The good news is, I'm feeling better than I have been.

I think I'm recovering from the severe bipolar week.
And I do mean literally bipolar week. When most people use that term they usually mean it as some form of joke or a descriptor of a rollercoaster week which is ups and downs.

But no, I mean quite literally, bipolar week, in that my bipolar disorder has been out of control. I started the week basically tossing 1k away through various purchases. A good deal was to charity; I can't really be upset. Some was to support a friend. Also not a bad thing. Yet when I was recently in a car crash, dealing with the financial expenses there and I had already spent on an impulse spending spree $400 of clothes...not great to spend more, even for a good cause.

And then the severe depression hit. A pain so severe it was physical. It wasn't thoughts. Thoughts I could counter.
When there's depressive thoughts, I can reason my way out of them.
When there's events going on in life triggering a bad mindset, I can address it.

When it's a feeling of intense overwhelming all-consuming sadness, all I could do was fight to keep my life.

And...I think I'm stabilizing, for both extremes, back to the more healthy middle.

​The bad news is, I'm still out of time. I work tomorrow. I work on the holiday on Monday. I don't have the time to do anything I should be doing.

I've not showered.
I've not brushed my teeth.
I've not changed my clothes.
I've only barely done mafia, torn, kongregate dailies, league/tft stuff, discord, and staying on top of emails.

But so much I need to do, I haven't.

I've a training due before the end of the month--haven't done it.
I've GOT to pursue getting the passport--haven't done it.
I've gotta check on my health insurance--haven't done it.

That's just the list of real life things which have deadlines that I can remember off the top of my head. There's more.

And I'm not really doing any of them.
I ran out of time.

So like.

I'm staying afloat, but if I don't keep in mind the things I haven't done which are important to get done, I'll collapse again.

I survived.

Now I gotta get back into doing things.
Heck, I've been gone from ComicFury for nearly a month now.
And I haven't done any of the writing I've wanted. (I've done some behind-the-scenes stuff, but barely any.)

​There's so much in life I want to live--I just need to live it.

If not blogging in three weeks wasn't a tipoff, let me make it official.
Physically, mentally, emotionally, I am in shambles right now.

My bipolar disorder's depression has been rearing its ugly head a lot as of late.

My chronic health issues have gotten much much worse as of late.

And then on top of that all, I was in a car crash on Saturday May 13th. And my car got totaled in the process, and I am the one liable for it, and it feels like everything which could go wrong, has.
I'm barely sleeping.
I'm unable to eat much despite knowing I should.
I'm still getting hungry, yet not getting enough food.
I'm not losing weight, though, so that's good, but the fact that I'm not likely means the stress is causing me to keep the weight as fat.
I'm not working out.
It's been weeks since I was on ComicFury.
I'm not staying up to date on discord at all. Literally every server I'm in, I haven't read in days upon days.

I know at one point, I had a thought of, "I've given up on life."

Because these issues build on each other, compounding one another.
My lack of good rest has ruined my freetime.
No free time, no time to get good mental health.
No good mental health, no good physical health.
No good physical health, no good rest.

I just have so much being wrong right now and what I have right is...

...That I'm not failing harder I guess.

I'm sorry I've been so silent.
I'm just...unable to...to exist, pretty much.

​Yet, having no choice but to...is quite the struggle.

Today marked my family doing family things during family night.
And by that I mean being extreme transphobes.

As a reminder; I am out as trans.
They know I am a girl.
They still were, very very very openly, being fully transphobic.

This week I ended up not taking care of myself. I did one, one, workout correct, but failed to do a workout for 3/4 days.

I've not been brushing my teeth.
I've not taken a shower or changed my clothes.
I've not gotten sleep.
I've not been blogging.
I've not been streaming.

I had the last person I would ever expect to be pluralphobic (genuinely were a huge part of me realizing I am trans, AND, a huge part of me realizing I am plural), invalidate the identity of one of our system mates.

Heck I've lost my voice and might be sick.

No self-care.
No work done on anything.

I haven't even played my weekly ranked games!
No games.
No blogs.
No writing.
​No art.
Nothing.

I'm just...

I don't know how to live.

Yesterday was rather productive, but I didn't have time to do literally everything I set out to do. I had to pick and choose near the end what to focus on, and it wasn't on blogging.

Today? Today's been a waste. I went to pick up my medication, and...
...And that was it, I legit did nothing else of note.

Unless you count spending more time on twitter engaging in conversation which doesn't actually convince anyone to do any good and blocking a small percentage of people of which there are countless more. (I could never block them all.) Which I consider to be a waste of time. I do it because I am mentally unwell. I am severely depressed, I go onto twitter when depressed. (Twitter doesn't make my depression worse but it likely is adding stress.)

Twitter is a useful tool for, if properly cultivating things, becoming informed. Once you figure out the signs of people spreading things which you can ignore and block, what's left is legit informative. I sometimes lack context in things, but most of the time, I can actually become educated. If not instantly, than with time. (I struggle with non-US issues, generally speaking, but I'm slowly learning.)

Still though. Not a good place to be. Really really not a good place to engage. Activism might be valuable, but my words aren't gonna do much of anything there. Those I talk to, I'm either preaching to the choir or preaching to bad faith actors with no intent to change their bigoted ways. In either case, I make little to no difference, so my time would just be better spent...

...Literally anywhere else.

I should be working on things.

Maybe on internally looking at our plurality (we were close to identifying another voice, because we got a name--Minerva--and knew she was active, but instead of finding her voice we let it go).
Definitely should've showered.
Probably should've napped properly.
I'm not taking care of myself across the board.

Picking up my meds was nice, but that's all I did, and it was because I have no choice but to.

​I have more notes to write for farn, and I've done none of them.
I haven't kept up on discord, either.

So like.

I should be doing more.

​I'm not doing well.

I have pain in my heart.

I just do.

Justification, whatever, doesn't matter.

It's there.

​It hurts.

I'm just...in pain.
Bipolar Disorder has struck and both halves are in full swing--badly.

In many ways, today was productive. I did nothing yesterday due to exhaustion. Today, I accomplished almost everything I set out to do. (Slacked a bit on hygiene, still haven't worked on my novel, but otherwise have done everything.)

So today is not me calling my lack of work a failure like the norm.
No, today was a success.

Mostly.

It's just that.

Well.

If you know what the date of this blog correlates to, it shouldn't be that hard to understand.

I've been spending a lot of time and energy defending my right to exist, defending against bigotry.
I'm exhausted emotionally. Drained. Dead. It's just...stress. Pain. Frustration. Exasperation.

I shouldn't need to justify my existence at every stage.
I should have people able to trust me.
I shouldn't have to need to explain. I shouldn't need to be proactive. I shouldn't need to fight. I shouldn't need to argue.

But I do. Because people don't understand how bad anti-trans sentiment is right now and how strong bigotry and hatred of all kind are growing from apathy. I am not the best advocate. I am not the best person to explain things. I am not the best person to debate. But I couldn't stay silent. I couldn't.

And I am now drained as a result. Mania.

But the real pain comes from the realization that, after getting that exhausted, I've done nothing good. Nothing productive came from my advocacy of my existence. I accomplished nothing. I stressed myself. I exhausted myself. And all I did was drive a wedge in a community I love and cherish.

Nothing else. It was a waste. It hurt someone who I didn't want to hurt. (And they weren't who I was arguing with.) I knew it would cause damage. I mean, I didn't go in thinking "I know this will cause damage, but I'm going to do it anyway". It wasn't so much I knew and deliberately did, so much as I did it without actively knowing, but on at least some level I did.

​How many people do I hurt this way.

I'm in pain.

Severe pain.

I'm destroying myself.

I need to stop.

I needed to stop.

I just.

I kinda want to stop existing right now.

I've no real reason to.
But the pain, the guilt, the exhaustion, it's adding up.

I don't want to live right now.

I need help.

I badly need help.

Even if I am forgiven by others I can't forgive myself, and even if I could, the pain I'm feeling isn't triggered specifically by bad things. It'd be happening anyway. But it's certainly made worse by the events going on right now.

I normally don't speak up. I normally don't advocate. Days like today are exactly why I don't. I know how damaging it can be for me to try. Still tho. I felt obligated to speak up. Trans people are under attack in a way right now that I felt I needed to speak up about.

It's just.

​I exhausted myself. I tired myself. I stressed myself. All over it. And then debated. And the debate could cause harm. And did. So. I don't know. I just need to...hope and pray I guess?

What else can be done. I'm on my medication. I'm sleeping. I'm eating. I'm taking my multivitamins. I'm still feeling like I want to die after that. So all I can really hope for I guess is words of affirmation to prop me up, and like...time where I hope I can get better.

​I wish I was better.

I'm tired physically.
I'm tired emotionally.
I'm tired mentally.

Just...exhausted.

I guess it starts with writing a blog for the first time in like two weeks.

Remember when my blog was daily?

I sure do!

Multiple entries per day, even!

I should start doing that again.

I need to transfer things to my new purse.
I need to use the new razor I purchased last week.
I need to take a shower and change clothes and, ideally, organize them too.
I need to get a full night's sleep every night.
I need to stick to my workouts.
I need to run.
I need to brush my teeth.
I need to brush my hair.
I need to change clothes daily and shower regularly.
I need to apply the lotions.

I need to continue blogging.

I need to eat through my to-do list.
I need to re-sort my notes I have on my desktop that I got scattered.
I need to send the emails I was intending to.
I need to do a job thing.
I need to sort through my phone.

I need to resume therapy.
​I need to get a new psychiatrist. (Ideally get Autism/ADHD diagnoses for peace of mind, too.)

I need to talk to a doctor about how we probably have POTS, too. (Not to mention, share that info with my family since they probably have it, too.)

I need to just...be better than I am right now.

We have plenty happening.
​January 29th is the anniversary of us being on estrogen, so we've passed the 1-year mark on it.
We've discovered more about our system, which we are planning to make art about to describe. (We're currently up to five discovered facets. Amanda, our deep 'yo' voice; Joy, our all-caps multi-exclamation mark voice of 'HI FREINDS!!!', Ashe our drawn out lowercase broken English voice of 'hiiiiiiii', Morgan our aussie, and Bella our southerner who gives phrases like y'all, ain't, and folks.

​We've continued writing for farn. Mostly note-taking, but a little bit writing, too. A lot of the notes we need to catch up on are farn-related though, but it needs to be done.

I did come up with a quick explanation of my story though:

"A shonen anime in novel form, with high school slice of life and harem-anime elements: the 28-year-old protagonist is isekai'd to a fantasy world as a 16-year-old. She is enlisted into a high school, but it's a school for adventurers. Shenanigans ensue, through the lens of shonen tropes. As action escalates, so do relationships, and via her personality, Vee has a lot of those."

​Is it the best description, probably not. Could I make it shorter, oh definitely. But it's apt. People I describe it to will have little interest in me explaining how it's based on me combining two different ideas that then took on a life of their own. (I think I detailed them in the blog before? How one was "what would it take for someone basically me, to be sent to this world as the one chosen?", combined with the idea of 14-year-old me who made an Adventure Questesque world where I was transported there at that age, grew up to be a great adventurer, mastering elemental magic, archery, swordsmanship, being an inventor of things like guns, and having familiars. Strong, diverse, but not overpowered per se, stronger on paper than in reality, which is what Vee is.)

​So cutting out what they don't need to know, we're left with what they do. It's designed to be something that could become an anime. I view the characters as looking like anime characters. Every scene looks like an anime in my mind. Literally all of them. That's what they look like. While I do see them as looking real, I mostly see them as looking like anime. It's like 80% anime, 20% real--not in style (a style looking like). 80% of the time, 100% anime. 20% of the time, 100% looking real.

So while it's not exclusively an anime--it's mostly an anime. It technically qualifies as an isekai, because Vee is de-aged and given a new body on arrival, even though it is not properly a reincarnation, not truly a summon, is something one of a kind in-universe.

It's a fantasy setting. The protagonist goes to high school, so there's plenty of high school drama going on. There's typical student archetypes in place, an alpha bitch posse, two guys being guys, groups, cliques, etc. But because it's a school for adventurers, they are learning to fight things adventurers fight--by design, amping up in threat level gradually, at least in theory.

There's constant training, there's tournaments, the classes have regular frequent mock battles and spar daily. But they also hang out outside of school with things like sleepovers. Vee, through her personality, interests, and past experiences, bonds with many of the students across classes, who get to show off their personalities and powers gradually. Every character has their moments to shine, but with the focus on Vee, we get a lot of focus on how her eventual lovers fall in love with her.

So that's what the story is, in a nutshell.

It's going to be one of a kind if I can do it--I just have to do it.

Like the long list of things piling up.

I had my generator running with internet every night without power, and six days into the outage, my power was fixed. So that'd be...Thursday, power, Friday, power, and today is Saturday, with me not having written a blog since then.

Mostly, that was me just being stupid and not doing the blog in spite of having it on my mind. Anyway, I suppose I should mention, I've basically caught up on life since the power outtage. I managed to finally grind out the league/tft quests, and thus my only reason to play more was if I wanted to attempt to raise my rank higher. But, I'm content to have it as-is, and leave it there.
(That said, I will have to put some time in to the preseason on Ashe, because while it certainly won't be optimal, I have in mind a hybrid poke/dps build. I already run comet with celerity and approach velocity for lane power that allows for building dps or poke, taking a tear to start. I know in past seasons Shieldbow + Manamune worked as a combo. But now I'm thinking that Shieldbow + ER + Navori would work as a combo, maybe Manamune as fourth or going full crit if not.)

I'll say that a lot of the lack-of-me-present is largely thanks to me being very unhealthy in mafia games. (Silver lining, there's like a 50-75% chance I get banned soon which, hey! Fixes the issue there. >_> <_<) I've been pouring 4-8 hours per day into mafia.

And then I tell myself. "Okay, never again."

And then I do it the next day, and say. "Okay, never again."

And then I do it the next day, and say "I can't keep doing this so this has to be the last day." And then it isn't.

And every work day, I go "okay you can use the phone but no looking at mafia".
And then every work day I look at mafia.
And then I say "okay you can browse offline, but you can't log in to post".
And then half the days I end up logging in to post.

And even though I have every reason to not pay attention to games I am not currently alive in the game as a player in, with my removal from the game as a good way to experience the sweet release of no longer caring and just moving on.

Turns out, as you might have been able to guess, I keep reading.

So mafia has been very very very bad for me.

I kept telling myself. "I'm going to be less active, I'm going to do less, I'm going to do things with more control."
And then I got more unhinged instead.

So like.

I basically have destroyed my life for the umpteenth time thanks to the game that I love but I hate how much it impacts my life. (I'd like to reiterate that I can't go too explicit because of ongoing game rules, but everything I've said here is generic not-game-specific enough to be fine especially since it's all public info and not game-reliant. Just generic things piling up tbh.)

Still.
It may be tempting fate, but I believe that phase of unhealthy mafia activity has ended in my life. (See also, may get banned soon.)

​We'll have to see.

Anyway, with my life beginning to normalize, some to-do things.

I need to finish my art profile picture, but any time I can be lucid and not absentminded, I should be working on my novel instead.
I want to work on minecraft but I know I won't finish my novel goals if I do.

The majority of my time needs to be spent on novel-writing.

Tomorrow I need to, ideally, stream, but if not, at least build my youtube video buffer back up again. (Ideally ideally, do both!)

I need to actually make the thread about youtube videos released that I said I would do.

I need to take a shower tomorrow.
I need to get back into brushing my teeth.
I need to get better at applying the moisturizer to my body to keep it from having breakouts.
I need to shave.

Which is...well. Both a lot, and yet, not a lot.

I've got less work in the next couple of weeks.
But like--on that note, I need to keep up my workouts. I've been quite pathetic there.

I developed an entire routine--and then have done nothing with it at all.

​I need to get better.

I did something today that freed a lot of the burden from my shoulders. Genuinely, before I did it I was literally in a spot of darkness, misery, anger, and utter exhaustion. I couldn't remember being happy. I was just tired in every way possible, and angry at so many things. And I wanted it to just...stop.

So I did. I did something which made it not be an issue.

And once I did it, it genuinely was a weight off our shoulders.

Immediate relief. And I mean immediate relief. Within five minutes, a flood of positive emotions.

Feeling giddy, happy, upbeat.

For the first time we can remember in weeks.
Calm, relaxed. Just, serene.

We were happy. We were free. We were good. We suddenly had the time and mindset for working out, and to actually knock out life tasks.

All good, right?

Sounds like it should've been a good thing, right?

And, well.

It certainly would have been!

...Except for one small issue.

We ADHD'd our way back into doing the same thing. It has become an obsession. A very unhealthy one at that.
We let go. We were free.
And then we weren't. Because we are stupid. We are dumb.

Even now we're thinking of that thing and it is taking every rational part of us to go, "NO. No. Bed. Not that. BED."

Which gives an idea for how bad it is. It's genuinely an addiction--and yet.

In spite of knowing how unhealthy it is, in spite of knowing how it is making this hellish week all the much worse.

We keep going back.

For god only knows what reason.

See also, we are stupid. And we hate it.