I'm having difficulty identifying myself.

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Before the wall of text begins, this isn't my type of topic to start with...but I don't know where else to go for advice on this, asking the only two people I could talk to about it would be awkward for me...and family isn't an option, I don't see a therapist or psychologist anymore, so that's also out of the question.

It's not so much identifying my sexuality, I already know i'm bisexual. But identifying my personality that's the problem, and recognizing who I am has gotten significantly more complicated and difficult in the last year since I joined the forums... I've posted this elsewhere but my school life was such hell for me that by the time I was only thirteen I had already thought up nearly three dozen plans for suicide...I haven't had any problems with that since one of my friends died only a year after that (hung himself) and seeing what his mom, and our friends went through drove it home that I would never put anyone through that. Around the time I was 9 I started to adopt a fake personality for using during school or around my classmates when outside of school, by the time I graduated I'd forgotten which was real and which was the fake. So I decided the "current me" (the fake one) was the real me, and for the last 5 years that's worked out...but after joining another community I've always been lured to but never realized until June...I realized this isn't me, and that I want to return to the "me" that I used to be, before all the harassment and torture forced me to change my personality just to be left alone...Now i'm 23, and due to my hell of a school career coupled with my asperger's, tourette's, and only recently realized bisexuality (only realized it about 3 years ago, prior to that I'd never concerned myself with even considering a relationship) made it difficult to even attempt to start a relationship, with literally no dating experience, much less anything else aside from casual friendships (likely one-sided viewpoint of the term "friend") or the type of friends you can share absolutely anything with, and neither questions any of it. (my friendships have always been one or the other, nothing in-between) I'm beginning to consider trying to find a person to date, but have no idea where to begin, let alone how to approach anyone about it...Living in a small city doesn't help either, mostly because everybody my age already knows me from school or has heard of me through siblings or friends at school...neither of which would know the "real me" i'm trying to return to being that all but ceased to exist nearly 12 years ago... Only two people I know IRL are aware i'm bisexual, and I don't have any intention to tell or reveal that fact to my family until I figure this all out...

Bottom line is, i'm finally beginning to do all of this self-discovery stuff I never got the chance to do during my teen years due to my school life being a veritable hell on earth for me. And in doing so i've realized the "current me" is not the "real me" but the fake personality I adopted to ward off bullies and now I don't like being this "me" so i'm trying to find out how to return to my former personality and in doing so also considering actually starting to try a romantic relationship. But I need advice on how to do either of these things and nobody IRL is an option for getting advice from right now...What should I do?

Maybe you could spend a couple of days in a different city where nobody knows you. You could just be your real self and see how that feels. In a different environment, you won't have the same influences that will cause the same fake reactions. Spend some time by yourself and see how much of you surfaces.

I would but i'm too dependent on my parents atm, and lack of a job (had one but it wasn't working out, so they're trying to find me a different position at the hotel grounds) means no money to rent a hotel room for a couple days. the more time I spend online in the forums of the other community I realized I always belonged to back to June, the more of the old me begins to surface and that's why I'm beginning to feel a desire to return to being that person. The current me is a sarcastic jackass with an instinctual knack for knowing exactly what to say to piss someone off or otherwise completely destroy their viewpoint of me, as well as a tendency to show-boat without realizing it. The old me was the type f person that everybody is familiar with, because everybody knows at least one from school. That is to say the type of person who's friendly with everyone, is always kind to people and takes a lot to get them to stop being nice. The kind of person who is always making friends with just about everybody... I'm still having difficulty figuring out where the line between the two was, and what parts of my memory of that personality were exaggerated and which were fact...I don't know how to tell the difference and my classmates wouldn't remember it accurately anyway because they would have only known that version of me for two years before i started to change into the other one...at this point I don't even know if there was a line...maybe it was always just two-sides of the same coin, maybe it wasn't...I can't tell anymore, it's been too long since I "adopted" this personality that I forgot where the line was and just threw the other one out because i blamed it for my problems with bullying,and the other one got them to leave me alone. Now I realize that personality drove my friends away...I only have 2 friends I can talk about anything to, but both of them met me after i'd fully chosen the "new me" (which is why I can't ask them for advice on this, even though they're the same two people that know i'm bisexual) for use at all times during school...they might have met glimpses of the old me when we hang out, because i'm still the same nice person I used to be when i'm near my friends...but the moment anyone i'm not familiar with is nearby, i go right back to the familiar "new me" as a kind of self-defense mechanism, thinking if I don't it will just invite the same bullying/harassment/torture whatever you want to call it that I went through in school. It's not a conscious choice, but an instinctive one...and one I don't like anymore, because it's not "me" responding, but my learned defense against potential jerks, designed to make others leave me alone...I only realized recently it works so well that it drove even my former close friends away and I never knew even it was the cause, most of them now avoid me entirely... Only those same two friends still make efforts to respond or hang out, neither live nearby (at least 20 miles away), and I have no car. While I suppose it's a blessing that this "self-discovery" phase of life is happening after I turned 18 and graduated high school, it's certainly not making it any easier to figure out. While a therapist or some other professional would likely be the best person to ask for advice on this "personality problem" I already feel they'd only say I can't truly return to my old self, which I already know...I just want to discard most of my current self for the traits I used to display so proudly because I hadn't learned yet that reality is a cold, cruel, heartless place more often than not. I think even my service dog is trying to tell me I should be more expressive about myself and my identity, until I truly began to figure this out he was never particularly vocal about anything. Once i started to realize all of this back in March, he began to get more and more expressive/vocal about what he wants/needs, as if to tell me that I should as well. That's largely what inspired me to post about it here.