Changes for the Sake of My Mental Health (Patreon)

CW; Self Harm, Mental Health

Hi, it’s Ethel here.

This is not an easy post to write, but it’s something that needs doing. I’m not doing well. Everything that has been going on the past few years, starting way back in Houston, Texas when I first covered the HERO ordinance in 2015, has taken its toll.

Last week I was trying to respond to a certain infamous text, when my mind just froze up on me. Every time I tried to engage it, the same thing just happened again and again. Now at the time I put it down to the fact that contained within the text was discussion of domestic abuse, something that touches very close to home for me. So I put that to one side and set out to find something else to respond to. I went through dozens of texts, only to have the same problem. Every time I opened one to respond to it, I’d get about 30 seconds in before my mind would just freeze everything. It was like trying to make sense of TV static. The more I tried to force it, the more distressed I became.

A common comment I receive on the channel are people telling me that they can’t grasp how I manage to not only listen to toxic content, but to do so again and again in making a video. And usually I brush it off, it’s just my job after all. Fact is, the toxicity in what I respond to does have an effect. And exposing myself to that repeatedly, to people who actively want to destroy my life and the lives of the people I love, it is a form of self harm. And I’ve reached a point where my body is just refusing to do that anymore.

So what exactly does this mean?

Well for a start, I need time to heal both physically and mentally. The turnaround on my most recent videos has been grueling, the Tony McDade video being written, recorded, and edited in two days. As such I can’t put a date to my next video. I also need to reevaluate my schedule to find something more reasonable for the amount of work I put into each piece. My videos have become longer and more detailed over time, and one a week is draining the life from me. So I’m doing away with all scheduling until further notice. I’ll be producing videos at an ‘when they’re ready’ pace until I can figure out a better approach to my work.

At the same time, there doesn’t seem much point in forcing myself to respond to toxic content when my mind shuts me down every time. Now this isn’t to say that this is the end of responses, but I need time to figure out how to approach certain topics in future in a way that prioritises my mental health. So the next few videos will likely cover standalone topics.

Thing is, all of this is incredibly hard for me to do. I don’t know the impact this will have on my channel, and that’s scary. When I moved here with Udita in 2017, YouTube was our sole source of income. And that’s how it was for the next two years. So in spite of the fact that Udita has had a new job for the past year, part of me is still stuck in the fear I had back then. I was so terrified that everything would fall apart, that I’d lose my sole income, and we’d be separated again. We were forced apart for a year after Udita finished her Masters as I completed my BSc, and neither of us could do that again.

Finances are still tight. When I say we got by in 2017, I mean we got by in a fashion where I wouldn’t come down from our apartment for weeks at a time. There was nothing to do in the area we used to live in, and everything else--including travel--cost money. And whilst Udita’s job has opened things up for us, letting us move to a nicer area, letting us see more of Delhi (I still haven’t been outside the city), I still worry about the future. I know I’ve been through cycles of burnout before, but I can’t keep working like this. I can’t sit awake at night in bed, too tired to work yet too terrified to even lay down for a second. I need to actually fix things.

We both hope you can understand the current situation, and we’d like to thank everyone for the support given to us.

-Peter/Ethel Thurston