>be in elementary school, Canada
>YTV would air anime at weird times so I basically never saw it on TV, only experience with anime was glimpses of piracy and some pack-in dvds
>beg family to buy me the "Dragon Ball Z manga" when I'm around 6 or 7 and it was fairly new
>take it to school with me to read it
>other kids call it "Dragon Balls" and insinuate I'm gay
My school library actually did have a small manga section with one (1) volume of One Piece, seemingly all of Prince of Tennis at the time, and two volumes of Mega Man NT Warrior. I read the OP and Mega Man to death, could never get into Prince of Tennis.

>high school
>been able to pirate anime for years, but lingering "Dragon Balls" trauma prevented me from talking about it ever again
>meet tumblrette girl
>is cute, likes anime for fujoshi reasons (Haikyuu and FMA were her favourites obviously)
>despite that she is the first IRL person I feel who 'gets' anime
>basically in a relationship
>goes to hell because I had been on 4chan since I was 10 and now it was 2016 and you know how that goes down
>basically excommunicates me
>relapse into a comtech group in the school, and the closest thing to an ally I get is some ironic weeaboo fag who didn't actually watch anime, just listened to "nightcore" and got off to catgirls (despised them), and a mangafag who only ever talked about how great manga was and only ever showed off boring landscape compositions
This was probably my punishment for being a sperg looking back.

>today
>employed and in college
>for zoom calls in college I have my anime shelf with figures, imported volumes, plushes, fanzines, etc right behind me
>nobody notices
>at work, one of my coworkers has some weirdly normal anime stickers on their car
>they're fun to talk to
>only see them about three times a year due to how our work operates
I was not born to be an anime fan IRL. I can only appreciate it on the internet.