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What you have described isn’t being mentally abusive. I’m really sorry you’re in this position. Please don’t convince yourself this behaviour makes you an abusive person: it doesn’t.

When your friends express that they want you to find help, it’s because they care about you. They want you to come out of this and thrive.

Right, I understand.

There are browsers that implement a lot of Tor Browser’s anti-fingerprinting features, such as LibreWolf.

The problem is that if you’re connecting to a site from an unique IP address then you’re still uniquely identifiable regardless of how much your browser resists fingerprinting measures. If you have a dynamic IP address, information can still be derived from this to build an approximate profile for you (location, language, possible interests, statistically likely demographic bands etc.). It’s surprising how accurate these can get.

The strength of the anti-fingerprinting features in Tor browser is really an additional protection on top of the main anonymisation feature: the routing. Everyone using the Tor browser and routing appears (kind of) the same to a site.

Connecting through a VPN provider is a half-way measure, but still won’t be as good as Tor. To a site or tracker you’ll appear as one of a smaller set of people connecting from that VPN where your browser fingerprint is different from others in the pool of people connecting via that VPN. That may not be enough to personally identify you, but it’s enough to build a fairly well-targeted profile of you.

So tl;dr: anti-fingerprinting browser features are really cool and technically clever, but they don’t protect against all the ways you can be profiled. And somewhat counter-intuitively, using only browser-level de-anonymisation features could actually make you appear more unique to sites or trackers, because you’ll be one of relatively few people with that combination of browser and network connection profile.

A big part of the anonymisation of Tor is from the routing, so I’m doubtful that just using their Firefox customizations would be enough.

Using Tor Browser with default settings is probably the least time consuming way of reducing a site’s ability to uniquely identify you.

It’s been said by other people here but I think it’s worth repeating: you are not the problem in this situation.

Your mom has put you in a difficult position, and I don’t think it’s unreasonable for your girlfriend to ask you to push back against your mom. It’s a difficult situation but it’s not one you created and if your mom or the rest of your family give you a hard time for siding with your girlfriend, then that shows a lack of respect for you.

I don’t know anything about its effect on fertility. I know people who have conceived while on SSRIs, but that’s purely anecdotal.

It’s going to be a judgement call on your part. SSRIs have been in use for long enough that I would expect there’s a big pool of data around fertility rates, even if it’s not had much analysis done on it. Also, rat models are useful but need to be understood in their context. One study in rats is not overwhelming evidence.

I have been on SSRIs for 20 years. For me they’re a good idea, but I’ve known others who have had a terrible time with them.

Sexual dysfunction is definitely a thing: how much of an issue that will be is going to be a personal decision on weighing up pros and cons. If your sex drive is low as a part of your depressive symptoms or you’re already experiencing anhedonia (inability to feel happiness/pleasure) or anorgasmia (inability to achieve orgasm) then going on SSRIs isn’t going to make that any worse. But for others the risk of missing sexual pleasure might be an unacceptable trade-off.

For anyone starting SSRIs I think it’s best to go slowly and keep in touch with your primary doctor throughout the process. There are a number of SSRIs available, and if one doesn’t work out you can try others, and hopefully land on one that works for you.

With all that said, SSRIs don’t work for everyone. It’s not unusual to feel weird or like things are getting worse when you first start them: it takes some time for the effects to settle. But if you’re having a really bad time on them, speak to your doctor about alternatives.

I’ve been using Ardour for quite a long time now.

You know, I love those albums where they fucked around did things like hard-pan all the drums to the right channel. I’m here for the experimentation.