This may seem silly because Quizilla has kind of turned into a joke around these parts, but as usual I don't really care. Quizilla actually did a lot for me and had an extremely significant impact on my life. Since it's now quite suddenly being shut down, I figured I'd do a little tribute to it.
I joined Quizilla in November 2008, about a month after I turned 12. This was when I first got into music as well, and I was totally obsessed with The Beatles and Pink Floyd and was getting into new stuff every day. My best friend [at the time] and I joined the website at the same time. I can't remember exactly why we joined, I think we were both just vaguely interested in writing and we were bored.
Either way, I joined, and out of curiosity one day searched 'The Beatles.' What came up were hundreds of Beatles stories, which I immediately began reading. Understand that before this I never knew that fanfiction even existed. I didn't even know that what I was reading was called fanfiction, and I wouldn't until maybe three years later. All I knew was that these stories made me feel something I had never felt before. It was a strange sort of fulfillment that I had been praying for, if only in my subconscious. I finally had found something that genuinely interested me and that I felt totally connected to and inspired by on a deeply personal level. Here were fellow young girls, writing stories about these bands I loved to death, for other young girls to read. It was so incredibly exciting.
Prior to looking up The Beatles on there I had posted a few non-fanfiction stories out of boredom. Before Quizilla I always had these story ideas that I'd try to write down in notebooks but could never concentrate on because it felt pointless. But now that I had this website I could share them on, and a computer to type them out on, it suddenly seemed totally possible and actually appealing. So all day at school I'd dream up stories in my head and I'd be dying to get home to listen to music and write all night long.
And then, shortly after reading my first couple of Beatles fanfictions, I decided to try to write my own. I had no idea what I was doing and I just literally wrote exactly what I thought I'd want to read in other people's stories. I was really nervous to post it and was expecting everyone to either ignore it or make fun of me, but instead I got tons of messages begging for me to write more and telling me how much they loved it. From that point on, I had a large audience of readers who sincerely liked what I wrote. You can imagine the kind of confidence and validation this gave me, as a 12-year-old who was being tormented on a daily basis at school, dealing with a rapidly increasing depression and anxiety issue and a chaotic home life. For the first time, I actually felt like a valid, real human being with my own interests and meaning in life.
Out of this I made dozens of friendships, and actually some of the first genuine friendships I ever had. The people that I was talking to actually shared interests with me, unlike all of my IRL friends, and they were actually there to listen to my emotional problems and give me support - also unlike my friends in real life. My friends in middle school thought that I was crazy whenever I talked about being unhappy or anything like that. On the internet, I could tell my friends anything and they'd understand.
Eventually, I met one girl who I became particularly close with, and one day she came out to me as bisexual. Before this I had never talked to a gay person in my life and was always taught to be homophobic by my family and everyone I was around.
The thing was, ever since I was 10-years-old and had my first waves of "puberty" I knew that I was sexually attracted to women. I convinced myself that this was some kind of sick perversion and would tell myself in my head that it was disgusting and sick and all that shit. But after a while of trying to force yourself not to think about something, for me anyway, it becomes an obsessive thought. So eventually I was constantly thinking "I'm a lesbian" or whatever, and then replying to the thoughts by saying "NO that's sick", etc. Eventually it got so bad that when I'd have those thoughts, I'd pull my own hair or bang my head up against the wall or do something painful to myself because I thought that by associating the thought with a negative physical reaction, I'd stop having the thought. Obviously it didn't work, until finally I was able to relax about it slightly and just let it (the gayness) go. But it was still there, just temporarily concealed in the back of my mind.
So anyway, I didn't know how to respond when she told me that. My immediate reaction was "oh shit, no one can find out I'm talking to a gay person" but I told her that I didn't care. Because I never really understood why you should care, it was just that my family made it seem like literally the most embarrassing and creepy thing ever. I thankfully went with my own logic, though, and we remained friends.
A few months later, though, the girl told me that she liked me. It came as such a shock, I honestly didn't know what to do. I was elated because no one had liked me since early elementary school and she was actually a cool person, but I felt sick and anxious because I secretly knew I was bi and I felt like I had to do everything to hide it. I hesitantly told my irl friends, thinking that maybe they were secretly not homophobic like me, and asked for advice on it, but they just made fun of me and the girl who liked me. Looking back, I think that they were all jealous that someone liked me on top of being sincerely homophobic. But I ignored them, and eventually realized that I actually liked her back. A lot. So we started a relationship and all of my friends constantly made fun of me for it. I didn't care, because I was in love. I know I was only 12, but I was so passionate about her, that to this day I still think I was in love with her.
Anyway, I know that was a long story but I just wanted to convey how powerful Quizilla for me. It literally helped me accept myself and feel like a relevant human being for the first time. It helped me "come out of the closet" in every way - as a writer, as a music fanatic, as bisexual, as depressed. I seriously adore that website for all that it's done for me.
RIP, Quizilla.
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