this journal contains mention of death, substance use, and intense emotions.

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this winter, many things happened.

my family had christmas, and throughout winter break, my dog progressively worsened in condition and we decided to euthanize him so he would not be suffering through the end of meningitis and cerebral death. he was a young soul, and full of energy, and much more than we could ever do justice to. after we put him down and said goodbye, the next day was christmas eve. that weekend culminated in stressful love, with my two grandmas getting married finally after being in love for over 20 years. needless to say, christmas day we all sat and took deep breaths and wanted nothing more but to sink into our couches and not talk to very many people. maybe read a book.

but back into classes I went and back into work we all dived. my courses were good, but there was a lot of self-learning going on that had nothing to do with the subject matter. planning, communication, timing and schedule issues were what sidelined me, as well as becoming aware of my planning, attention span, actions and wants. learning more personal patterns of behavior, my own schema for different situations, and how i deal with myself. for the first couple weeks i spent most of my time high and buzzed, trying to ease back into paying so much attention to scholastic endeavors, and taking on so much mental capacity at once. it was a sort of lock chamber back into the world. i was scared for a little bit that it would become habitual, but it has not.

last month was awful. january we had some nice snow and some stress but most of it was the usual winter feelings. february was hard. so hard. i met and reconnected to people, i met a new good friend and went through the same cycle of fast friend infatuation that i'm always very scared of (meet, connect, establish mutual interest, continue to discover how cool a person is, become infatuated and fall in love with some part of them, find out you need to respect them as their own human being and your rose-tinted glasses are one-sided and projecting and that's not cool, re-establish friendship as a normal relationship without those feelings), i recognized this cycle finally in its complete entity after a good handful of disastrous attempts. i also met some weird people, and i can't remember between january and february if i had the rug pulled out on me about another person (that should be some common knowledge, but if it is not i will not talk about it here, find me elsewhere), and felt like a large part of my life was suddenly poisoned.

and then, valentines week and weekend. i had been experiencing newfound anxiety to the point of mild panic attack (which was very very very new to me and upset me a lot just as the fact that it happened), calmed down enough to face gf on the weekend she'd be coming down, then it sort of just... rolled into one disaster after another. parents came down too to have dinner with us, a double date i was happy to oblige. both gf and parents arrived hours early, taking me off guard and tipping me back into panic and anxiously overwhelmed emotion so much i had to ask them to leave for an hour before coming back. on the drive to restaurant, parents receive hysteric phone call from grandma that grandpa had had something happen to him and he was bleeding. the whole evening went from bad to worse, as we chaotically arranged our reservation, parents going in and out to check the phone and updates, calling family members from all over to convene, leaving back to Seattle before they could eat their food. packing up my parents food and telling them it will be okay, as i sit with my half-finished fish with my gf and sending them off with a smile was a prediction of exactly the opposite. over the course of the weekend, his condition worsened and he passed on monday morning (it could have been sunday, those days are pressing so close to each other in my memory). gf stays the entire weekend and following week as i get my mental and scholastic ducks in order to go back up to Seattle the following weekend.

for the next while i am a rattled, unfeeling robot with confused and upset thoughts that can't quite make their way to my heart. i talk about it with some people, with others i stay away and keep my troubles out of their life. whether it was a good decision, or a dumb one, i have no idea. this was the third thing of huge impact to happen in my life in such a short time. i felt (and still sort of do) feel rattled. shaken and deeply upset. but my foundations are still solid, and my last inch is still intact. even after MacPhaerson passed due to catching Ick while i was gone in Vancouver, it is just one more thing life has. finding the positive is so so difficult, but often we make the positive, and forget that we have the power to do that for ourselves.

speaking of Vancouver, VF was fantastic. the worst things that happened was a friend getting food poisoning, my card getting declined after three transactions, and the dance getting canceled after a noise complaint. i got to see canadian friends, talk to very cool people, make some money off of my art, deliver the art, see smiles, make someone's day, and party my nuts off. and eat delicious food with deliciously good friends.

and coming back to more work was doable, up until the point i burnt out last weekend. at this point, my finals will be what they will be, and although i still have a bit of work and projects to turn in before them, at this point, i'm fucking glad to be alive and in this world learning all these goddamn things. i feel like i've cried more times this year than in the last five, i feel like i've lost and learned more in these last three months than i have in a long long time. i definitely haven't had moments like those i have had this past month as i have had since middle school, in the middle of that depression and anxiety.

but i have beautiful friends, creative and inspirational pieces of work (cartoons, games, stories, comics, music), and a good fucking pair of favorite pants. i'll be okay.

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tldr: the reason i haven't been uploading art

my tumblr and twitter have more art on them, as collections of everyday sketches and doodles mostly. i haven't had time for doing bigger pieces of art. hopefully this break will allow for that !