Wow... I haven't posted here in a while huh?

I'm truly sorry for the extended absence and total radio silence. A lot has been going on in my personal life that has impacted my ability to draw and be present on social media beyond a couple of discord messages here and there.

I don't want to go too deep into detail as it's rather personal and I'm not comfortable sharing everything but I'll share what I can so you can all understand why I've been so absent. It's not an excuse but it is a reason and something I've been working on getting over for a while now. I apologize for how long this journal is about to be but it's quite a long story. I'll make a TL;DR at the bottom for folks who don't want to read my novel.

Last year it finally happened and my partner and I got covid. Both of us were pretty sick for a few weeks but it definitely hit me harder. There were a lot of moments where it was getting so hard to breath that I was worried I'd have to go to the hospital but thankfully I managed to avoid that and recovered. Sort of.

In the following months I noticed that my emotions were totally out of whack. For the first time in my life I didn't feel depressed. I was unable to feel sad even in situations that I SHOULD feel sad. I couldn't really feel happy either. the only things I DID feel were either totally neutral or unreasonably angry, which is very out of character for me.

I was also EXHAUSTED pretty much all the time. I would get about 14-16 hours of sleep a night, struggle to stay awake for a few hours, nap for a few hours, and struggle to stay awake again until it was time for bed. Not only that but any amount of physical activity made my muscles ache like I'd been at the gym all day. Even something as simple as eating would just totally wipe me out. I slept a LOT for months after getting sick and not really doing much else because physically, I couldn't. It didn't stop me from trying though and I did do my best to try to keep up with housework and to draw. It usually didn't end well and made me worse off but I hated feeling so useless and kept pushing myself to be sort of functional.

I also saw a doctor, had a lot of tests run, but they couldn't find anything actually wrong with me. I was worried it may be long covid but my doctor wasn't convinced and eventually we hit a dead end. It also didn't help that my future in laws would say I should be grateful that covid seemed to "cure" my depression but then also get very frustrated that I was tired all the time and hadn't gone out and gotten a normal job and that I was actually worried that something seemed wrong with my brain because I didn't have normal emotions anymore. Anytime we saw them we dealt with hours of them nagging and badgering us about what failures we are in life, how everything we did was a mistake, and I just needed to try harder and get over it. This REALLY compounded my stress and self-loathing about my current health struggles which seemed to only make said health issues worse which then made them more upset at me and my short-comings. It was a stressful and awful cycle that I endured for MONTHS.

Now the part where I'm gonna keep it vague. My partner has thought I had a mental thing going on for a while now. In fact a lot of people have thought have the same thing but I was always in denial and didn't want to hear it. But him coming to be from a place of genuine concern and love made me finally look into it and turns out I tick all the boxes! The downside is that it's not possible for me to seek a formal diagnosis and therapy for this because if I did I would get deported and seeing as we JUST got me permanent residency (yay!) we don't want to risk losing that and the life we're building together. Australia has some pretty ableist immigration policies...

While we were doing our research about this and ways we can manage it ourselves we found a link between this and all of my health issues I had been dealing with since getting covid. Basically there was a chance that my health issues were triggered by the stress of getting covid (something I've been TERRIFIED about since this all started) and being overwhelmed mentally from all the pressure from future in laws and that nothing was actually wrong with me and I just needed a lot of self care to give my brain time to recover. Long story short, partner made me do nothing but relax for a couple months and a lot of my health issues cleared up. (I still have a lot of unrelated ones that are popping up lately but that's a whole other thing) This just made us more certain that I did have that mental thing and we'd have to make some accommodations to work with that which was pretty easy for us to do in our own home. But we still had to have a talk with his family and get them to understand what was potentially going on with me, why we couldn't seek a diagnosis, and why we needed to set some boundaries.

That talk did not go well. Like... at all.

Before we had the talk there was a death in my partner's family. The night it happened he had a fight with his mom where she spent hours saying that I was holding him back, ruining his life, and taking advantage of him and his money. So now we were not only having to have a discussion about the boundaries that I needed but the boundaries he needed as well. We barely got a word in the whole time because she kept talking over us, interrupting, making jokes, laughing, and then doubling down on her actions and making it clear she had no intention of changing the way she treats us despite us telling her how harmful it was. So after the funeral we made the difficult decision to go no contact with his parents so that he could work through his grief and issues with them and I could focus on getting better. (That also didn't go well because we haven't been able to go more than two weeks without someone bringin it up and calling us stupid for dragging this out and telling us to apologize already so it still feels very fresh)

This whole situation has a huge negative impact on my mental health and I started slipping back into the feelings of exhaustion and numb emotions. It's been a constant roller-coaster since then. I take time to take care of myself, start feeling better, then the fight is thrown back in our face, we're blamed for everything, I feel guilty and angry, I get bad again, I have to take care of myself to get better, and the cycle repeats. It's been fucking tiring and I don't know how much more I can take...

To top things off, my partner's sister is spreading these lovely rumors that I'm toxic and mistreating him which is only compounding my stress and making him very angry. She's ruined my relationship with his youngest sister and possibly damaged my relationship with his entire extended family. She was apparently also stalking my twitter for god knows how long and honestly who knows what other sites this spoiled 18 year old is watching me on at this point.

So to say we're dealing with a lot is an understatement. And the impact that all of this has had on my mental health has had some very physical consequences.

The good news is my partner's mother is very regretful of the fight and wants to work things out. Hopefully we'll all be going to family counseling together to work through these issues and move forward but I also don't want to get my hopes up to high. I'm keeping my expectations low while also being open to putting in whatever work I need to on my end to hopefully start repairing this whole fucking mess. But working through this whole thing with his family would be a huge weight off and allow me to get back to working on how to cope with my own mental shit in a way that's actually productive.

So there you have it! This is why I haven't been on FA in a long time or really drawn much of anything and why I'm even barely active on discord. Life's being a bitch, existence is pain, and I would give anything to get a break from it all long enough to actually get better.

TL;DR (sort of)
Got covid last year and was pretty sick. After covid my brain was broken and I couldn't feel anything but neutral or angry and also I slept like all the time. Saw doctor cause I was afraid it was long covid and got lots of tests but tests said I was fine so doc kinda gave up. Future in laws not happy that I'm so tired all the time and are mad I don't have a normal job and throw it in my face whenever we see them. Turns out it was actually a mental thing and the cure was long term self care. Partner loses a family member and then his picks a huge fight that very night to tell him all the ways I'm awful cause I'm not working a normal job. Partner and I decide we need to have a serious talk with his parents to explain everything and set some boundaries. Parents don't take us seriously at all and double down on their words and actions and say they won't stop or change so we decide we need to go no-contact for a while to work on ourselves. Partner's siblings and extended family keep messaging him every couple of weeks to tell him the fight is stupid, stop dragging it out, and apologize already so we end up not feeling like we're being given space at all and we both struggle to move past our hurt. Eventually his mom gives a sincere apology and suggests family counseling. Meanwhile his middle sister is spreading rumors that I'm abusive and stalking my social media for whatever reason. Still very stressed and trying very hard to not let it make me sick again so I can be functional again.

And TL;DR of the TL;DR:
Got covid but then got better. But also was still sick. Future in laws mad at me about it. Turns out it was all in my head and start getting better. Future in laws continue to suck and treat me and my partner badly. We try to set boundaries and they say "no" so we go no contact. His family blames us for the fight. His sister is spreading rumors about me and keeping tabs on me. We're both very tired of this whole thing

I'm going to keep trying to work on my mental health and get back to a good place again. I've been making small bits of progress here and there but it hasn't been easy and I've got a lot working against me at the moment but I do promise that I'm trying. And I'm lucky enough to have an amazing partner helping me along the way.

I'll try my best to be more present here (Especially because I need to start working again. Like really bad.) and get back to posting to art