#<— personal tag

[saltedskullz]

cw // tw // child abuse , vent , trauma

i cant speak to new people .

i don’t know what kind of symptoms this is , but it makes me incredibly lonely . the fact that i was so goddamn isolated as a kid (literally locked in a room for a majority of my childhood haha!) cemented my inability to talk to people and the autism specific “social anxiety” .

(side rant !! the autism specific social anxiety , that i put into quotes cause i feel that it’s inaccurate to my experience , is the anxiety that surrounds real social rejection. social anxiety for allistics is usually chronic anxiety about interactions with other people , but the way that it started for me was experiencing real social rejection . i was isolated from my only possible option for talking to people who wasn’t my abuser BECAUSE of my autistic traits .)

i’m going to college soon , which means that there will be MUCH more people around me . which means , that i might get talked to more . this makes me want to scratch my eyes out !!!!!!!!!!!

when i try to think about meeting new people , my brain sits on the ground and refuses to move despite me tugging on the leash . it’s hard to explain , but it makes me feel tired thinking about it . the act of getting to know people is so fucking taxing . trying to mask my constant flood of paranoid thoughts , having to stay aware of my body , facial expressions and voice to make sure that i don’t do anything that’ll freak anyone out !!! having to keep in mind what they’re doing and saying and trying to map it out on my current reality despite the fact that it doesn’t mesh with my reality so i’m slowly slipping off the edge !!!!! i’m a wet slab of meat on a rooftop sliding down to crocodile infested waters !!!!!!!!!!

i like my friends !!!! i like the people that i can talk to !!!! they know me and i know them !!!!!!!!!!!!

but they’re also my only options . when my 4 friends r busy , what am i going to do ? i don’t have anyone else to turn to so i’m consumed by guilt for subjecting my poor sweet friends to so much of me . i feel like im a parasitic mound that only my friends have . the guilt gets so strong sometimes that i’ll fully be unable to speak when im with my friends .

social spoons r the most taxing so even when i NEED to be around someone i won’t be able to manage it because of how twisted up i get about my disorganized thoughts .

every night i’m sent to spiral about the cage that i keep myself in but don’t have the key to , i’ll never be able to live out or in the cage

[saszor]

Overview of some topics when it comes to drawing characters who are burn survivors.

DISCLAIMER. Please keep in mind that this is an introductory overview for drawing some burn scars and has a lot of generalizations in it, so not every “X is Z” statement will be true for Actual People. I'm calling this introductory because I hope to get people to actually do their own research before drawing disabled & visibly different characters rather than just making stuff up. Think of it as a starting point and take it with a grain of salt (especially if you have a very different art style from mine).

Talking about research and learning... don't make your burn survivor characters evil. Burn survivors are normal people and don't deserve to be constantly portrayed in such a way.

Consider supporting me on ko-fi if you find this to be helpful.

edit: apparently tum "queerest place on the internet" blr hates disabled people so much that this post got automatically filtered. cool!

second way more important edit: How are people seeing this post where I specifically talk about burn survivors being normal, real people, and still tag this as "TW body horror"? Not a single one of these drawings or pictures is a fresh injury. All of them are healed. How the hell would you feel if someone tagged a photo of you as "trigger warning: gore"?

Disabled people are not your fucking body horror. Grow up.

[evidently-endless]

i think we should remind musicians they can absolutely make up little stories for their songs btw. it doesn’t have to be about them at all. you can invent a guy and put him in situations to music. time honoured tradition in fact.

[johannesviii]

Repaired my fave jacket, got emotional, drew something about it

[deityofhearts]

consider sending me $10 before adding an unnecessary comment on my post

[lastoneout]

Ya know when people told me "when you're finally safe enough that you can leave survival mode and start to let go of and process your c-ptsd/trauma things are probably going to get really, really bad before they slowly start to get better" I thought that was reasonable. I did not understand that by "things are going to get bad" they meant "you're going to find yourself in the worst mental state of your entire life, but dw, that means it's working" and tbh I simply wish someone had been more clear.

Edit: If everyone could please take a minute and think about what it must feel like to be struggling and then have multiple strangers say to your face that they find the prospect of going through what you're going through so horrifying that they'd rather kill themselves and then stop leaving comments like that I would greatly appreciate it.

[secondbeatsongs]

somehow instead of saying "as a treat", I've started using the phrase "for morale", as if my body is a ship and its crew, and I (the captain) have to keep us in high spirits, lest we suffer a mutiny in the coming days.

and so I will eat this small block of fancy cheese, for morale. I will take a break and drink some tea, for morale. I will pick up that weird bug, for morale.

I'm not sure if it helps, but it does entertain me

[pixelephant]

[miitarion]

all drawings i did in this style in past several months

was there one which you liked and if yes - which one and why?

[shorelinnes]

BDS added this section to their boycott page and I think people really need to read it:

[source]

please remember, pushing unorganized boycotts without carefully fact-checking every company in the list can be actively HARMFUL to the boycott movement.

[noelledeltarune]

EVERY SINGLE DAY there are MILLIONS of characters in their late 20s who get falsely accused of being father figures to teenagers when in reality the description of "weird older cousin" or "step-sibling that moved out before you were born" is 1000000x more apt

[aesethewitch]

When I was a kid, we moved into a house that had a huge lilac tree out front. It was mostly rotten, and it needed to be taken down before it fell. It took a while, but eventually, it was gone.

Mostly. A couple years later, little lilac babies popped out of the ground in its place. My mom was determined to get rid of them, because she'd planted a beautiful flower garden there, and the lilac trees would overshadow and kill the whole garden. I insisted on saving at least a few saplings. She said fine, but I had to dig them out and put them in pots myself.

So, I did. I spent days digging little lilac bushes out of the ground and putting them into pots. Some couldn't be saved, but some could. When all was said and done, I had five brand-new lilac saplings. Seven or eight years old, and it was my absolute pride and joy.

Three died due to sun scorching, severe drought that no amount of watering could save, and perhaps just being moved from their place in the ground. But two survived, and I was awfully proud of them! I'd go out and talk to them every single day. I watered them by hand and made sure they were fertilized properly. I learned all about their favored environments, and I was determined to make sure they lived.

One of my mom's friends saw what I was doing with the lilacs. She asked if she could have one to put in her backyard, and I agreed on the condition that she take very, very good care of it.

It's now fucking enormous. I'm talking ten feet tall and bursting with beautiful purple flowers every spring. My mom still gets updates each year as they start to bloom, which she forwards to me. And all I can think is, "That's my friend! Thriving some twenty years on, there it is."

The other tree nearly died, too. It lived in a pot for far, far too long. I wanted to plant it somewhere in my parents' yard, but my mom was reluctant. Eventually, we agreed to put it in the far back garden. It grew okay for many years, despite the shade, but in all these years, it's never bloomed.

Last year, the massive tree casting massive shadows over the lilac and the garden cracked in half and fell. It tumbled into the garden, crushing part of the nearby shed and destroying a few plants beneath it.

It missed my lilac by inches.

The clean-up is long done. The rest of the tree has been cut down, and my lilac has full sunlight for the first time in fifteen years. It won't bloom this year, I know. But it's got new shoots up. It's taller than ever. I spent half an hour a few weeks ago praising it for surviving all this time, dreaming about its future and telling it how I believe it'll become the tall beauty it's always been meant to be.

I think next year, I'll see flowers.

[kottkrig]

People liking your personal OCs is still such a crazy feeling, I've been doing this for years and ppl asking about them still fills my entire heart with warmth and idk how to handle it

You enjoy this fictional guy I made up for fun?? Whose only content is random artwork or writing made by me and a handful of other artists at most? They have no show/book/game with a large fandom, it's just one person with an art blog?? I love u

[sashasactivities]

FISH QUIZZZZ!!! FISH QUIZZZ!!!! TAKE IT!!! special request from my friend avery shoutout avery <3 it's right up my alley anyways... im so jellyfish coded !!

quiz made: june 2024

[wildbasil]

things haven't been great but i think they will be. eventually 🌻🌼🩷

[tactfullyinappropriate]

It's like we all collectively forgot as a society that friendship and just connection in general takes effort. Even if you meet someone you immediately click with, it takes hanging out about 20 times (!) to become friends. And guess what, some of those 20 meetings might be awkward or unimpressive.

We all want to reap the benefits (having a friend circle, having a partner, getting married) without doing the work (going to events, interacting with people, learning to handle conflict maturely, dating). Myself included. If I could, I'd never leave the house or go on another mediocre date again... except, that's part of the process.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, the cure to the loneliness epidemic is touching some grass and building tolerance for tedious in-person interactions.