#I'm still dealing with health issues

[celepom]

Every so often I'm hit by a fugue of homesickness, but lately, I have come to realize that what I long for no longer exists. The forests I played in as a child have been cut down and replaced with box houses. The ones who loved me are gone. The wild has been replaced with the manufactured. There's nothing left but ghosts.

[futurewife]

Ven please, I'm begging you to go to therapy. Your posts hurt me so much cause I recognize myself and people I've loved in them and I always wanna say smth to make you feel better but I know from experience that that only helps for a little while or doesn't help at all or can even make things worse. But you don't have to suffer like this forever!! You can get better and there is help!! And as a fellow pmdd sufferer you can get help with that too. Idk how you feel about medication but going on birth control continuously so you never have periods or using antidepressants or mood stabilizers just for the two nightmare weeks after ovulation can help so much. Please please please I worry about you and I know you can have a good life if you get help! you're beautiful and creative and you have everything you need you just have to figure out how to access it and use it and I know you can do it. I know your F/Os would want you to and I know your future real life S/Os who are waiting for you would want you to too. You deserve to be happy instead of feeling like a ghost all the time.

Thank you anon I appreciate the concern, feel a little bit embarrassed about oversharing now but you know what...sometimes you just have to say it out loud somewhere. As you would know the nature of the disorder means there's often not much that can be done in terms of talking myself out of the way it feels cause biology is so (detrimentally) overpowering and intensifies other mental health issues and generally all pre-existing negative feelings about ones' existence. The ghost analogy is apt and I've often used this to describe how I relate to life and connecting with others. now idk if I can overcome myself and thrive but maybe I could switch some things up and see if it makes it suck a little less

I was on ssris constantly for years previously (edit: and therapy on and off) before I stopped taking them but your ask has me considering intermittent dosing even if I dislike the side effects just to see what happens. I thought I could just grit my teeth and bare it (put myself to sleep between being wracked by ugly crying as I cannot stand being conscious in my own mind) every month in lieu of meds but maybe I can't rawdog slog through dark funhouse mirror evil pmdd reality on my own/shouldn't feel that I have to in order to not "lose"

I was very touched by your reaching out and compassionately disagreeing with me (lol) and it means a lot from another person with pmdd. It helps to think someone out there sees the value in me as I am right now, and that someone else is also fighting their own good fight. When you said I have everything I need I just have to figure out how to access it and use it and you know I can do it you sound just like my grandma. (<3)

[holocene-sims]

a sneak peek for an upcoming (timeline tbd) update 😊

[pallanophblargh]

I think part of me expected this burnout would last a long time, but it’s drawing close to a year now. I have a strong reason to suspect medications are prolonging it. Granted: I have no intention of stopping medication, but I suspect I may need to make some changes. It’s been nice not to feel burning rage/crippling despair/panic most of the time, but I also miss being able to actually... act on things! Start things! Feel some semblance of motivation, as fleeting as it is. Mostly my reaction to prompts of any kind are “nah, don’t wanna” or “so what?” which isn’t terribly conducive to anything more than day to day life. (Y’all, I can’t even reliably plan my vacation and that’s pretty terrible.)

I’m saying this in part as a sort of explanation as to why I’ve been so slow to respond to anything, or post any art, or even re-open commissions this past year. I just... generally can’t make myself do anything that isn’t a part of my daily maintenance routine. Knowing that making art (even personal art) takes 3x times as long to complete is a standout reason I’ve been refusing to reopen commissions especially, since I’d be unwilling to make clients wait more than a few months for even something as simple as a sketch. People were patient enough with “Old Me,” I don’t think most would hold out for “New Me.”

Thankfully I’m speaking to my doctor tomorrow regarding my experiences on the current medication, and maybe I can find something that works a little better. I feel like I’ve been pretty fortunate so far, all things considered, and my side effects have been fairly mild. (Though I have suspicions it’s also thinning out my hair something fierce... probably time for supplements for that issue!)

Hopefully I’ll figure it out sooner rather than later? Either way, I’m learning to accept things as they are these days. 

[bibuckleykinard]

how many times do we need to learn as people that irony and hyperbole can be harmful because 'jokes' aren't easily distinguished from genuine thoughts and feelings until we stop rewarding people for speaking or posting about violence

like even if you're joking/don't actually believe that/think whoever you are insulting is bad/immoral/fictional therefore deserves it - ad hominem attacks always do more harm to the people who share those characteristic then the individual you intend to cause harm to or discredit

[kinnbig]

🧍‍♂️🧍‍♂️🧍‍♂️

[moe-broey]

Oh, poor thang!

[beauty-grace-outer-space]

I know at least some of you will relate to this, but it's wild what it does to your mental health to know there's no one else to pick up the slack.

Like... if I have an off day (or three, or five, or a week)? All I'm doing is making more work for myself down the line because no one else is going to help me with the laundry or the dishes or the shopping or meals.

It can be a bit defeating at times.

[sga-owns-my-soul]

as someone who has been misdiagnosed at best and fully ignored and not believed at worst about my health issues, it's really frustrating when people tell me i don't really have something unless a doctor has diagnosed me. doctors don't believe i have any issues to begin with, why are they supposed to be trusted over me?? like i get they have degrees but idiots get degrees literally all the time. idk it's just really frustrating when i tell people i have food sensitives and they don't believe me unless i can procure an allergy test. i tell people i have chronic pain and unless a doctor told me that, it doesn't count. i'm not allowed to identify as autistic until a doctor tells me i can. like i get looking something up once isn't the same as a medical degree but idk can we maybe just. stop pretending doctors are the only ones capable of telling what's wrong with someone? can we maybe trust that sometimes people do actually know what's going on with their body and their health?

[vinmauro]

i need a fucking break.

[replica-model]

.

[vvelegrin]

you know, it's an interesting feeling to experience sudden and new joint pain that is impacting my ability to, among other things, hold a pen for an extended period of time and the only thing that my (now former) doctor has done is repeatedly test me for lupus (it's not lupus. it's still not lupus.) and tell me he was going to prescribe me claritin for it and then not actually put in the prescription.

[symbioticsimplicity]

So @stranger-rants got me thinking.

I know Dacre looked into a few different mental illnesses (DID, anxiety) for Billy, and it really does come through.

I personally feel like his symptoms seem most like BPD, pre-possession at least.

He doesn't quite have enough of a split to argue for DID, or at least they don't focus on him enough to get a definitive idea that he's got alters. I think the possession is as close as we get to that.

He's definitely got anxiety issues, though I think they're a part of a larger condition. While BPD usually develops in young adulthood, and Billy has clearly been having problems for quite a while, I don't think that's enough to rule it out entirely.

These are some of the symptoms of BPD taken from the mayo clinic's website. I don't know about you but I see a lot of similarities there.

It very much lines up with how Billy is shown to behave in canon. And given that back in 1980 the conversation around mental health was still riddled with stigma, if it was brought up at all? I'd be surprised if he had any idea what was up with him. Taken with his home life, the kid would have been basically drowning all the time. The adults in his life didn’t help him, since they saw him as both mature (since he looks much older than he is) and troublesome. Most of them took advantage of him even more, which is all too common for people with mental illnesses to experience.

Doesn't justify him hurting people, sure, but it sure does explain it.

[marietheran]

.

[heartshattering]

Well, I managed to make it through the night. Even with all the physical pain, anxiety, catastrophizing, obsessive thoughts, panicking, sobbing, etc. I still fell asleep eventually (and without having to take more of my sleep aid than what I've been taking for the past 2 weeks). Pain is actually a little bit better today but not completely gone.

I scheduled an appointment with my doctor for June 13 but still have to make an appointment with the gastroenterologist and with the lab to test me for stomach bacteria again. I'm trying my best but this is so exhausting and there's no guarantee I'll even have any answers by the end of all this. I just wish this was all a nightmare I could wake up from and finally be okay.

[weregreatatcrime]

Hiii! Omg I am so happy to see you doing Trollhunters again! And I am enjoying the crossover tidbits.

Though, as an older fan, I am curious to ask, hope it doesn't feel too pushy. Have you thought about your Kanjibarbara fic ever since coming back to ToA?

Okay so I'm gonna say it again and probably not one more time. Not because this ask was pushy, you're fine, but because I've gotten Several asks about it over the last two years since stopping Kanjibara au and all my other projects. It's frustrating because it's a deeply personal and painful topic for me and many people from multiple Fandoms keep asking the same questions. Like a lot of people. Like, a LOT of fucking people on ao3

The last two years have been medical hell. I've had a fuckton of medical, neurological, and mental issues that changed my entire life- part of those issues are cognitive decline and memory loss. The first year is a blur tbh, and a lot of my memories are fuzzy as a result. My ability to recall things is scattered- some shit is fine, some stuff may as well have happened to a stranger.

Part of that is my creative work. I don't think I'll ever continue the things I was working on beforehand, simply because I don't remember what I was planning or what I was doing with them. I remember I had an absolute joy with them! I remember the Trollhunters Fandom being a delight and a very warm and welcoming environment.

But a lot of details are muddy and I'm sure you understand, trying to piece together my own memories of stuff I'm struggling with is frustrating and painful and more stressful than it's worth. I'm already recovering incredibly well right now, I don't feel like digging myself back into that hole for Fandom stuff

New stuff is all on the table though! After two years, I finally was able to get my hand strength back up enough to draw recently and have been working on maintaining it. (Tremors and spasms made it impossible before) I'm also back into writing- though I still struggle with cognitive issues with writing, working on writing things that bring me joy has helped a lot

But all my projects from before are likely not going to be touched on again. It sucks. But they're a sensitive topic for me rn and probably will be touchy for a long while. Chances are I'll delete any asks or comments I get about them from here on out just for my own sake