#and the thought of wanting to live is far scarier than the concept of dying

[piss-stained-jorts]

2007-2017: I want to die

2017-2024: I'm okay with being alive, but I don't mind if I do die. that's okay

as of like 10 or 15 minutes ago, I'm calling it official: ...wait...wait wait wait wait I want to live and keep living and I prefer it to dying

[hiccanna-tidbits]

The RotBTD+ Gang Plays DnD! (Feat. my ships, sorry not sorry XD)

So highkey I’ve actually been wanting to do a “The Gang Plays DnD” type post for AGES now, but then I saw @hobie-brown and @ohlooksheswriting-wips do DnD AU posts for RotBTD, and then I was like “Ah shit, I really should finish mine, eh?” So thank you to both of you for inspiring me to get off my ass and actually write the post!!!

Hiccup DMs. He comes up with this super complex plot revolving around dragons (because of course) where the party has to dismantle this society ruled by evil knights who want to genocide all of the dragons. Imagine his chagrin when the party wants to do nothing but fuck around in towns and aggravate NPCs 90% of the time.

They usually end up playing at Jack’s apartment, mainly because Hiccup’s dad doesn’t really want a bunch of loud nerds yelling about 20-sided dice in his household while he’s trying to work, if he can at all help it. Jack’s sister regularly barges into their living room and roasts the fuck out of Jack and his friends for being such damn nerds and eats all of their DnD snacks they’ve set out. If they’re in the middle of a combat session, she always gleefully proclaims that they’re all going to die. While Jack is annoyed by this, the rest of the party finds it deeply hilarious.

Jack Overland plays the absolute mayhem warlock Jack Frost, who got his powers through making a deal with the archfey Prince of Frost and has absolutely no qualms about being an evil god’s mortal Sower of Chaos. He spends the vast majority of the campaign doing such useful things as creating ice slicks under annoying NPCs and freezing people’s drinks. He also plays a Tiefling because absolutely no one can talk this boy out of playing the creepy demon race.

Rapunzel plays a woodland nymph druid who is also the party healer (because of course she is). Her name is probably Sunlily or something else suitably hippie-esque. Whenever there’s downtime (or whenever the rest of the party is also dicking around, and she can get away with it), Rapunzel likes to go into the nearest forest and pick the best berries and nuts for the rest of the party. She also loves baking fruit pies and cooking the best nymph food for her companions when given the chance. Definitely the party Cinnamon Roll (every party has one!). She often will turn into cute animals to distract the guards while the party infiltrates a building.

Merida’s character is the party archer and general ranged weapon master, as well as a raging lesbian. Hiccup learns very quickly that any male NPC who tries to flirt with her will very quickly get impaled with an arrow. She can’t ever decide if she wants to be a ranger or a rogue, so she multiclasses in both for flare. She also plays a Tiefling, and continually insists that her character is both scarier and sexier than Jack’s. In combat, she either Leeroy Jenkins her way in with a sword and just starts slashing every which way, or just shoots 90% of the enemies with arrows before the fight even starts. There’s really no in between. She can get away with this because she’s highkey one of the party tanks, and consistently deals a shitton of damage.

Anna plays a human bard, basically having read over the class options and going “Wait, in this one I get to make stylish medieval music??? And wear dramatic and garish outfits and a dumb hat??? And cast wacky illusion spells??? And do silly little magic tricks??? And INSPIRE EVERYONE??? Hell yeah, I’m in!!!” She mostly uses magic attacks in combat (definitely favors Tasha’s Hideous Laughter), but occasionally when she’s out of spell slots she’ll just take to slamming enemies in the face with her lute. She also has WAY too much fun with Vicious Mockery, let’s be real.

Elsa, upon hearing Jack’s character concept, rolls her eyes so far up in her head she can see her damn brain, and vows to play his concept, but serious–solely out of spite. She rolls up a super OP elf Chaos Sorcerer, filled with lots of brooding angst about how uncontrollable her winter powers can get if she isn’t careful. She combines it a bit with Storm Sorcerer so she can create literal blizzards, and Hiccup ends up allowing it just because he thinks it’s cool. Although Elsa’s character is undoubtedly aggravated by the rest of the party’s antics, she starts becoming grudgingly protective of these idiots and can deal some pretty crazy damage when her companions are threatened. She also contains one of the party’s only brain cells.

Eugene of course plays dashing rogue master thief Flynn Rider. Although his high deception and lockpicking skills certainly come in handy, he’s the most chaotic neutral fucker you’ve ever met and will take any excuse to rob NPCs blind or cheat them out of every cent they have in a tavern card game. It’s nigh impossible to get him to cooperate with the rest of the party much of the time, and often Elsa’s character has to either bribe him with some of her family’s gold or threaten to freeze him to stop him backstabbing one or more party members. Eugene’s character forces Hiccup to add in many more heist plotlines than he originally intended. This delights Eugene immensely, and sometimes he goes a bit crazy planning elaborate heists.

Moana plays a sorcerer water genasi. She can control any body of water, but she has a special affinity for controlling saltwater (i.e. the ocean lol). She also requests an animal handling bonus, but only with marine animals, solely because she thought it would be funny. She’s also an ex-pirate who robbed a lot of wealthy merchant ships and freed their slaves back in the day, which Merida thinks is incredibly badass. Moana tends to get bored and unengaged when there are no bodies of water to play around with, so Hiccup ends up having to add a lot more lakes, rivers, and oceans to the campaign than he originally planned on. Moana also takes a sailing skill, and thus the party often ends up traveling by boat. Typically Eugene and Rapunzel will infiltrate and hijack it, and Moana will sail it. Moana probably contains the party’s only other brain cell.

Astrid plays a gigantic berserker orc barbarian who is never without his trusty axe. Astrid is hands down the party’s top tank, and unquestionably deals the most damage every combat session. Much like Merida’s character, Astrid’s character is absolutely a shameless power fantasy. Hiccup pretty easily picks up on this, but is too polite to say anything about it. Jack also picks up on this, but is hardly as courteous as their DM, and teases Astrid mercilessly. Astrid is not amused.

Rapunzel requests that her weapon of choice be a frying pan, her justification being that her character found a discarded one at the edge of a human village outside her woods and mistaked it for a highly-dangerous human weapon. Hiccup is like “…you know what? Fuck it” and rolls up stats for a goddamn frying pan. Jack has nigh-endless admiration for Rapunzel for choosing such a goddamn memey, absurd, yet oddly effective weapon and it definitely makes the poor boy even more smitten with her than he already is.

Eugene and Merida have a bet going on who can sleep with more sexy barmaids. Merida is currently winning, much to Eugene’s chagrin. She’s not even inherently better at seducing NPCs, she and Eugene have the same charisma stat–she just consistently rolls better than Eugene. Eugene is incredibly salty about this.

Anna and Elsa want to be sisters in-game as well, but neither want to change their race–so Anna decides her character was adopted. Hiccup and the rest of the party go along with it, mainly because there’s something deeply hilarious about a regular human bard being adopted and raised by a family of high-powered elf ice mages.

Astrid is absolutely the sort of player who tends to get bored and restless outside of fights, and tends to fidget and twiddle her thumbs waiting for the next combat session. Jack picks up on this, and purposely does more roleplay for longer just to piss her off. He’s also just a very dramatic fucker and highkey loves roleplay.

When she’s not causing mayhem around the town or sleeping with hot women, Merida tries to entertain Astrid between combat sessions by offering to spar with her. Unfortunately, this does not usually end well for poor Merida, as even the most hardcore and badass of tieflings is prone to getting dumpstered by an 8-foot-tall barbarian orc with an axe. Astrid is, nonetheless, grateful to have someone to fight.

Rapunzel, Elsa, and Moana will humor Hiccup and attempt to actually play the main plot. Meanwhile, Jack, Merida, and Eugene are a DM’s worst nightmare. They constantly derail the damn campaign to fuck around, cause mayhem, and do inane shenanigans in every. Damn. Town. They go to. Anna is kind of a wildcard–she’ll typically go with whatever group looks like they’re going to be doing something more interesting. Astrid will go along with whichever group is more likely to get into a fight–which, often as not, is Jack and his posse of terrible Chaotic Neutrals (who have definitely pissed off a number of NPCs into attacking them).

As the campaign goes on, Elsa and Eugene become the beleaguered Party Mom and Dad. Both are quite aggravated by this–especially poor Eugene, who just wanted to play a morally-gray charming rogue who stole everything and got away with it and then accidentally ended up caring about these idiots he got stuck with.

Anna initially joins the campaign because she has a planet-size crush on Hiccup, and inevitably is the one who dragged Elsa into it too. Being the hopeless romantic that she is, Anna writes a love interest into her backstory. Hiccup eventually has the party run into said love interest, and Anna is overjoyed. He starts flirting with her as the love interest, and it’s easily the best 30 minutes of Anna’s life.

Moana and Elsa also give Hiccup pretty detailed backstories, and he works in little subplots for them. Moana gets to bring water back to a dying part of the jungle in the middle of a draught, while Elsa gets to go on a whole sidequest to explore her family history and how they came to be sorcerers.

Jack, Merida, and Eugene also give Hiccup fairly elaborate backstories, but Jack’s and Merida’s are like 99% memes and Dumb Shit. Hiccup tries to give all of them backstory-related plot hooks, but inevitably any hooks he provides are either stabbed, robbed, or frozen. Honestly any plot hook offered to these 3 will be all but spat in the face of and tossed off a cliff.

The one relevant part of Eugene’s backstory is that he and Rapunzel decide they used to be partners in crime before the campaign started. Rapunzel would infiltrate and scout out places he wanted to rob as small, unobtrusive animals (her preferred Wild Shape is a chameleon) and later distract the guards as a bunny or kitten while he went in and took every gold coin in sight. In return, Flynn Rider would bribe builders to not develop into Sunlily’s forest. Rapunzel and Eugene partly came up with this For Funsies, but also it was Rapunzel’s sneaky way of tricking Eugene into having prior connections in the party so he’d be less likely to betray them. It works pretty well–although the entire party is protective of Cinnamon Roll Sunlily, Flynn is certainly especially protective of her.

Astrid does the absolute bare minimum as far as backstories go. She is literally just here to smash stuff, slice people, and beat some fuckers up.

Rapunzel has a backstory, but she’s typically so invested in the main plot and the other party members that Hiccup rarely needs to bring it in to keep her engaged. She’s highkey the party emotional rock, and probably the only one keeping them all together.

On that note, Rapunzel’s character is the ONLY one who can get Jack’s character to take the plot even REMOTELY seriously. Like he’ll be dicking around in the nearest tavern challenging the nearest orc to a drinking game, and Rapunzel will come in and ask him to help them on a Main Plot Quest. And he’ll be like “come onnnnn I’m having funnn” and she’ll be like “Jack pleeeeeease?” and you just. Can’t resist Sunlily’s puppy dog eyes. At all. Also, whenever Sunlily is genuinely threatened, any silliness immediately goes out the window and Jack Frost is OUT FOR BLOOD.

For better or for worse, Rapunzel is not immune to being looped into Jack’s shenanigans. Occasionally if either Merida or Eugene have a particularly hare-brained scheme she’ll go along with it, but by and large Jack is the most successful in convincing her to temporarily abandon the plot and cause mild mischief with him. They once wasted half a session creating an elaborate “ice theme park” for some squirrels in the forest.

Hiccup tries to get Merida to play the main plot by eventually having there be no more sexy female NPCs to seduce in the towns they go to. Unfortunately, this backfires–Merida just hooks up with Moana’s character instead. When asked to roll for how good the lay is, Merida gets a nat 20–and thus her character and Moana’s character end up hooking up regularly throughout the rest of the campaign.

Hiccup introduces a few Wise Old Mentor-type NPCs to guide the party throughout the campaign. While Rapunzel, Elsa, Moana, and Anna actually try to listen to them and take their advice, Merida, Jack, and Eugene absolutely refuse to take them seriously and mercilessly play pranks on them.

At one point, Hiccup gives the party the option to attempt to tame a group of wild dragons and use them as mounts. They all have to make animal handling checks. Anna, Rapunzel, Elsa, and Moana pass. The rest of the party fails, with Jack and Eugene crit-failing. Hilarity ensues.

Hiccup ends up bringing back Anna’s backstory love interest as an NPC regular. Anna thinks he’s just being a good friend and a good DM and trying to incorporate her backstory as much as he can, but really, he just wants an excuse to regularly flirt with her. He hardly has the balls to out-of-game.

Merida comes out as gay toward the end of the campaign. Everyone in the group is extremely supportive, of course, but everyone is also like “Merida…with the amount of barmaids you’ve banged…and the amount of times you and Moana’s character hooked up…this isn’t exactly surprising.”

Hiccup actually finds a way to use Jack and Elsa’s same-concept-opposite-execution characters to the plot’s advantage. He decides one of the main villains will have a prophecy saying he’ll be taken down by a powerful ice mage. The party manages to fool this guy into thinking this ice mage is Jack, and sends Jack to fight him. As soon as the villain sees Jack, he’s like “WHAT??? THIS clown???” (word has absolutely spread throughout the land of Jack not using his ice powers for anything besides mildly annoying trolling). Naturally, the bad guy lets his guard down after thinking he’s going to fight this literal joke, and then Elsa crashes in from the side and absolutely dumpsters him.

Jack tries to defeat the final boss by just annoying him so much that he leaves. Unfortunately, he just annoys him so much that he attacks Rapunzel’s character. Jack’s just like “oh HELL no” and attacks with absolutely nothing held back. Turns out he’s pretty terrifying when he’s not using his magic for Dumb Antics.

During the final boss of the campaign, the Big Bad tries to one-shot Moana’s character, and Merida’s character super theatrically jumps in front of her to take the blow instead. Rapunzel just barely manages to heal Merida’s character, but it’s a really close call. During all this, Merida is like “ah shit...maybe I’m NOT just in this to get fantasy-laid.” After the fight’s over, her and Moana’s characters have a big dramatic love confession and share a Big Damn Kiss in front of everyone. It’s pretty epic.

After the final session of the campaign, Merida drags Moana outside Jack’s apartment and sputters and trips over her words for a solid minute before she finally gets out that through all this nonsense...well...maybe it’s not just in the game that she thinks Moana is hot. Moana just gets this HUGE grin on her face and says “c’mere, Leeroy Jenkins” and just pulls Merida in and kisses her. Cue the rest of the party barging in on them. Merida and Moana freeze, and there’s a moment of terrified silence...and then the entire party starts cheering them on like “took you long enough!”

The entire rest of the party could detect the sexual tension. Literally all of them.

But Eugene is like “HA, THIS MEANS IF WE DO A SEQUEL CAMPAIGN I’M WINNING THAT BET! BECAUSE YOU’RE GONNA BE DATING MO’S CHAR AND THUS NOT ABLE TO SLEEP WITH ANY MORE BARMAIDS!”

By the epilogue session, Jack and Rapunzel are dating. Merida and Moana are also dating. Hiccup and Anna STILL haven’t figured out why they’re so prone to spending half the session flirting when Anna’s love interest shows up, and Hiccup STILL hasn’t figured out why he likes to have Anna’s love interest show up so often. Bless their souls. Maybe they’ll figure it out next campaign...?

Damn I actually really like this...maybe if people like it I’ll do some incorrect quotes or a drabble or something??? Or maybe some HCs from next campaign???

[casillaz]

21 Life Lessons

Money is better spent on experiences rather than things. Every time I’ve saved up my money to buy something and then I finally buy it–sure, it feels good for about five seconds but by the next week you’re wishing you hadn’t bought those shoes and you had the money to go out and do things.

Nothing…and I mean nothing…is ever as big of a deal as it seems. If I had a grain of rice for every time I overreacted and made myself sick with stress over things that don’t matter anymore I could feed all of Texas for a week. It took a couple of decades to learn, but now I can ask myself if the issue will matter in a matter of a day, month or year…usually the answer is no. If the answer is  yes, I work on fixing the issue rather than worrying. I still haven’t mastered this concept, but at least I understand the principle.

You write the story of your life. There are many things about myself that I used to think were set in stone. I thought that I had these characteristics, good or bad, and that I would just have them forever. Little did I know until recently–these things are very much malleable. I thought I couldn’t have a job that required me to get up early because I was a night owl. Well, I changed my thought pattern and made it happen. I now wake up at 5 and get in bed much earlier than I used to. The point is that once I realized I was self-defining things in my life I was able to re-write those parts of my story. Some things you can’t change–your height (well actually I’m sure there’s a surgery for that…), your race, etc…but once you stop enforcing boundaries on your story you are able to grow more than you ever could otherwise.

You DEFINITELY become who you are around. When I think about how I’ve changed personally over the years I can absolutely link those changes back to who I was associating with at the time. I have realized now that life is way too short to spend all your time with people that you don’t want to be like.

Life is short. Is there something you want to do but are putting it off? Do it.

People are really only concerned with themselves. I’m not saying that to hate on society, because I’m including myself in this. What I mean is we often are so caught up in what other people think about us, but in reality everyone is too concerned with themselves and what others think of them…an endless loop. Who cares if someone doesn’t like you? Do you like you? Work on liking yourself and nothing else will matter.

Be overly grateful. Be SUPER appreciative of every nice deed, big or small, that is done to you. You don’t know what someone had to go through to get you that Starbucks–maybe they waited in line for 30 minutes or spent the last of their cash just so they could do something nice for you. Maybe your mom had to save up her money for three months to buy you that thing you wanted so bad. Maybe someone had an awful day and they just want to go home and eat ice cream, yet they’re still there listening to you talk about your awful day and being supportive. Seemingly small actions can be larger than they appear. Just be grateful for everything and TELL people how grateful you are for them in your life.

Hard work pays off. This may seem obvious, but it’s so ridiculously true. Every time I halfheartedly do something I absolutely do not get the results that I desire. Then I beat myself up for that. If you want something you literally have to give it your all. Recovery, a good job, graduating college…I have had to give these three things my all and more. So far, I have the good job and I’m working hard every day. I graduate college in 2 months. I have made immense progress in my recovery. Hard work is the only kind of work that’s going to cut it.

Healthy is not skinny, ripped, or anything of the like. Healthy is eating vegetables AND ice cream. Getting enough sleep but still occasionally sacrificing sleep. Going to the gym but also taking months off because you don’t feel like it. Getting outside and seeing nature. Eating what you want. Prioritizing mental health. Health is so much broader than a physical appearance. Society will tell you that abs are the picture of health. Fun fact: when I had an 8 pack, I was actually dying.

You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do. In other words, people see what you actually do–they don’t see your intentions. We’re judged for what we do. Sometimes I get caught up in my good intentions but I don’t follow through. Good intentions aren’t the same as good actions. You gotta make things happen.

The path less chosen is less chosen for a reason. It’s harder to do what no one else is. It’s scarier. It’s weird. It’s different. If it was easy everyone else would be doing it. Also, the reward at the end of the path is much, much greater.

Asking for help is 900% okay. I’ve always been so independent and stubborn, and both of those things caused me to rarely ask for help. Ever. I felt like that made me weak. Now that I have experience in the work force I realize that asking for help is absolutely okay–even essential.

Your siblings + parents are your forever best friends. Of course my sisters and I fight, and my parents and I had issues while I was a horrible teenager. But those 7 people are also the 7 that I have for all of our existence to be my supporters, best friends, and favorite people.

Your body is just a vehicle for your soul. For real, though. Of course I never asked for an eating disorder or willingly developed one, but I did choose to recover. Just because I know this one to be true doesn’t mean I don’t still struggle–but at least I know it is true. Personality and character over any physical appearance POINT BLANK, PERIOD.

Days are long but years are short. In my life, at least, it sometimes seems like the days are so busy and long. I wake up around 5 and don’t hit the hay until usually midnight. I stay very busy throughout the day. However, when I look back I realize that the years have gone by far too fast. I spend a lot of time daydreaming and planning the future, and I really have been trying to live in the present and not let the moments go by too fast. It’s good to know what you want for your future and work toward goals, but it’s not so good to live IN the future.

Life is so much more fun when you do not care what others think. I actually just said these words to Jarrett while we were in Costco and I was body rolling down the aisle backwards. I was like, “Man, it’s so much more fun when you don’t care what people think.” People always stare at me when I do weird things in public, and it makes me feel bad for THEM because I’m having more fun than them and they’re so rigid by society’s “norms” that they think it is wrong for me to act the way that I do. Be weird. Don’t be embarrassed to do things. Be yourself and don’t care about the rest.

Pray ALL THE TIME. There is never a wrong time to pray. From driving in a scary storm to waiting for a professor to hand out a test or standing in the shower…there’s never a time He won’t listen. Lonely? Pray. Scared? Pray. Grateful? Pray. I could go on for days.

Stay away from caffeine and reach for water instead.

Saving money is hard, but you should probably absolutely 742% do it. 

You can’t search for the person you’re supposed to be with.

Life really does begin outside of your comfort zone. Absolutely, 100%, no question. Everything in my life that I have achieved, the things I am most proud of, the most progress I’ve made, the most fun I’ve had…these things all started as very uncertain, awkward situations. I have had to push myself through many uncomfortable situations in order to get to the pot of gold on the other side. Life requires that you do things you may not want to do or that you feel uncomfortable or unprepared for in order to reap massive benefits. Don’t let a comfort zone hold you back from greatness. My eating disorder was my comfort zone. It took so much from my to push past it. Life now? It’s a whole lot better than it ever was when my days were ruled by a tiny evil voice in my brain.

Annie Mishler

[mylifeasevelyn]

Untitled I

I will never know myself until I do this on my own and I will never feel anything else until my wounds are healed. I will never be anything 'til I break away from me. I will break away. I'll find myself today. I wanna heal, I wanna feel what I thought was never real. I wanna let go of the pain I've felt so long. I wanna heal, I wanna feel like I'm close to something real. I wanna find something I've wanted all along: somewhere I belong

Hello dear stranger, it’s me, Evelyn. Whenever I type a new post, I always have a title in mind, but I can’t seem to choose one at the moment… though I still wanted to type something today ‘cause, well, it was my birthday this week and that’s when I truly feel that the year that has passed is finally over, and I feel reflecting upon the things I’ve learnt these past twelve months. I apologise in advance for my sloppy writing. It’s been a while after all...

So yeah, it’s been real, man. Dealing living with mental illness is always challenging, I know that very well and so, this year’s has been the loneliest year of my life- well, it still is in a way. I willingly chose to find my road to recovery alone and be my own anchor. I rely on my talk therapy and myself, that’s it. Of course there are people around me who care about me but I no longer burden them with my shit. I only talk about what I think is necessary. And if I ever need to grief, I do it in solitude�� and that’s why it’s been lonely… yet liberating. I carry a huge baggage of history and pain that only I know, so I can’t really expect others to understand what I’m going through. I mean, I may try and explain myself when necessary, but that’s just it. It took years, years and years to realise that this pain is my own. And yes, I do need to talk it out (we all do), but only with the right people… though now that I’ve done my fair share of talk therapy, the pain of past traumatic events has receded tremendously…

Do you believe in premonitions, dear stranger? ‘Cause I do. I’ve already typed something about it on a previous post, so yeah, I’ll just assume you know, lol. Anyway, I had a strong premonition at the beginning of this year and fuuuuck, was it helpful. It made me shape my new found perspective even more, and since then, my mantra for recovery has been “embrace the darkness within.” Unfortunately, we live in a society that’s obsessed with “light” and positive shit and that’s as fucked as it comes. What’s wrong with crying? What’s wrong with wallowing? What’s wrong with having a shitty day and not being able to tell someone about it? What’s wrong with lying about how you truly feel when someone asks “how are you”? Fucking hell, man. Pretending that everything is okay is what makes society fake and unrealistic af. No wonder why people like me fall into that trap and get heavily affected by this mentality. But hey, like I’ve said already I am now cool with the darkness within, and I highly recommend that you do so yourself, dear stranger. There’s no point in trying to shush your demons with shit that’s just as toxic as the bullshit that affects you. In this case, two negatives do not make a positive.

There’s three things that I’ve truly learned this past year. One: you can’t change the past, therefore, you cannot dwell on whether you could’ve done this or that in order to change the outcome of a certain situation. Two: I’ll always be broken. I can never go back to the time when my life wasn’t a living hell. There’s no point in trying to erase what made me who I am today ‘cause, again, you can’t change the past. Three: give time its time. Giving myself time to heal is what I needed. What I still need. As of now, I’m going through a major grieving process. I’ve awakened and faced demons from my past and I can’t just pretend that it’s all easy peasy. It takes shit tons of guts to do so, and it’s the only way to find peace with whom I’ve become. So yeah, time. Real time. Unplugging from anything and everything. I stopped wasting my time caring about others’ well-being and started focusing on me. God dammit, I hate to admit that I cared too much about sooo many people that I never truly gave a shit about me and my well-being... and that’s when the concept of self-care became prominent in my life.

As regards self-care… I’ve always wondered how people could handle their adult shit, you know what I mean, dear stranger? Like, how do they manage to accomplish so many things during their day-to-day lives without losing their shit? Or, like, without making it seem like a mentally draining task? My shrink recommended making a list or having some sort of agenda and yet I always failed at doing everything I had to do for that day, week or whatever. It took me a long time for me to realise… I’m not like everyone else. I can’t be trapped by a routine. I need to be free. I need to do what I feel like doing. My perception of routines are heavily influenced by my anxiety, and if I follow an agenda, I go out of my fucking mind. So I thought of different ways to go through my day-to-day tasks without losing my shit. And the one thing that works for me right now is writing down the things I want to do that day and then checking if I’ve done every single thing I’ve set myself to do that day. Within those tasks I set myself for the day/week, I always make sure to make self-care a priority, which is something I never paid attention to until now. My well-being comes first now. I need to be in a healthy state of mind, otherwise my day turns into a wasted one. Of course this method works for me ‘cause I’m a student and that’s all I have to focus my time on.

Oh, and last but not least. There’s one thing that ties in all of these things that I’ve learnt in the past year: self-confidence. It’s a no brainer that someone like me suffers from low self-esteem. As I grew up being emotionally neglected, I never truly knew if I was good enough to do certain things, and the only things I’ve succeeded at are because I had someone outside of my family circle to encourage me and cheer me up whenever I doubted myself. So I knew very well that I needed to find and “discover” this confidence within me in order to grow stronger, and I did so by recalling all and every accomplishment that I had taken for granted until now… and fuck, I had and “oh, shiiiiit” kinda moment that made me realise that my insecurities had only been fed to me. If I just focus on the facts, I can see how much of a fierce woman I truly am. Ok ok, I don’t wanna sound cocky now. But yeah, I find myself proud of how far I’ve come and man, I’ve done this all by myself?! Seriously, how badass is that?! Fuck you, BPD!

Oh shit, I also forgot to mention the fact that I am now fearless?! Again, another no brainer. People who suffer from mental illness, become fearless at some point along their road to recovery. Let’s take depression for example. Depression literally made me afraid of feeling alive. Every single time something positive happened to me when I was depressed (in the past) made me scared ‘cause I didn’t want to hold on to that glimmer of hope. I didn’t want to believe good things were meant to happen to me. Oh boy, what a broken spirit can do to us...  but hey. At some point last week, I realised that I’ve lost all fear of failing, losing, or even dying. Depression made me think about death as a way out for so long that now that it’s no longer an option and I’m finally living, I don’t think there can be anything scarier nor painful than dealing with my demons on a daily basis. ‘Cause you know what, dear stranger? Living truly is scarier than dying...

Anyways… it’s crazy to think how much a person can get affected by just one traumatic event, in my case five or more, damn. I’m just a chick who went through a lot of shitty things and had no one to talk to and when the pain become too strong, I did the one thing I could think of: numb the pain in every possible way I could, without a care about my well-being. I could’ve easily died many times before yet here I am, still standing strong. Jesus, take a shot every time you read the word “strong”. So yeah, if I’m still here on this earth, then there must be a reason for it, right? Let’s find out together, dear stranger. Shall we? ‘Til next time.

     Never give up, always fight.

Love,

Evelyn