#I just remembered I never posted to tumblr the artwork I drew last summer for the Slime Puppy Summer exchange on AO3 hosted by

[mavoorik]

Getaway: Deserted Island AU prompt fill for @nimblewordplay on AO3 for the Slime Puppy Summer exchange hosted by @servingourinterests

[sow-ay]

I received many private messages from people asking for help because they didn’t know how to talk about their mental health issues to their friends or families. I’m not good at giving advice but from my experience, hearing other people’s stories gives a lot of courage, makes me feel understood and less alone. I’m so glad to help people with a simple story or drawings. I apparently saved lives! I’m so proud of that, I can’t quite believe it.

I thought I could share my full story with you like I did with some. That’s incredibly scary to share. I’m so scared to imagine my friends or old coworkers reading this but I guess helping people is more important.

I’ve never really known what was wrong with me, so I drew a character who had the same issues. He was not happy with his life, felt lonely all the time, had no self-esteem (like -967272074%), loved music way more than he loved himself, and was often biting his nails until his fingers were bleeding. You know this character if you’re following me.

At that time, I was refused by every art school. Some even told me my drawings were useless. I was 18 and already felt like I had failed my life so drawing was not enough to make me feel better. I was not enough. Not enough to be accepted in art school. Not enough for anything.

I think music woke me up. I remember being alone, listening to music with my headphones, in a large space, with people and students walking around. I was drawing my character. He was depressed and I heard, “Best, you’ve gotta be the best” in my ears. That was “Butterflies and Hurricanes” by Muse. (I cried when I heard it live.) That was 6-7 years ago.

I texted a friend about all those things in my head. Let’s call her Satan. She followed everything from the first doubts to the day I could finally put a name on it. She will probably read this and I’m glad she exists. (She’ll probably cry while reading this line and I’m not even sorry.) For me, depression was for weak people at this time. It was only in their heads. And I simply couldn’t understand how a human being could think about ending their life. (Damn, this is really getting serious and even more scary for me..)

My head was still messed up, and I was having more and more insomnia. It got gradually worse and worse. I think my other friends knew I had sleep issues but only knew that at the time. My “solution” was to keep my mind busy by working and over-working on personal projects even if it felt pointless. I HAD to stay busy to avoid this little voice in my head that was constantly telling me I was not enough. I felt like I was ALWAYS lacking energy and motivation even if I was over-working. I had some really depressive nights that just ended with me thinking, “What’s the point of living?”  That’s how I understood how someone could think about suicide.

The insomnia was getting worse and the anxiety seemed inhuman but I didn’t know what that was, so I only talked about the insomnia or the physical symptoms caused by anxiety to my doctor. I had huge chest pain and was convinced it was cancer or that I would have a heart attack. I always wait until I can no longer go on to finally dare going to the doctor. “But you’re so young, you’re not even 20.” In my head that was, “Oh my god, am I that fucked up !!?? I’m so weak. I suck. I hate myself.”

I had some sleeping pills (that didn’t work) and I kept working and creating stuff all the time. I wanted to get better, so I could make a living off of my work, so I did tons of things. Until I burnt out.

It’s “funny” because I knew I was getting off limits. I kept working and working because I stupidly thought that would make my mind quieter. I was tired all the time, I couldn’t sleep, had no energy and didn’t know why I was doing all of this. It felt pointless.

I started a new band with my friends (another project again!) because I thought music could save me (and it did help a lot, that’s the best thing I’ve done in this mental battle). I needed something to keep me sane. Day at work (I had a full time-work at this time), evening staying busy on personal projects or making my stuff ready for the weekends I spent at art shows or conventions.

Those shows ended up being huge failures so that didn’t help mentally at all.

I suddenly realized I could no longer go on like this when I had a huge panic attack during a concert in 2016. (The Last Shadow Puppets. It was amazing, by the way. The bromance between Miles and Alex is at a tumblr level.) At the time, I didn’t know what a panic attack was. I just felt like I was dying, or at least thought I was going to pass out. I spent the following days hugely depressed, panicked, and had no motivation and energy at all. It was worse than anything I’ve ever felt before. Like music was no longer safe for me. Music had always helped. Knowing I had a show coming always made me happy. But this show destroyed everything. I had 4 other shows in the following months. But I just couldn’t.

I again ended up thinking, “What’s the point ? Why should I keep living ?” like during many depressive episodes. But this time it was really stronger. And it really wasn’t a good time for this (can there be a good time for this?). Getting back to work after that panic attack simply felt IMPOSSIBLE. Going to my friend’s birthday on the saturday also seemed impossible. It was invisible and had to remain invisible. I was scared to have another panic attack or to suddenly fall apart in front of my friends, and they couldn’t see that I’m broken.

It was so strong that I texted Satan. I needed her to know. Then I told my mom I maybe had depression. I always need my Satan ’s support for this. I always need to feel reassured about everything I do. Before publishing this I had to ask her.

Then came the saturday and my friend’s birthday. It was just a drink in a bar, but I was so “sick” (I still thought it was just me that was not enough and not that I was sick) that I texted the 2 organizers to explain to them the madness that was going on and that I might not find the strength to come.

Like every time, I showed up. For my friends. To not disappoint them. I felt so off, I can’t tell what happened. I just stayed for the drink and left before the evening because that was already too much. I remember that a friend hugged me before I left and not crying at this moment was super hard.

The following day, I explained everything to all the friends that were there in a message (I again needed to be supported by Satan before that). Because imagining what they could think of me, all those stories I was making in my head were killing me.

At the moment I pressed “enter”, I instantly wanted to disappear. “OMG, I DID IT. They’ll read it and hate me. I suck. I want to die. I hate myself. Will they answer?”

And they were super understanding! What a relief! WOAH! After that, I felt better about publishing my drawings online, because I was no longer scared for my friends to find it.

I stopped working on all my personal projects and spent all my time out of work in bed haunted by a mental ghost, thinking I couldn’t get back to work on the following day or on Monday. I spent the beautiful summer weekends watching the sky at my window from my bed. I was so messed up.

With time, I talked about it with more friends, like my band mates. To explain to them that I was freaking out before a concert or a rehearsal. I even dared refusing to play a gig because of the panic. Saying no was the hardest thing ever.

Not everyone was cool about that. I kept hearing, “It’s in your head” and that’s far from being over.

Since the concert that changed everything, I had some other huge panic attacks. Those panic attacks made me scared to go out. It was stronger than my usual generalized and social anxiety. I usually ended up at the doctor trying to explain this and had many blood tests. As these were really physical symptoms, they didn’t immediately think it was a mental illness. I was paranoid. Like, “Oh my god, I’m gonna die. Maybe it's cancer.”

The worst attack I had was during one of my art show openings. I spent half of the evening throwing up, had huge vertigo, couldn’t see clearly and even had huge tinnitus. It felt like I was out of reality. People were here but far away. I couldn’t hear or see them clearly. I really thought I was going to die or pass out and people couldn’t see me like that. I ended up texting Satan from the toilets. I had to leave earlier and I hated myself so much. My projects and artworks were betraying and abandoning me, like music after THE concert.

This time, I accepted the work leave my doctor was telling me to take for months.

It’s been 6 months. I still have huge depressive episodes. I took a Netflix account. I spent months not being able to get out because of panic disorder. I drew when I had thoughts I needed to get out of my head. Some folks apparently liked it and I ended up on the Huffington Post and many other websites in over 7-8 languages. Many people told me their stories. I always answered. I apparently saved lives. Saved Christmas’ lonely night for someone. How can I help people when I cannot even help myself?

Today, I was too tired to leave my bed. That happens. But my biggest fear these days is to get better. I’ve never really known how it feels and I’m so scared of it. What if I relapse? I don’t want to no longer feel like myself, don’t want to lose my creativity. Getting back to work simply feels impossible. I just can’t. And I still hate myself so much. (If you can see some mistakes, I’m sorry, English is not my first language)

(I wrote this in 2017 so maybe I’ll update it later)

[xt1erminator-blog]

My History With D&D: How I Got Started

This should have been my introductory post on this blog, but, lazy.

It was a dark and stormy night.

No really, it was a dark and stormy night. I'm not just pretending to be Snoopy writing a novel. Anyhow, I recall being over at an elementary school friend's house for a sleep over I believe. Must have been 10 or 11 years old. There were three or four of us, and my friend, we'll call him Willy, was Dungeon Master. I had no actual playing experience before this night (the only time I had run into this strange game was several years earlier when I was over at the neighbour's house and their much older teenage kids were sitting around the kitchen table with their friends, the table cluttered with big books and weird shaped pieces of plastic and small metal figurines, and bottles and cans of pop and chips and all sorts of delicious looking junk food... it was similar to that scene in E.T. where the kids are playing D&D [not the photo above! - that’s from Freaks & Geeks] except it was daytime). And here I was now, sitting in a camper trailer in the middle of a big thunder/rain storm being shown how to make something called a "character". I have no recollection what race or class this character was, or his name.  I do remember though that he used a mace as his weapon and wore chainmail, and had iron rations. Maybe he was a cleric. I think it was red box Basic D&D we were playing.

I think I might have played a total of two or three games at Willy's place. Mostly with the same other friends playing it each time. The last game we played was using the 1st Edition AD&D rule books, and it was way over my head at the time. I remember stealing money from my paper route collections (which were probably due at the end of the week) and buying my own red box Basic D&D set and some dice, and I played the solo adventure for awhile (damn rust monster!) and then just hid out in the basement with a stack of graph paper, and drew out dungeon after dungeon after dungeon. They all sucked, I’m sure. I think the next major book purchase was the 2nd Edition Player's Handbook. And then the Monstrous Manual binder. Man, I hated that binder. What an awful format. I mean, great for organizing, being able to take out monster sheets and add in new ones, etc. but functionality-wise, it was a disaster. The binder didn't sit well with the other books on a shelf and whatever lamination they used for the exterior of the cover got very scuffed up if you put it in a backpack and it looked like ass in no time flat. The good old days. I would borrow other books and modules from anyone who was willing to let me take them away from them for any length of time, and sit there and read parts of them, mostly paying attention to the cool maps and the artwork. I remember photocopying many a module at the public library too.

So for several years after, I would mostly just read the books, and Dragon and Dungeon magazines, and attempt to create my own maps and even once or twice spent some money on miniatures and tried to paint them. Massive fail. If I would have know that the Ral Partha Forgotten Realms Heroes miniatures set I bought for $15 back in the late 80's/early 90's (whenever it was) would be worth hundreds of dollars almost 30 years later, I would have taken greater care with how much primer I carelessly sprayed on to those poor little figures, getting the shit all over my dad’s workshop tool bench (sorry Wulfgar, Drizzt, Dragonbait, Alias, etc.!) and how much paint I recklessly slapped on to them thinking I was doing things right. Ouch.

I tend to ramble so I'll try to summarize everything else up until now with a bit less detail. After elementary school came high school and there wasn't a lot of action when it came to playing Dungeons & Dragons, well with cool people I mean. There was a small group at the first high school I attended, that would play a game in the art room in the lower level of the school. I sat in once, maybe twice, to check it out. Wasn't my bag. These were the stereotypical super geeky, taped-up-eyeglasses nerds that were more interested in dissecting the rules and not playing with any real imagination it seemed. They were kind of like robots. Plus, not very fun when you have 45 minutes for a lunch break to try and make any progress in an adventure. I heard about others in this school who played, but I was never invited to go play in anyone's campaign. I stopped in a few times to see what was going on with another friend's home game, but didn't end up playing because they were a little too into roleplaying. Most of the playing I did happened later in my teenage years when I ended up playing in late night sessions with some older seniors at another school I went to, and then some games here and there with a bunch of fellows who have since turned out to be what you might call "life long friends". The good guys. Then, in my early 20's, I was the first of anyone I knew to do something incredibly stupid: meet a girl on the internet (1997), marry her and move to another country.

From that point on, I guess I lost interest in the hobby. I had always wanted to run my own game, but no opportunities ever arose, or I didn't have anywhere to play or I was just too on edge to be able to compose myself if a game were to actually take formation. I spent a lot of my time learning how to play musical instruments and often partied. Often. I don't regret it, those were some of the best times I've had. Years passed and I really didn't think about D&D or playing any sort of table top game at all. I grew more fond of digital entertainment, PC games, console games, etc.  I ended up attempting to become somewhat of a "photographer", and after many years I think I'm happy with where I am at with that particular hobby. It was one of those things you never thought to pursue and then one day, you end up spending several hundred dollars on a friend's used DSLR body and a strange, big zoom lens you have no clue how to use properly.

After almost six years and a "should have seen that one coming" style divorce, I returned back home and was again surrounded by my long time friends. It took a little bit of adjustment to get back into the circle with everyone - just picking up and leaving the country when you're 22 years old and supposed to be starting to explore your options for a career and everything, can kind of make a mess of your social connections.  I ended up getting back on my feet pretty quickly though, and found work a month and a half after coming home. I'm still there actually, almost 15 years later.

So, how did I reconnect with my beloved hobby?  It was almost two years ago or so (summer of 2015, I don't know if Tumblr dates these blog posts, I don't think so). My wife's step brothers had asked if she knew anyone who had ever played Dungeons & Dragons. She mentioned to them that I did. She asked on their behalf if I would run a game for them, they were curious and hadn't played before. I declined, no way no how. Been out of touch with it for years. Didn't play anymore. Made up some excuses. Left it at that. I had never run my own games before and had no confidence that I could be very effective when trying to introduce newcomers in to the game.

Then, at the end of that summer, another opportunity arose. Some mutual friends/family expressed interest in trying out the new 5th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons. They had been watching Critical Role online and somehow it came up in discussion.  I had spent the last few months recalling my love for the game from my past, and ended up being much more receptive to the idea. I was much older, had been through a lot of situations in my life where things like social interaction was easier for me to become comfortable with, and I was developing a passion for it again, it seemed. After downloading the free basic 5e rules, and researching some things on YouTube, I was all for it. Our first session was on my 39th birthday at the beginning of October, 2015. It has snowballed into an addiction since then. I have invested a lot of my time (and money) into a small collection of books and miniatures, and some writing to fuel a small Forgotten Realms campaign. We don't play often, maybe every month and a half to two months, as it depends heavily on my wife's work schedule and when she can book a weekend off. I don't like playing on weekday evenings, as I'm usually pretty burned out from work or there just isn't much time to get into a good game before having to cut it short because people have to work the next day.

My Forgotten Realms campaign, currently one of two games I run, started out with three characters: a dwarven sorcerer, a half-orc druid and a gnome rogue. For the first session or two, I attempted to incorporate a PC that I was playing, a cleric of Bane. His appearance was very brief, as I decided it was not going to work well, playing a character while trying to hold down the fort being Dungeon Master and running the show. I'm not at that stage yet. So, I sent the cleric off in the night to go tend to an important mission while the rest of the party carried on. I used the majority of the 5e Starter Set module, Lost Mine of Phandelver. It did the job. I twisted it up a bit and definitely didn't follow it as per the booklet, and I still do that to this day. My style when using pre-written adventures, it seems, is to grab bits and pieces that are essential, and do the rest on the fly and change as necessary based on what the players may do to throw things off. And that's a good thing. It's helping me build skills to become a better Dungeon Master that can adapt to different scenarios, because it almost always doesn't go the way you plan it will go. I learned that early on. After a few months of playing and completing the Wave Echo Cave area, a situation arose that brought the party through a portal leading to the entrance to the Undermountain dungeon, located underneath The Yawning Portal in the great city of Waterdeep. This was an opportune moment to introduce a new player to the group, which happened thanks to a spur of the moment idea I had, to invite an old friend who I knew was a fan of what we were doing. I wasn't sure if he was up for joining the group, but you don't know until you ask, right? The next session, without saying too much of anything, the door bell rang and moments later the group now had a paladin amongst their ranks. It's been a way better game since.

The second campaign I'm going to start running over the next few weeks will be based upon the Eberron setting, which up until last week I had personally shrugged off any time it came up in my travels, and had no interest in even reading what it was about. I'm not sure why that is, I think the brief encounters I had with it previously were based on flipping through some 3rd Edition books, and I just wasn't picking up on what it was all about. I have never been much into anything 3e, the look and design of the books are unappealing to me. This past week though, one of my players and I got ahold of the 4th Edition Eberron Campaign and Player's guides, and I started reading them. I am really liking the setting and am looking forward to trying to use it in a new game. Lightning Rails, Airships, Warforged, Shifters, Dragonmarks - very cool stuff!  Also of help here was a video on Nerdarchy’s YouTube channel where the guys discuss 10 Reasons Why 5th Edition Needs Eberron

This leads to my next post: What Might Eberron For 5e Be Like?

Coming soon!

-runDMsteve