me who I am. Queer theory says gender is performative but I didn't respond well to my training in the masculine stage show. Some people do, and are quite comfortable in that space, and more power to them, but finding another path is challenging when most of the people you care about are deeply uncomfortable with it and angrily try to push you off it and back on to the traditional one.

How do people in the country feel about punks?

This makes a lot of sense to me. I'm gender non-conforming in that I'm a tall guy with masculine facial features, and I'm most happy with my waist length hair down, wearing a long flowing dress and make up. This is apparently extremely strange to 99% of people, disturbing even.

Gender roles are very deeply ingrained in society and our training/conditioning starts early. It never even occurred to me that this is who I want to be until my mid 30s, and it was very painful to discover about myself.

Most of the time I dress fairly normally because it's practical for work as a stonecarver (currently wearing overalls and a woolly hat), and people make hardline assumptions about who I am and how I'm likely to behave. How I ought to behave.

Occasionally I'll slip up and a sudden expression of happiness will come out in a very girly way, like fists balled to my cheeks and little jumps for joy. This is usually regarded as utterly pathetic, by both men and women alike - at least in the straight cisgender world. If I'm working on site I can't express myself freely at all because if my queer side shows at all it can make an entire room of previously relaxed laughing men freeze over and turn sour.

I'm still doing the work of shrugging off these societal shackles in my early 40s.

Oh most people who see a rock that got beaten up by me like it. Except some other artists cause there's a lot of insecurity in the art world.

I just manage to piss people off by being socially incompetent. Making good arts only gets you so far.

Damn I had no idea I was so brave! Not that I'm unafraid to be myself, everyone just hates me.

I say everyone but I exaggerate. Most people have no idea who I am. And even then of those that do, only most of them hate me.

Thanks for the suggestion! I've been going to various queer meetups cause I feel like that's an aspect of my identity I can connect with people on.

I went really deep into my creative work and find it hard to connect with others on that now, even people I've worked with for many years. It's kind of alienating. It turned into this whole journey of self discovery so if I start talking about it in any depth I get really intense and manage to kill conversations stone dead :/

Haha thanks for the pep talk! I'm trying!

I was all ready to start, then covid arrived! So this year I've been trying to make up for lost time. I took my sculpture to the stage, ok a small one but it was fun. Met a lot of people. I'm still bad at it, but I'm trying for sure.

I wish someone had been able to get through to me when I was young, but no-one did. But the more people you try to get through to, the more you put the right information out there the better the chance you will reach someone who needs it.

Interesting article, thanks.

Some do. It just takes many of us longer than we'd like. I careened down the path of making art because it was so productive, while the rest of my life collapsed around me. But eventually I started acknowledging the flashing warning lights and hit the brakes.

I started making sculptures in my early 20s. I'm now in my early 40s and pretty good at it.

The whole time, I was avoiding human contact cause I was really bad at making friends, let alone relationships. Now, at 41, I really understand the principle that you might as well start now even if you're bad and you know it's gonna take a long time. You're gonna be older anyway, and sooner than you think. Might as well use the time to build the foundations for a better future.

My stonecarving and clay modelling skills are the envy of some of my colleagues, but my social skills are so poor that I've been single for the whole of the last 20 years, and likely to stay that way. There's some kudos to being a gifted artist but if you're no fun to be around people will admire you from a distance and no more. Or seethe with envy, that also happens.

A bit of searching will tell you what you really should be focusing on.

Do that.