Storytime (Patreon)

I caught a cold from the hair salon. Haha.

ANYWAY~

Hi!

   I've mentioned a few times already that I've been going through some troubling times and that I've meant explain what's been going on... But for the same reasons I've had hard time, it's been super difficult to find words to explain it. It's super dumb.

Talking about myself is something I feel pretty uncomfortable doing. I've always felt what I do is more interesting and important than who I am, so I'll being going a bit outside of my comfort zone. :,3

Basically, what happened was me trying to do something responsible, but it leading to a steep downhill of opposite results. To someone who's not experienced the same sort of thing, I might just sound like someone complaining about things that don't exist and that I'm just lacking conviction... But I hope you can at least try to understand. :,3 It's very real and it's very stupid. I feel like I've messed up, but also in too deep to walk back.

SO. Storytime.

   Last year, during the summer months I got really sick with the flu. Twice in a row perfectly timed after my niece's wedding and my nephew's graduation party. Getting sick is one thing, but it lasted for so long that my art production slowed to almost a halt... and once I finally started feeling better, I had a really hard time finding the gear to get back to it. Something akin to depression I guess that had accumulated from feeling useless for so long.

I have some preexisting conditions that makes retaining focus on stuff pretty difficult as it is. Something I've known for a long time, but it's never been an issue until I put myself on a schedule (patreon). I've always felt like I've been under performing and it's been quite stressful, but I kept trying to do my best and not worry about it. "It's my process."

But at this point, I felt I was at my lowest point, unable to climb out of it, so I decided to do the most responsible thing I could think of and seek professional help.

It all seemed really promising at the start. Met some really compassionate, understanding people and it was nice to vent about life to someone who's life it doesn't affect. But it was when the medication was introduced that everything fell apart.

Numbing of the Mind. Or the Clogged Sinuses of Reflection.

   The first few weeks felt like I was definitely going to die. The anxiety-reducing medication was no joke. I don't know if it was because the anxiety had taken hold of every cell of my body and the purging was quite literally tearing me apart or - I don't know... but it was something. I have experience with anti-depressants from back in high-school, but compared to then when I could barely tell the effects, this was... Quite overpowering and I couldn't tell if I was experiencing an over-reactive placebo effect or if it was real.

About a month into the medication I started feeling "better" in terms of not dying. But I was 100% clocked out from everything. Like I was existing in some weird ethereal plane between the world around me and my own body. Like a passionless robot. I couldn't enjoy anything and everything was so intensely boring that I often had to retire to my bed and hide my head under a pillow to shut everything out. Every experience or input was like a jab of excruciating boredom straight into the frontal lobe. But hey, at least the anxiety was gone.

Work continued to suffer.

   After complaining about my experience to my doctor, he didn't want to have a knee-jerk reaction and change my medication immediately (they did reduce my anxiety after all), so we settled on going back to the introductory sized daily dose. This helped a lot. I felt like I could return to my own body, the anxiety stayed away... But I still felt numb. Unable to enjoy the things I've normally considered a hobby or even my own creations. It's been a lot of rocking back and forth in my chair and staring into walls. I've logged maybe five hours of video games in the last seven months and I've felt almost mute in terms of communicating with people. Lagging behind on friendships or keeping in contact with people on all fronts and back-ends. (Not to mention here.)

And it suffered.

   I couldn't establish an emotional link to anything I was doing. Which of course hindered being creative even further. I looked at my own characters as strangers and making them do anything felt extremely weird. The way I usually work, I'm very in-tune with the characters and their shenanigans as it all comes from a very personal internal space. But now that gateway is somehow closed. Like my mind's eye is blind and deaf.

I've voiced my concerns to my doctor many times. That I don't have the luxury of time to experiment with my brain like this. He seems to understand, but worry that I worry about my work too much. Which I find weird, since it's reason I sought out help to begin with. Either way, it's a slow process and I want things to work out. Jump through the burning hoops until everything clicks.

   This has been the main culprit of my story so far. It's all very "vague" to an outsider I guess. Easy to disregard as laziness or "not trying hard enough" or hiding behind mental health.

I'm getting old and days are limited in terms of being a productive human being. I can't afford being lazy or blaming my troubles on medication. I have too many stories I wish I could tell.

Now... For a story within a story but outside the story.

Petrification

   One early morning late last year, I woke up by sudden sharp stabs in my left hand's fingers. It confused me greatly. I hadn't overworked them or done anything out of the ordinary. As soon as I bent my fingers, the joints would feel as if I had shards of glass stuck inside them. The pain would subside over the next few minutes, to my relief. But every single morning it would be the same. Or I'd jolt wake in the middle of the night as I accidentally moved my fingers in my sleep. It would soon affect my right hand as well and eventually both my wrists. The wrist pain would become a so-far permanent thing and my fingers would feel sore and stiff at random during the days.

   This is my current greatest worry as it goes beyond "trying harder" and has always been my greatest fear. Some Old Lady warning ahead, but it turns out I've developed arthritis in my hands. With my joints slowly degrading and becoming stiffer and more painful with time.

My mom suffers from it and while I never met my grandma, my dad told me horror stories of her experiences with it, so I've always sort of... Waited for it to come to me as well. And here we are.

*when things aren't dumb. YouknowwhatImean.

I tried to do what I thought was the right thing to do and it backfired into ways I wasn't prepared for. Things are moving slow and I'm quite frustrated... But I want it to work out and I'm not giving up. I'm not asking for anything - just telling what it's been like.

Thank you for reading/listening!

I hope you're all doing great!

(and please don't take my situation as some sort of deterrent to seeking help if you need it! I just got off to a shaky start is all - and the medication I'm taking probably isn't suited for me.)