Fresh Air

Last year was difficult for me, personally, on many levels. I discovered an old friend passed away and suffered, as a result, a depressive episode lasting months. I struggled with personal identity and personal happiness. I lost a job and some dear friends (not by death, but other things); I then found the most amazing job I've ever held.

I stopped writing for a while.

I then wrote a book (65,000 words, written, edited, and sent to beta readers) in exactly a month. I'm still floored.

The voices of my characters vanished during that time. Not the characters from the new book, but the ones from my life-long series. They just... went away. I became lonelier than I've ever been. I never want them to leave me again.

I stopped writing... again.

I seriously questioned my art (for the millionth time).

My best friend's life fell apart, and all I wanted to do was pull her close and tell her the world is not as hateful as it seems. I'm beyond lucky she's in my life. She helped me turn everything around. She helped me see the light and breathe anew.

Then, I clicked back into action. I started focusing on things important to me: my marriage, my art, my BFF, myself. These aren't listed in order of importance. They're all important to me. All equally part of my life--the best parts of my life.

A few days ago, I drew something (and someone) I love dearly for the first time in months. I drew Yaranda Aneys (nee Yassla) from The Soulbound Curse and The Soulless King: Part One.

Nothing fancy. A sketch. A doodle. A moment to reflect on last year--on what I want and why. On why life isn't futile and why things are worth doing. Why this story--and my other--is worth writing.

Yaranda is one of those characters who digs into people. She digs in and won't let go. In a word, she's tenacious. She's passionate. She's pissed off, and she has every reason to be. Her rage helped propel me forward, and I cannot be more thankful. Hers is not a story of love and life. Hers is a story of loss and survival, of struggling to maintain what little she has. In the past, I connected with her least of my characters (and I have a lot of them), but when my heart was heaviest, when my soul darkest, when the world lost its luster, she was the one who took me by the heart and squeezed.

"Do you like to live?"

"Most days."

"Then do something worth living for; or else, your flesh is a waste of life. A waste of generations and time. Do something, or forget us all and become mindless--become nothing."

She went quiet after that, but I could feel her seething at the back of my mind, and with her my other characters: Marik, Clae, Eti, Janine... countless, countless others whose lives will be lost if I do not keep going.

So tonight, I stepped back and colored a little. This is a work in progress; I still have a long way to go, but at last, I feel fresh. I feel like things will be okay again. And I can't wait to wake up early tomorrow and really dig into my projects. I can't wait to launch back to Inrugia and her peoples. I can't wait to try something new and exciting and continue this story.

I can't wait.

One day at a time. I'll get there. This picture, this character, is a reminder that when life is terrible to us, we can make it through. We can survive. We can pull out of our darkest moments and breathe anew.

So I will. I will push forward. And this time, I will not stop.

The Crushing Truth of Hating Myself to the Core

Every morning, I wake up, and it's the same internal mantra, I hate you. You're terrible. Look at you. Not even worth breathing. Everything about you is scum. You're scum. Nothing would change if you weren't here. The world wouldn't miss you one bit. And that's not me thinking about someone else. That's me thinking about myself. Every morning, every day, and every night, this is what rolls through my mind on repeat. My only relief is when I'm either working or trying to distract myself with an on-going story inside of my head. I used my characters often as an escape from these words. Still, somehow, they come back. They always come back. And I always, always believe them.

Over the past few months, things have become progressively worse. My self-loathing has devolved to a point where I suffer in constant despair. I often find myself romanticizing how my friends wouldn't even notice me missing if I simply stopped talking to them, or if I simply vanished from social media. About how they despise me and how I'm an absolutely horrid person. How I'm just the worst to be around, and how much they hate me for everything I am--and everything I'm not.

It's a pretty crushing feeling to think to yourself repeatedly, Your friends don't even like you. No one likes you. You're a burden. And to know, somewhere deep inside, you believe every single word. Every one. There's a point where it goes beyond me just believing those words, too. There was a point where those words become so ingrained that they're just about burned into my bones. That's how much I believe that little voice. I feel it, deep inside of me, that I'm worthless.

I hit that point about eight years ago. Now, the burns are more like giant gouges, dug so deep that my marrow leaks out from the wounds. No matter how much I try to plaster those gouges shut, they simply crack open again, breaking wider and longer than before.

The more I think about what's going on inside of my head, this tremendous self-loathing, this hatred for everything I am, everything I've done in my life, that I can't help wondering, Am I alone? I doubt it. Self-hatred isn't uncommon. It should be, but it isn't. I bet I throw a virtual stone and at least ten of my Facebook friends have the same self-hatred and deep-down despair that cripples you to the core. That's why I'm writing this. Because, you, my friends, aren't alone, and yes, someone would miss you. I would miss you; I would miss you terribly and deeply and without any way to describe in words the sorrow I'd feel at your loss.

Don't let the self-loathing win. Don't listen to that voice inside of your head, no matter how convincing it is. Please--just remind yourself that you would be passionately missed. That's what keeps me going. I have to remind myself how selfish of me it is to hate myself so much when so many people have put such enormous love into my life. When so many people have shown me their devotion and love for me... and it helps to know that I am loved. Even when the whispers are darkest and the most tempting, I try so hard to remind myself of that outpouring of love.

Because if I don't remember it, if the whispers start telling me that all of that love isn't real and, worse, if I start to believe them... I'm not sure what will happen.

For now, I'm fighting. Please, fight with me.

Facing the Days After

I've thrown myself completely into my work, from revising Frendyl Krune and the Nightmare in the North to working as hard as I can on The Soulless King: Part One. My day-job, too, has consumed me, whether for better or worse. Some days, my skin aches. It's a weird feeling.

I'm still compiling my feelings, my thoughts, and trying to work through the complex surge I've been experiencing over the past week. Sometimes, I'm okay. I can function pretty well and go about my day without any problems. Others, I just stop and start crying because of something stupid. I mean, god, someone texted me about something silly, like a video game, and I just fell apart. Or when my friend who works at a clinic told me about some patients, I cried, but I was also a little glad, because it gave me a little more insight into how things may have been during those impossible years. A battle fought, a struggle so impossible, I'll never be able to understand it.

Still, from what I've learned, from what I've heard, I'm so, so proud of him for what he tried to do. So incredibly floored by how Shannon did his best to come back from the brink. It's an impossible fight, and for a while, it sounds like he was winning. That's truly just downright amazing.

I'm still trying to figure this out. I want to keep focused and keep strong, but it's hard, because I keep thinking about what may have led him down this path. It's frustrating, too, because I really didn't know him the last few years. All of my memories of him are from when we were kids. To me, he was this dorky, funny kid who lit up my life when things got kind of dark. He was just... fun. Like, we were both stupid and we both did stupid things (dares galore at daycare; man, triple-dog-dares ran that daycare). But I get flashes of what he may have been like as he grew older, and it just gets harder. It gets harder, because I think we'd still have had a ton in common.

Death is frustrating and enraging and breaks my soul again and again, because I just think of how close I was to finally reconnecting with him after so many years of searching. Years of thinking I was crazy, because I had no evidence Shannon or his sister even existed. I honestly thought for a while that I made them up as imaginary friends. It wouldn't have been the first time.

Knowing he was real king of makes it harder. There are things I want to show him. Stupid things I hope he would have liked. Game Grumps, for example, or my husband. I honestly think that Shannon would have really liked Micahl. Oh, and my brothers? Forget about it! Man, those three would've been perfect friends, haha. The chaos they could have reaped... I just laugh thinking about it. And then...

Just... ugh. A sourness has crept into my soul. Not bitterness. I'm not bitter, but I feel... sour, like everything just isn't as sweet right now. I think that'll pass in time. Death takes time. Mourning takes time. I keep trying to force myself to focus on other things. On happy things. But the other day, I was talking with a friend about some of the things going on in her life, and they're pretty heavy. She explained how she was trying to force herself to be happy, because happiness comes from the inside (and she's right, of course; my depression and anxiety are much better on days that I make myself be happy and focus on only the good things in my life). I could tell, though, that she was really struggling with her happiness, so I told her that it's all right--healthy, in fact--to be upset, to mourn the bad things going on around her. I explained that her feelings are valid, and that she's allowed to be upset and angry and cry. It's how you start healing, after all.

I think I need to take my own advice. Let myself mourn instead of forcing myself to just shut everything down. Time will heal this. I've reconnected with two amazing people, and that's a positive note. One I can be more than satisfied with. I've learned a lot about myself and a little about my past. But for the next few days (see: my weekend), I'll be letting myself mourn a little more deeply so my heart and soul can begin to heal.

There are other things going on in my life. I've had to relinquish my D&D session time. Mostly because of work and time constraints, but there are other more personal reasons for needing to walk away. I'll miss playing, but I know in my heart I'm doing the right thing for me right now. Sometimes it's all you can do.

For now, I'll be writing, mourning, and spending time with my memories. Because right now, that's really all I can focus on. Thank you, all, for the love and support over the past week. Truly, your support means the world to me. Just remember to tell the people you love and care for how much they mean to you.