#its just the weight of guilting myself into having to be a one-trick-pony isn't really there anymore

[alilaro]

small personal update

.

taking a break from being so intensely involved with volturi fandom has been a really good thing for me I think.

I still think about and draw them daily—to me they are like my own characters now, with long much I have changed them, and how much it has changed me since being a preteen.

But I think I got so obsessed with posting, being liked, and being a weird persona of myself that I just burnt myself out. Especially from 2017—2019, I was just a mess, and addicted to the praise and attention I got from posting non-stop, and making content almost purely to please others (which I now realize was a way of escaping the nightmare that was my previously incredibly abusive household, and the years of neglect that came with it.)

And now, since 2022 I've been on a hiatus, and I think that was the right decision for me.

its been really hard in some ways. After escaping my toxic father, the shock and grief of it all was so so much for me to handle. All those years, my entire life, locked in a room, guilted and fear-mongered into complete and never-ending isolation; to finally be free from that was both liberating but the hardest thing I've ever done, and it crushed me, it drained everything from me, including my one tether: my art.

i struggled with it for a while, and still do. i still only draw the bare minimum, but when I draw now its for me. there's no more 'cant draw That because its Cringe'. theres no constant, nagging guilt from not posting something in over a month. i don't have to make excuses, or grovel manically for imagined people to forgive me—as if not posting is some cardinal sin.

i just draw for fun, because I feel like it. because it makes me happy. :-)