Christmas has always been a pain for me, much more than any other day of the year. Maybe that was because it meant so much more to me than it did to others. The most wonderful time of the year was in fact the worst for me. With all the relatives coming over, telling me what a handsome boy I am and how I’m starting to look more like my father every year. I was so sick of it. What my family didn't know and what they would never understand was, that I'm Non-Binary. Meaning I felt neither male nor female, instead I just referred to myself as a human being and used the pronouns they/them. Others however... other people couldn't understand that. If it was because of the way they were raised or for another reason, I didn't know. And frankly, I also didn't care much. I knew that I wouldn't be able to live like this forever and that people would never leave me be with my decisions. I liked to tell myself, that I was okay with this. I wasn't though.
It was the morning of the 24th of December and I had just eaten breakfast when I decided to go on LGBT+ Amino for a while. I had downloaded the app only a few days ago and didn't know my way around it very well yet. I also didn't like to chat in the group chats of the app, as I didn't really like huge crowds of people in one place. Sometimes people liked to chat me up, but they soon stopped talking to me, seeing that I wasn't one of the friendliest or talkative people in the world. When the usual feature page appeared on the screen, I briefly scanned the new posts. A new challenge seemed to be hosted, but I didn't really care much about that kind of stuff. When I looked at the Chats icon however, I soon noticed, that someone must have chatted me up. I clicked on it and was led to the list of chats I was in, at the top of which I found a new chat started by someone with the username "Santa Claus" and their profile picture was the jolly old man himself. "At least someone seems to be in the mood for Christmas", I thought and clicked on the chat request.
Santa Claus
"Hello!"
Personally, I didn't appreciate people chatting me up only saying "Hi" or "Hello" or anything similar. Those conversations usually ended after asking how the other person is, but I was bored and decided to answer the person anyway.
Jayden
"Hey"
I stared at my phone for a while, the other person didn't seem to be online, but I knew that people could mark themselves as offline, so it wasn't necessarily true. After another minute or two I was about to turn off my phone again when the mysterious person replied after all.
Santa Claus
"I think they need a friend right now"
Another message with a link to someone’s profile appeared beneath and I clicked on it. It was the profile of a girl or so it seemed from the profile picture at least. I went back to my chat with Santa Claus and typed an answer:
Jayden
"What do you mean by that?"
<Santa Claus has left the conversation>
"What the-", I thought to myself and clicked on the link to the girl’s profile again. Should I report this to someone? It was oddly strange of the user named Santa Claus, but it didn't seem report worthy. So maybe I should chat the girl up? But what if it was just a stupid joke or something? "I mean… It doesn't hurt to text her", I thought. I wasn't the most social person though, so when I typed the chat request, I didn't know what exactly it should say and even though I hated getting those messages myself I decided to just type a simple "Hey". "Better than nothing", I thought to myself as I waited for an answer.
