Hi, it’s been almost a month… “Orz

I fell behind. I got overwhelmed, tumbled under the wagon, got caught on the wheels and just… couldn’t get up when everything was finally over. Until now :’)
i apologize for the jumbled mess this post is probably going to be X_x;

A lot has happened!
I got married on June 2nd : ) ¹Reason #1 of why I was overwhelmed af.
It was a lovely small ceremony with 30 people in my mom’s house, I ate a lot of delicious cake and finger food, my family and friends were there, me and my husband looked beautiful and were extremely giddy and I was the happiest person in the world <3

Then I took a week off bc honeymoon staycation xD ²Gods, we’re so lazy, lol. Also no honeymoon trip bc it was raining everywhere, lol. We also haven;t decided what to do with the wedding registry money x’D And the stars aligned and my old partner and friend started talking again after a year of not doing so and we went back to having happy conversations; it was like a huge, sad weight was lifted from me!

But, even though everything was great, somehow I got used to the state of uselessness and when I wanted to get up again… I couldn’t.

Self sabotage and avoidance became the weapon of choice and I just barely could get out of bed. Funny enough, it was not depression, I didn’t and don’t feel sad or have dark thoughts or anything³And I was/am very much enjoying my maladaptive avoidance coping drug of choice, so no anhedonia. Hi pretty idol bois mobage and japanese translating/studying! , just…. endless frustration at myself while my body physically fights me doing anything, even getting out of bed ⁴I very much want to run away from everything. Even as I’m typing this I have the urge to close my laptop and drag myself to bed to stay there being a useless lump all day. I’m actually shaking a bit and my brain is screaming “YOU DID ENOUGH FOR TODAY ALREADY!!! ;O;”. In the end, mental and emotional exhaustion from the constant ups and downs make it harder to get up every time I fall… meaning I stay down longer and longer…

So, tired of being tired, I gathered willpower to reach out to my old therapist as I had decided in my short-term plan⁵More about that below. First step is dealing with my mental heath properly again, tho., and got an appointment.
I went yesterday.⁶Man, I missed my old therapist, she’s so sweet and nice and I love her. It was like seeing an old friend!

While I had planned to just focus on therapy and not meds⁷I took meds for 5 years for social anxiety. I no longer have impairing social anxiety and can cope on my own : ) After 5 years, the meds stopped functioning anyway…, she strongly referred me back to my old shrink, since she believes I’m gonna need maintenance meds while building proper coping mechanisms and habits, especially because my lows tend to be too low and my lack of energy and focus is becoming too much of an issue there may be some biological component to that stuff that may need meds to deal with it in the short term. Which makes sense, really.
She suggested my shrink may want to give me some mood stabilizers and maybe some ADHD meds to treat my crappy focus and motivation for the time being; she will get in touch with him shortly to get him up caught up ⁸He was the one who referred me to her in the first place a couple years ago, so they know each other and sometimes work together. and figure out a treatment plan. I got an appointment for next Saturday, or earlier if any slots free up before that (yay for his practice being withing walking distance from my apartment!) and I will go from there, one step at a time.
I can do this! >_</

So… that’s what’s up.
As for my short-ish term life plan, I planned it while I was overwhelmed and tired and panicking the week before the wedding:

First step is mental health treatment, because I can’t do this on my own anymore.
I tried, and it worked sometimes, but I’ve reached the point where I don’t want to keep struggling by myself.
Like I said in another post, it’s okay to be weak!

Second step is proper habits and reduce things that overwhelm me.
Like hiring somebody to help me with house chores ⁹house chores are the first casualty when my mental health declines.,  and renting a cowork desk space out of home so I leave my apartment once a day routinely to return home for lunch and whatever I decide to do in the afternoon.¹⁰I love my studio room at home, even with the window that makes me really hot in summer and really cold in winter, but I seriously need to get out and stop being holed up in my apartment all day.

Third step, after the two steps above are dealt with, would be to devote time to guilt-free activities during my free time (that I should have after establishing decent routines!), that hopefully will help me socialize and relax, that are NOT work related in any way, and also hopefully will take me out of the house!

Now I’ll go on with my day and hopefully cross a few minor things off my to-do list, while resisting the urge to go crawl back to bed and avoid the day away :’ )

Featured art for today is a Tenn I drew last week for both practice and my friend Koko, who has been reading me scream about pretty idol bois for the past couple weeks while I avoided life under a rock, and has actually passively helped me cope more than she knows :’ )¹¹Now let me use this space to be a gross fangirl and gush over my precious 12 idol sons that I never asked to have so many feels for.  *Inhales* SOGO AND GAKU AND RYUU AND RIKU AND MOMO AND MITSUKI AND TENN AND YUKI AND IORI AND TAMAKI AND YAMATO AND NAGI. And also Banri because BANRI. Okay, fangirling over. I’ll go listen to some TRIGGER now.

Today was a cloudy day.
That usually means a wasted day, and that’s exactly how it was.
It was really, *really* windy in the morning as well, which sent fall leaves flying everywhere and caused a few black-outs in the city.

I finished my Zinestiria piece and I’m pretty happy with how it turned out! It took me a bit of effort to scan it, and CMYK killed a couple colors¹²Stupid CMYK killed the top of my pretty indigo/dark blue sky *sob*, but I’m confident it will look pretty when printed in the zine :) Also the rest of the entries are looking *so good* so far, I can’t wait!

Besides that, I cleaned my laptop keyboard a bit (and broke the left Ctrl key when trying to take it out for cleaning underneath “Orz) and doodled a bit.

I’m trying to avoid the negatives on my daily posts as to not focus on them when looking back, since I tend to fixate when I’m in a dark mood and binge reading old and depressing journal entries is not unheard of.¹³Depressive mood: ‘Let’s go read all the bad things you’ve gone through and re-grieve! :D”. Yeah… no. While there is a lot to be learned about one’s shortcomings and failures, we are already predisposed to remember the bad instead of the good, so highlighting the good and talking a bit about whatever idea occupies my mind seems like a better idea when it comes to archival purposes.

I’m old.¹⁴compared to the people I hang online with lately, not in general!
I’m turning 35 this year.
Even though I may look and act 10 years younger, at the end of the day I have more experience and understanding of things than when I was 10 years younger.
I get to interact a lot with younger people than me lately because of fandom, and it’s… a funny experience. I relate a lot to them but I also feel the age gap often.
Sometimes it’s funny and endearing, sometimes it makes me shake my head and think ‘kids…’, and every now and then I go ‘I’m too old for this shit…’ and feel like an Adult(tm). Which is weird, since I’ve always been the baby, the immature one among my peers… I guess it stops counting when you start hanging out with people that are 7-10+ years younger than you, haha ^^;

The thing with being old is that you start seeing things in a more detached way, sometimes. Things tend to affect you less ¹⁵Unless you’re in a bad mood. Then everything affects you and you’re back to being an emo teen. and you hopefully become a bit more objective.
…That or my stoicism studies have been catching up and I’m actually applying what I’ve been learning for once! Which is good. being affected by everything around me is exhausting.

While I am less affected by things in general nowadays ¹⁶Only when doing well mentally, tho…, I’m still a very non confrontational person. I shy away from conflict and drama, don’t take hard stances in favor or against things or people because I’m mostly scared of people lashing out.
I am weak.
And that’s not ideal, but… I think, ultimately, it’s okay to be weak.
There’s always this expectation that you have to be strong, courageous,  have unshakeable beliefs, be abled, be ambitious, be a winner, be an adventurer and conquer the world and reach all the dreams and goals… But not all of us are made that way.
It’s okay to be weak. It’s okay to be flexible.
It’s okay to stay where you are if that makes you happy. It’s okay to not chase after conquering the world if that only makes you miserable.
It’s okay to leave the fight to others that are better suited for certain battles.
And it’s okay to be weak today to work towards being strong tomorrow, if that’s your thing too.

Not all of us are or want to be the Hero, some of us are content being NPCs.
Just don’t be a half-assed NPC, though; do your best at whatever it is you choose to and can do :)