CW for depression, anxiety, suicide, medical stuff, trauma

Some of you may have heard that things have been a little rough for me lately, and if not, with how long it's been since the last journal, you may have simply wondered where or how I've been. So, I decided to write this to share a bit of my life and hopefully give you all some insight.

I don’t think any amount of explanation could properly express everything that has happened in my life in recent years or my feelings about it all, but this journal isn’t supposed to be a full-life summary or justification of my feelings; it’s just an update, with some background for context. When I began writing this, I couldn’t decide how much detail was worth going into, so I figured I’d just get started and see what happened. Ultimately, I wound up sharing more than I expected, though please understand that there were still details I chose to keep private. Now, hang on tight, because it gets a little rambly (sorry).

---

About three years ago, I fell victim to insurance fraud, when a doctor performed a procedure on me that I did not need, which caused problems for me greater than the one they claimed to have fixed. When I went to see another doctor to have these new problems fixed, this next doctor took it upon themselves to perform yet another unnecessary procedure, without my informed consent, in the name of resolving my issue, and what they did was so much more drastic and severe that it took what I hoped would be my solution and turned it into a physical and emotional trauma—and "trauma" is not a word I use lightly. People then blamed me for what I "let" happen, told me I was wrong about my own body, and even tried to convince me that it was all in my head. The level of victim-blaming and complete lack of sympathy and understanding were incredible. I have seen more doctors since then, none of whom have had any solution or treatment for what happened.

I have struggled with severe depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation and intent for most of my life, but one way or another I kept managing to persevere and hold out hope that maybe I’d figure something out. Finally, by 2018, it seemed as though I was set up for the brightest and most productive year of my life. Even with depression still kicking my ass, for the first time ever I had long-term goals and plans to achieve those goals, and I felt motivated and hopeful enough to drag my miserable ass out of bed and make myself do what I needed to do. Instead, all of that aspiration blew up in my face and 2018 became the worst year of my life. None of the intended progress was able to happen as a result of the trauma and I felt worse than ever before, and even now I still find myself suppressing panic attacks when I so much as see the year written in text (this has not been an easy paragraph to write). Then 2019 became "2018-part-2," and 2020 was, well, 2020.

Mind you, this was not the first thing to go wrong with my body—far from it—and arguably it may not have even been the most severe! It was, however, the first to come bundled with an emotional trauma. Overnight, my life turned into what felt like an exercise in futility as I became tasked with desperately searching for ways to even cope with my new reality—let alone the depression and anxiety that were still present and which had become exponentially worse as a result—but the more I continued to try, the more ways I found to fail, putting me in a progressively more hopeless situation every time. If I couldn’t be happy pre-trama, what hope could I possibly have post-trauma, after all. There hasn't been a single day that has passed for the last nearly-three years that I haven't thought about what happened and been affected by it in everything I do. It has strained my relationships with friends and family, contributed to my various other physical issues, and taken my depression and anxiety to new depths.

Now, nearly three years later, as I’ve still been failing miserably on a daily basis to cope with something that happened nearly three years ago, on top of the issues from even earlier that I couldn’t deal with, a whole new issue has come up. As it turns out, I’ve been pretty stressed these past few years. Go figure! And stress leads to simple stress-habits, including unconscious ones like grinding your teeth in your sleep. It happens to a lot of people, and it’s usually not a big deal and is easily dealt with. Welp, not for me! As it would so happen, my grinding over the past couple of years has been so severe that I have nearly destroyed my jaw, giving it a degree of wear roughly equivalent to what “regular grinding” would cause in over 40 years in the span of fewer than 3.

Talking is uncomfortable (and has been for a while, but now I know why) and I am on a diet of strictly soft foods until further notice (but at least I can still eat solids). I will be undergoing physical therapy for this issue over the course of the next year and a half (or more depending on how it goes) and will need to wear appliances for the rest of my life to hopefully strengthen and support what remains of my jaw enough to last in a serviceable fashion. This is now the latest in a long-running series of issues, all of which have made life progressively more difficult, in addition to its own ties (and triggers) to the initial trauma. It is yet another change I will have to learn to live with that further reduces my quality of life, and the prospect of things ever going “back to normal” is one I’ve already long since had to abandon.

Since 2018, I have been trying to move past the trauma and not let it control my life, but when you hold a physical reminder as part of your body, doing so is not so simple, and I was not succeeding. It makes matters worse to see that, even after so much time, the trauma from three years ago can still cause brand new issues in the present. So, when I was already feeling hopeless and unable to cope, I now have something else, something permanent, to make life worse forever. It does not help paint the most optimistic outlook for my future, and frankly, I don’t know what to do.

Art has felt like it’s been going in reverse for a while now. I would love to take commissions (and could certainly use the money for my new medical costs), but I may require more time to get myself back into “commission shape,” if I am even able to get there. I would also love to stream video games more just to hang out and have fun (just started Sekiro and still have to beat 13 Sentinels, after all!), but I need to be wary of how much talking and mouth movement I do, and the energy to put myself in front of people and be conversational may simply not be there most nights.

Even so, I will be trying to do more streaming and drawing to keep myself active during a time when the temptation to give up is stronger than ever, though I apologize in advance if my energy levels and mood are below what I have projected up until now. I won’t go so far as to say it was all fake, merely that I don't have the energy or will to maintain my usual public face for the time being.

I feel very defeated, and I don’t have much faith that I’ll make it over this hurdle when I was already still caught on the last one (or five). I am trying, and so far in my life I have never stopped trying. I can’t promise I’ll always be able to keep trying, but for now at least, I am trying in the greatest capacity I am able, even if that capacity may be severely diminished.