#oh look the pmdd is hitting again welp

[johannas-motivational-insults]

Fandom is supposed to be fun but at this point it’s mostly just scary. What if I accidentally put something in one of my fics that offends someone and they send a hit squad after me to sort through everything they can to find all the ways in which I am problematic and release a manifesto declaring I am a terrible horrible person not to be associated with? Then I lose my social circle and one of my main sources of joy and a key creative outlet that has been valuable as a therapy, because if I kept writing the hate would keep rolling in and I am only human. Doesn’t help that a big chunk of my PTSD is tied up in bullying and ostracism and deep-rooted feelings of shame in the first place. So yeah I want to keep creating but it’s starting to feel like Russian Roulette or swimming in shark-infested waters and every time I see a fandom drama erupt it makes me shrink further and further inside myself because these are people I know and some of them are good people and as terrible as I feel for them and how I want to combat injustice all I can think is “am I next?!? Do I need to wipe my whole blog and orphan all my fics so I’m squeaky clean and there’s no chance for something to be taken out of context or for past remarks I no longer agree with to bite me in the ass? Do I need to silence myself before someone else can do it for me??”

...I wish I was even 1% exaggerating. This shit is terrifying and it’s been causing me tons of stress and anxiety lately. When you were raised to believe you were evil by nature and your peers treated you like you were some disgusting monster it’s easy to believe that you are in fact an evil monster and it’s only a matter of time before you’re found out. I used to want to be an influential person in fandom so I could counteract bad takes and so somebody would finally care about what I have to say. Now I just want to shrink into the shadows and let my inner demons eat me alive, safe from the scrutiny of the spotlight.