It's so easy to run into something blinded by your hopes, don't you think? When I started this journal alongside my site's revamp, it was due to a myriad of reasons that I wanted to mull on due to a couple really, really tough months. You'll notice I've yet to really make entries that aren't related to personal development, right? I only just noticed it myself, though... ugh. Despite making an entire section of the new website shoehorned into being "art focused" - there's very little there that I actually recall, or have enjoyed the process of making. I look at what is supposed to be a gallery of my work that reflects myself, and all I see is vapid, fake, and most specifically - completely nonrepresentational work, in a way I thoroughly do not enjoy. I know it sounds cold, not to mention contradictory; if there were truly no enjoyment in focusing on art, why the hell are you writing this? Why did you even start to make any of that? It's a long story.

Let's just get to the point. I think that the version of my self I'm surrounded by, both physically and digitally, finally went off and died way back in 2023 when this all started. Following the previous year of actual hell, I had a realization that fundamentally broke me in some way... When even was that? January? February? (... Oh, hey, that's when this site was first made, huh? Oh.) Without revealing the specific details: in part, it involved family, their knowledge and involvement in my lifelong trauma history, and their behavior towards it currently. At that same time, every support I had was crumbling out from beneath me; for a multitude of reasons. Internal, external... I myself am not exempt from those reasons. I made a lot of stupid decisions, and hurt a lot of people. Acted stubbornly, callously, and most of all - desperately. At my most vulnerable, I got hurt a lot too. This constant cycle of continually picking those same wounds, reopening scabs, finding infection, pretending not to notice. That same flame has been slowly dying down and flaring back up since then. I was in therapy for all of this nonsense until the tail-end of 2023... interacting with therapy as someone with a dissociative disorder is hard, though. I found out a few months later I had supposedly stopped going to therapy altogether, for reasons that I couldn't even begin to untangle or fathom. (In truth, I still don't completely know.) Now all I have is this same outlet, this same place - the one thing that I have to grasp on to when art fails me... which it does, often.

All of this in part is what's caused art to become such a sore spot for me; though the two issues (ongoing trauma and artistic expression) are seemingly intertwined, anyways. Art has become my sole monetary source due to disability, and something I've become forced to rely upon to survive. Anyone else surviving off of freelance commissions can tell you how quickly it can drain the enjoyment from the art process! Judging by my archives, it seems that I've been doing mostly commission based artwork near exclusively since I lost my first job in 2023 due to physical disability. Couple that with the above problem, and you reach a sizable roadblock in being able to actually "express yourself" artistically. I think most people would find those circumstances suffocating, but I find that it's ramped up a notch due to being so dissociative. This has happened to me before during a time of heavy trauma processing, too... It caused me to back away from this place in a similar way. When I started to "revamp" this website (a process which started planning stages about a year before it went into effect), it was due to that large, looming yet invisible disconnect I felt between my self prior to these events and the one after. I had only just began to investigate those feelings then, earlier this year. Ironically, (and despite writing about it two separate times now), I'd yet to fully process just what that "disconnect" was. I still don't think I know, even through all this writing. Dissociation is a hell of a drug! I feel very strongly about not letting this happen again. Please don't let me let this happen again! (It inevitably will, and we'll get by anyways. Hopefully.)

Irregardless... I've just sat here and stewed in it. This all just feels irreconcilable. Art, survival, escape, contentment – these things all seem irreconcilable to me in their own ways. In the depths of my thought on this feeling, and without revealing specifics of myself; it boiled down to a point of: "When was the last time I felt like myself?" I don't think I have an answer to that. Not one that feels satisfactory, nor one that I understand. Without safety, you can't afford leisure... without leisure, you can't stop to look at yourself. If you're constantly worrying about survival, how are you supposed to do anything besides run on instinct? How do you stop and take a breath? When you're carrying so much weight, living with the people that caused it, and always having to be on defense? You just don't. Build those walls up further and further until all you know is that you're doing something, for some reason - you have to, or you'll die! ... Yeah, it's dramatic, but it's how art feels for me now; and that depresses me. I still feel some type of excitement deep in the depths of my heart, the same I felt as a kit – but it's far away, inaccessible even to those meant to "feel" those things. I guess it's that I enjoy the idea of creating artwork in the way I did when it was fun... but I can't access that anymore, I can't find it. No... more accurately, those parts that feel those things aren't able to comfortably exist. This is why I struggle to find a solution, because when telling people something like: "I struggle to draw lately", the natural first thought is to say something related to art block. It goes so much deeper than "art block", though – UGH, God, I'm so tired of trying to figure out solutions to "art block". I could do all the studies in the world, all the different mediums, brushes, different devices, environments - anything - the outcome is always the same! It doesn't matter how many times you try to break the block, time is going to keep passing! What happens when the energy is there, when you try and you try and you try - yet your body and brain lose the cognitive ability to even PROCESS what you're trying to do? What do you mean most people don't do that!? Then, what if your problem is something else!?

What are you supposed to DO if the problem is YOU?

... I don't know. If you managed to get this far, thanks for reading. I do genuinely feel beyond grateful for what I've been able to do, and that people are at all interested in what I post. The support I have gotten over the past little while here has, without a doubt, both saved and completely transformed my life from what it was just a few months ago... I don't want this to seem like empty platitudes to cap off something so cynical. Here are a couple of things that have happened over the past month or two that have been a direct consequence of everyone's support:

• Not only have I gotten my license, I also was able to get A SHITTY LITTLE CAR!!! I cannot even begin to express how HUGE of a thing this is for me. Even if it's a cheap $2k thing with many problems, I've never been more grateful. For the first time in my life, I can experience some degree of "freedom" or "independence" that the hurt parts of my self have been yearning for for years. Seriously, thank you!
• I also met my goal that required having a car, getting a job! It's bittersweet because physical disability caused me to lose it very quickly after, but I'm still proud of myself for even reaching that point. With how much I had unprocessed, it was inevitable I'd crash. I hopefully have something else lined up soon that requires less physical work (but I'm keeping my hopes tepid...).
• Most importantly, this allows me to get space from my family, something that is heavily impeding my mental progress. Thank you for helping me avoid a much worse scenario, even if things are still hard right now.
• There are probably some more things, but I'll probably remember to check back later... probably...

Full disclosure, my edible hit while writing this journal entry, so I'm going to ride the spiral and try to get some work done. I think I need to start letting other parts of myself have their space to exist. I need to learn to relax. I think I'm going to have to let myself become a wiki/forum user like I've meant to be since forever. I want to remember what personal websites are supposed to be... !!!

... Okay, enough of that. Should I put comments on the bottom of these? Would anyone like something like that? Leave a comment on the shoutbox if so. (It's possible that if I do so, the ability to add comments on previous entries will be reached, too.)