Therapeutic Post - Depression, Vulnerability, and Strength: A Stream-of-Consciousness Of Mental Unwellness and the Determination to Get Better (Patreon)

So, I'm not usually one for sharing personal things online, especially in open forums like this. It's a pride thing - I don't want people feeling sorry for me, or taking pity on me. But at the same time, I know that just bottling feelings up is an extremely unhealthy thing to do. Hence, why I am making this post.

That being said, the reason why I am making it here on Patreon is because I can restrict it, so it isn't wholly public. I know there are people out there who would love nothing more than to have something like this to bully and deride me with. Under normal circumstances, I'd be willing to take the risk and roll with the punches, but right now I just don't have the emotional fortitude to put up with that.

With that being said:

I'm sure this won't come to a surprise for a lot of you, but I have been coping with depression for quite a few years now. It's not a clinical diagnosis, and honestly I don't care if it's not "clinical" depression - all I know is that I go through large swaths of time hating and doubting myself and just sitting paralyzed with conflicting thoughts of "you're a worthless sack of shit for not doing anything, be productive and do something" and "you're a worthless sack of shit because you can't do anything, so don't even try to be productive."

I'm generally pretty decent on a day-to-day basis - in reality, I am genuinely happy for most of the day, most days - but I've been acutely aware that I've been consistently sliding worse and worse these past few months, as far as my overall mood and self-esteem goes, and it sort of all came to a head over the past few days, and it's starting to actively affect my thoughts now.

To keep a long story short: while working on my Rebecca project, I bruised my ego by failing spectacularly at making an oral animation. I love oral sex, and so it really hurt when I failed so utterly and completely. To lick my wounds, I decided to rebuild Miranda - but that, too, ended in failure, with everyone I asked for critique on agreeing that it "looked weird" and "wasn't right." Ego actively bleeding, I elected to work on a face-sitting flashback for Blue Star, between Liara and Femshep. Like the two endeavors before, that, too ended in failure - another fatal blow, because I love face-sitting even moreso than oral sex.

So with 3 failures in a row, my ego is exposed to the air, and it's throbbing with every breath. And so here I am, baring my heart to you all.

I have a lot of reasons for making my art. I do genuinely love what I do, and I do genuinely have passion for writing and making my projects. But the cold, hard truth of the matter is that there really is one reason I make my art above all else:

I make my art to ride the high of creation and escape from underneath the crushing weight of my depression.

For the past few months, I've been chasing the dragon, unsuccessfully. Blue Star's extended production time has been wearing me down, and the months since my last video release have been eating away at me. So I've been pursuing side-projects, trying to make something that I can release, to calm my anxiety and so I can focus.

But for as many reasons real as imagined, these side-projects haven't been completed.

I hate to throw her under the bus like this, and I can't share details because it's a very personal matter and not my place to discuss, but I know that a lot of my stress is coming from InsideIncognita. We are extremely close, and she's been having issues these past few months, which has been in turn stressing me in empathy. Additionally, though, her issues are inhibiting her voice projects.

I have that BAS Liz project that has been done for at least a month now, and it's just sitting, waiting for Incognita to be able to voice it. And Incognita voices most of my favorite characters: Elizabeth, Liara, Samus, Moxxi, and Nyotengu.

Without Incognita, I can't do any projects with any of these characters, and that stresses me more, on top of the stress I'm already experiencing as she deals with her issues.

All of this comes together to throw me into a vicious, violent circle: I'm not producing anything at a decent rate, which makes me want to make something; but I can't make the things I want to make, because Incognita is currently incapacitated and so locking away my favorite characters to work with, meaning I'm not producing anything at a decent rate.

I've tried coming up with projects with other characters, but I keep running into one of four problems:

1.) The ideas I come up with are too big, and so they fall into the same pit as Blue Star: they take too long to produce, and so I fall back into the circle.

2.) The characters the ideas involve, I don't have voices for, and I am too deep in this pit to have the emotional fortitude to do a casting call, let alone have the emotional fortitude to stand up to criticisms about casting new voices while still working on Blue Star.

3.) The characters the ideas involve, I don't have models for that I am happy with. This is where building Miranda came in, because the existing Miranda is on DazV1, which is a model I am not happy with, due to (among other problems) how the ass deforms horribly, and I am very much an ass-oriented person. And right now, I am just too far gone to have the emotional fortitude to build the models, because anxiety tells me that I know it's pointless anyways.

4.) I just don't really like the characters. As pretty as the Dead or Alive girls are, I honestly don't really like them. I like to look at them, but I don't really have interest in doing anything with them.

All four of these issues feed into this depressive cycle, sending me further and further down this path of feeling increasingly despondent. I feel like a failure, incapable of achieving anything, incapable of making anything, and that self-loathing just paralyzes me. But the worst part of it all is I just feel alone, with no one to help me learn to love myself again.

I don't think I really have anything else to say right now. I just wanted you all to have the chance to learn what's going on with me, and to let you all know that I'm not doing well right now.

Again, I don't want people to feel bad for me, and I don't want pity. I don't expect you all to do anything with this information, other than simply understand.

And, to be totally honest, I'm not even really writing this for you. I'm writing this for me. Writing my thoughts down, and committing them to a permanent record, is a coping mechanism. I am resisting the urges to just delete all of this text and not make the post, and let me tell you, those urges are powerful and frequent.

But anyone can bottle up their emotions and play it tough. It takes a strong man to cry. And I am proving to myself that I am strong. Because I need to be strong, if I am going to get through this. And I have been strong, and I have been getting through this, for the past 5+ years of my life.

And I'll be damned if I give up and quit now. I've invested too many hours and too many tears to give up now.

This has become a stream of consciousness, now, but that's also a coping mechanism. And honestly, just writing all this out - especially that bit about strength - has already made me feel a lot better. I think I am going to work on finishing the new DazV4 Jack, drafting out an idea, and then emailing Milly about putting together a guttermouth short with Jack.

And as a final push of my strength, I am still going to commit this post, for all of you to see.

I appreciate you all reading this, and I am truly grateful for your understanding. More than any amount of money you may pledge to me, it is your emotional support that I am the most grateful for. Your money may help support my body, but your love is what supports my soul.