I'm sleeping too much.
Tired too much.
Not having logical sleep.
And as a result of this oversleeping, I have less than half of the time I should have.
I'm simultaneously going to bed too early (when not really tired), and too late (at times like 6 AM). And waking up too early (at like ten AM), and too late (immediately crashing on the couch until 2 PM).
No shower in two weeks. Brushing teeth happens sporadically. So, my hygiene's basically gone.
And art? Still behind. I can cheat and say I'm only one day behind on Inktober, but truth be told my Sunday pen I did at work wasn't meant for Inktober so it should really be two days. Then there's my actual comic.
I'm slightly better off on the mafia front...slightly. I've gotten like 25% of the work I should have gotten done finished, and there's scheduling issues I should be working out with will be a royal pain to deal with. (Like, absolutely, terrible.)
And for ComicFury, I'm not as active as I need to be. I'm four days (and counting) behind on my subscribed comics. I'm trying to get that to zero, but I'm falling behind. It was three days, but I'm too slow at reading the comics I'm behind on, which slows down the process. Honestly, there's a lot of skimming going on, because if I don't skim, it's impossible to catch up.
(This is the main reason the comics from long-time friends that I have long-term investments in don't have comments from me: because I DON'T want to skim them, which means that I want to read them in full, and I absolutely know I can't handle that, so if you see me as a subscription and I don't comment, that's the most likely reason.)
And it's 5 AM.
And I also need to do a dual job blog tomorrow thanks to my negligence today. (I woke up some time like 11 AM...then crashed until 2 PM...and was so tired that I must have napped at least two or three extra times in the day.)
I don't think this is anything physical, unless cold weather is to blame. (I am wearing my summer clothes rather than winter clothes right now, in spite of it being winter weather.) I also don't think that there's anything which can be done about it, but that it is a real problem I'm having.
Just...uhg.
My life would be so much simpler if I could keep my time optimized.
It's not that I don't have the time in the day. I KNOW it's there. I know that, when I push the minutes, I can get a lot done and efficiently tackle tasks, one by one.
It's that I'm unable to right now. And I don't think it's a lack of ability. I don't think it's even a lack of willpower, either. It's more like...there's something that is making me want to withdraw within myself and fall into that pit of depression. I don't like that. It's a terrible place to be. It's frustrating. I feel...very weak. Very powerless, very vulnerable.
And while I like to show my strength to people on ComicFury, I am very much human, very much susceptible to that vulnerability. The wise old lady who likes to banter, gives good advice, and is basically everywhere was once a stupid young child with emotional highs that went on a destructive rampage. This I share openly, but not so openly is the second half of that story, that the young child, the powerless girl curled up into a ball, still exists, and she is reeling her head at me right now.
The risk of self-destruction is ridiculously high. Like...I can actually see my life crumbling before me, piece by piece. Do you know how terrifying, how scary it is, to have control, and having perfect awareness of every bit that you slowly are losing? Because, yeah. I'm...not well, right now. And...I honestly don't know who I can talk to, and how I can talk to them.
That's the biggest issue. This is not something to keep to myself. It's absolutely not something that I can handle alone. Every time I try, I fail, I go deep within myself, and I weaken greatly as a person because of it. So if I could tell someone, I definitely WOULD. The problem is...
...I don't know who I can talk to. Someone from real-life? They don't know anything about my online life other than being vaguely aware that I have one. My mom might suspect my meds aren't working properly (and, honestly, she might actually be right), but I can't talk to her.
I don't meet my counselor until next week, and even when I do...I never get the experience that I plan. Never tell him everything which is on my mind, and never get from him what I expect. Sometimes, this is a good thing! He gives me something I was not expecting, which leaves me in a momentously good mood, and makes it all worth it.
Other times, though, especially as of late, I come away from the session feeling like I have made no meaningful progress, like there is nothing new, no groundbreaking thought, like it was a waste of time, like it was going through the motions. There's a reason we went from full hour sessions to 45 minutes, and this was not a spoken agreement but a subconscious choice we eventually made with time passing. (He might not have noticed, but I did. The transition happened with this as the reason.) There's also a reason we went from meeting every week to every other week.
Because I can't talk to him that well anymore. I should be able to. He was the first person I told in real life I am a girl. It's quite literally his job to listen and to not judge me. And he's good at doing that! He's really good at his job. But, no matter my desire to vent to him, I just...can't always get these things off my chest. Call it my autism at work.
So, real life's out.
And, to be fully honest...I don't like to bother people online. I don't like to trouble them. I do have two separate mes: the mature, adult, older woman me, and the small little emotionally-frail child me. The child me needs to exist at least some times, like right now, and yet...I really hate being her. I hate needing help, admitting I have a problem. Opening up, admitting vulnerability, is hard for anyone to do.
...Doing so as someone who strives to be a wise, mature, respectable veteran of the online world? Much, much, MUCH harder than that. People on ComicFury look up to me a lot. Even if I actively tried to tell them not to (I don't, but I could), short of me actively doing something to destroy my reputation (like, we're talking, bannable offenses here), there's nothing I'd be able to do to change that at this point. I'm important, I'm constantly attempting to be that beacon of what the community should be, to set a good example, to be a bit of a leader you could say.
...Yet I can't maintain that all the time. I wish I could. But I'm human, I'm flawed, and I have weaknesses. Admitting I have them breaks the mask, and that's difficult to do, because I don't like people to see that side of me, least of all, those who look up to me as an example or even an idol. I'm an imperfect one, sure, but as that hero of sorts, that "legend", there's a little bit of a mythos surrounding me, and I really want to live up to it and not shatter people's perceptions of me.
So, it's hard to confess that, yes...I am struggling.
I really don't want to say I need a break. On anything.
I really, really, really don't want to say I need a break!
Breaks haven't solved anything. I took breaks on comics, and that killed them. I took breaks on ComicFury, and those turned into year-long absences. I took breaks on mafia, and same, year-long absences. Sure! Breaks are rarely truly permanent. But they always last MUCH longer than the time I set for them.
So while I know I can't take a break. That somehow, I need to power through this...
...I still really have that urge to take a break. To cave in. Give up. Let the depression in, run its course, and then when my life has been left in shambles, I'll eventually pick up the pieces. That's what there's temptation to do.
And yet, I know I can't.
I suppose there is the mafia site to talk about these on, but even there, there's an issue, different from the ComicFury one. There, both sides exist in equilibrium. I've attempted to separate them out into two different accounts, more or less, but in spite of my efforts, I remain as both. Plenty of people do see me as having a lot of "cool" traits: good at games, good at game theory, good humor, good at socializing, a good friend, good at art, you get the idea. Plenty of people also see me as a bit of a (pardon the language) whiny bitch. And then there are some who see me as something even worse, a hybrid between the two, someone who acts cool and yet will still complain a lot, someone in denial that has the worst of both.
And it's cultivating that belief which I think I honestly fear the most. It might be stupid. It is stupid, actually. But it's true all the same. I...don't like to open myself up to others because I'm really scared of them. I'm scared of what they'll say. Attention whore, for instance. The worst of them (and there's at least two people who fit this bill) are those who will imply these things with their responses but refuses to explicitly state them: indirect assaults on my character, which are vague and which do deeply sting me, in large part because I'm not even sure they're wrong.
I have a tough skin. It's hard to insult me. It's hard to compromise me. But when I am already compromised, on the other hand...I get really, really scared. It's that whole fear of rejection thing, basically. So on ComicFury, my fear is letting people down; on the mafia site, my fear is similar but different in that it is a fear of not having people actually be there.
That might sound ridiculous. They're just people on the internet. What could I do to hurt them? And how could they possibly help me? Yet...it doesn't take a genius to know the answer to both of these. What we say, what we do, has a lasting influence on people which can span years in advance.
I recently talked about this when making a comment on a comic, but basically, the trope "But For Me It Was Tuesday" applies to 'heroes' just as much as villains. (I'm no hero, obviously, but...I'd love to be one. I try to be one. People see me as one, and I want to make that hero be real. That's one reason I chose to make Red Hood Rider in the first place.) In this case...that one moment I help you out might just be another moment for me. Two years down the line, I probably won't remember doing it. I do it for many others, and I don't have the memory capacity to retain every act of charity I do especially since I try to make my life be filled with nothing but.
You, however, would remember what I did, because I was there when nobody else (or at least very few others) was. So I always want to be that beacon, that helper, that person who is good at almost everything, and is constantly supporting others. I want to help, not hurt.
And similarly...people can't cure me. People's advice? Often nothing I don't already know. Often nothing I don't already tell myself. But...all the same. All the same, they can still bring a smile to face when they do manage to say exactly the right thing which can give me something I needed.
So that's why I wish I was able to figure out how to share my issues. I...am really messed up right now. Saying it helps a little. Knowing it helps a little. But I've got no plan on how to fix being messed up, aside from surviving. Which is all I'm doing. And barely at that. Badly.
I just feel...so stressed. So unhealthy. So tired, so...so...weak. And...that's not a place I want to stay.