#unfortunately the mental illnesses have also been kicking me and i've had no energy for weeks

[zephyruslights]

HIIIIIII EXPLODES INTO A MILLION PIECES UNABLE TO BE REPARED. YOUR OPRATCH ART. IT? IT KILLS ME ITS SO BEAUTIFUL I GENUINELY POURED TEARS LOOKING AT IT. THE PAINTING STYLE AND THE COLOR TONE AND THE TENDERNESS AND THE EVERYTHING. DIES

AKFJSH. THANK YOU. IT MEANS SO MUCH WHEN PEOPLE LIKE MY ART

im so abnormal about them and i love to inflict all the feelings in my head on everyone

[cisthehuman]

The Future of Streaming~

It's not a goodbye! It's a 'See You When I See You' type of deal.

Trigger Warnings: Family Tragedy, Self Harm, Suicidal Thoughts (while I don't go into great detail about these thing, they are mentioned)

To explain myself and how I've been feeling, we should talk about why I started streaming in the first place.

I've said it a few times on stream, and possibly on here in a post, but I started streaming a few months after my dad suddenly passed. At that time, I was thinking 'Oh shit, we really don't have long to live. I need to do stuff I've been wanting to do before I kick the bucket too!'. At the same time, I've withdrawn from my friends a bit at the time, and I wanted streaming to be a thing to show them I'm okay and hanging in there.

And not everyone will understand the pain and energy it takes to grieve. It's been three years now and it still sucks ass, but it was even worse during those first few months when the wounds were very fresh. I don't even remember those months now as it's blocked it out of my memory. On top of navigating this new normal without my father, I went to graduate school which required even more energy and time. And to make matters even more confusing I was beginning to experience my first symptoms of PCOS which made my mental and physical health even worse.

I'm unfortunately not a stranger to poor mental health. I've considered cutting my time on this planet short enough times to know that I have to take extreme care of myself to be strong enough to fight off these thoughts. The stress of taking up some of my father's responsibilities, dealing with loss, school (which then turned into work stress when I got employed), and the ups and downs of chronic illness made me very weak to find happiness and enjoy my hobbies.

Now, don't get me wrong--streaming positively affected me during this time. I was able to do some streams with my irl friends, meet new people, and experience new stories/games that I never considered playing. The highlights was playing Our Life. The small group that amassed during that time was very fun. It made me feel lighter and brighter! And in the future when the sequel comes out, you bet your bottom dollar I'll be streaming it!

Tangent aside, while streaming was fun and did give me something new to do, I became a bit too ambitious with it. That is all on me. I started trying to make this into my third job and the two that I have take up a lot of my time. I started to bite off a bit too much than I could chew. I wanted to make a big overarching story for my streams and make all of these cool things for it...and with my limited energy I usually missed my self imposed deadlines which would make me very upset and feel even worse for myself. On top of that my lovely (but fairly cheap) set up would sometimes make streaming impossible, which added unnecessary pressure. I would think the small viewership I had would forget me, I could never get this to take off, all of this was for nothing.

That was when I realized I lost sight of what I was doing with streaming. I forgot that my original goal was just to sit around and have fun, whether no one or several people showed up. It was something I wanted to do to just relax. Instead I turned it into something I avoided.

I needed to take a step back. I took a small vacation from my job and truly sat around and did nothing. It was the first time in the last three years that I just enjoyed being alive. It was a sobering experience for me as I realized that I also haven't fully processed all of my grief and traumas. Resting also helped me get more energy to feel more present with people I care about and be more mindful of what I was doing healthwise.

This brings us to now! Streaming is going on an indefinite hiatus. There may be times where I randomly have one, but I won't stick to a particular schedule. I need more time to myself to get to a place where I'm mentally and physically able to bring streaming in as a bigger piece of my life. I've been in this place mentally before, and instead of giving myself time, I ruined things for myself and wasn't the best person to other people. That's a scar I'll keep, but I'd like to be better this time around!

So yeah! If you made it through this half planned/half stream of consciousness, thank you! Like I said, it's not a I'm completely gone type of thing. I just need to rest properly. I like putting my whole self into things, and I just don't have enough 'me' to put into this sadly. But don't worry! I'll still pop up with things! I'll still make posts on here as well!

One day, CisLunar will be back and ready to roll!

[returntothewilderness]

A Continued Midrash on Tending to Grief Through Movement, Song, and a Look at Amazigh Rituals

Image of Imazighen in traditional dress and tattoos, holding a drum for a dance (image found on Google and is not my own).

Grief, like any emotion, is energy that demands to be tended to and deserves to be treated with gentleness, curiosity, and lots of love and patience. In contemporary western society, grief is given almost no time to exist. We lost over one million people to covid and haven't had so much as a national day of mourning. Lives have dramatically changed, mental illness is heavy for a lot of people, and grief is given no adequate time to be felt and processed. I will never forgive this capitalist & individualist world for robbing people of their human need to grieve deeply and to be cared for by a loving community.

Unfortunately, grief will not sit idle as you try to ignore it. Some of the best teachers of how to tend to grief are young babies and children. Overwhelmed with emotion and energy they don't understand, babies and toddlers do what feels intuitive: they scream, they cry, they thrash their arms about, they kick their little legs, they stomp and roar. We've been taught that big displays of emotion are inherently troubling things that need to be tamed; this isn't true. These big emotions, this big bout of energy, it needs to be moved and soothed out of the body. I've been working on feeling the emotions of grief, and then much like a child, exploring the different ways my body can move to honor and ease that tension. Where is the grief storing itself? Does it feel better to move my legs, is it bound to my chest and need arm movements? I've also learned that vocalizing has a very soothing effect on me when I'm deep in grief. One of my music projects includes creating a warm blanket of vocalizations and sounds that comfort me. Different pitches and movements of the tongue/mouth/breathe through the throat have different impacts on how I'm feeling. It reminds me of the Chassidic Jewish leader who said something along the lines of "there are gates in heaven that will only open to song".

Music and sounds and singing aren't inherently artistic expression for the sake art. Western culture has created this idea that song belongs in a separate category from everyday life. That we have to somehow be "good" at it, that dance, singing, and music making are meant to be of high caliber done by professionals. This is also wildly not true. I had a beautiful conversation with one of my friends who is Native about the use of singing to connect with nature. They told me about their friend who is learning her family's tribal language and singing to her plants in her native tongue. Think of the experiments done on how plants grow differently depending on the energy you bring to them. Inspired by this I have begun singing prayers in tones that feel healing to me to the plants I'm growing. Connecting to sound is our way of communicating not just with one another as humans, it's our way of communicating with our bodies, and with the natural world.

I come from an Amazigh family; the Imazighen are the indigenous peoples of North Africa. In learning more about the history as best as I can, I came across a couple of rituals that spoke deeply to me. One ritual is the grief wailing ritual that occurs shortly after someone close passes away. A group of women (usually) will get together and wail out loud. This is a beautifully cathartic ritual that both intends to honor the deceased by dedicating time to feeling the grief of the loss and tend to the body that needs to release this grief. The Imazighen also have dances that involve whipping hair around; I'm not sure the origins of this ritual or why it came to be, but it's very clear that making song/sound and movement was a core part of living. Not just something meant for professionals, to grieve and to love and communicate through movement and sound has always been a core part of the human experience.