First and foremost, I feel like it’s something I should talk about. Shed some light on, raise awareness. I don’t really know honestly.
Someone you might know it, some don’t. I’ve been through quite the things in my life life and with everything that happened in 2022, I for once looked forward optimistically into the new year 2023. Not knowing what was about to come.

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Long story short: depression and anxiety both are bitches that stick around even if you don’t want them.
The first event I don’t want to dig into to deep because… despite being told many times how it actually played out, I still feel like it played out differently.
Anxiety. In it’s simplest form, you feel nervous/restless for no reason and there is this sense of impeding danger or even doom.
Danger and doom doesn’t mean something actually life threatening, it can be literally anything. Even minor things like someone you are texting is not responding cause you overthink a lot. You stress out over nothing.
In addition to me not understanding my emotions, why I have them. It resulted in those emotions getting seemingly amplified and bursting out into several outbreaks that affected me quite severely.
I locked myself away from everyone just to avoid anything that could cause more of these outbreaks. I kinda know what it triggered, and knowing I can’t avoid it I just wanted to be alone.
And here depression starts.
My car didn’t pass state inspection because lots of parts that simply wear were just to worn to be deemed safe. Repair cost was estimated to around 2.000€ (my car is from 2003 and had a mileage of around 220.000 km). Had to make a hard decision, and after long thinking I decided to spend the money ang get it repaired.
The very same day extremely bad news struck me: My workplace back then fired me because “there were complaints”. I work as a CNA and no one - neither coworkers nor the residents I took care of could explain why I got fired. So I sat there with a 2k repair bill and soon no job.
I started to isolate myself even more with depression slowly creeping up.
Luckily I found a new job almost instantly, but everything that happened that day… I don’t know.
It still follows me to this day, I don’t know what I did wrong, if they fired me because they didn’t like my nose (can’t even bring it to court cause I was fired in my trial period. They can even fire me without reason and it’d be legit).
I don’t really know what else to say here. My car got repaired and is still driving around, and my new job I got puts me onto new challenges, and I feel that my knowledge is actually valued compared to the previous jobs. So that’s an improvement at least.
But looking back to the first half of the year, especially after seeing the r/thanksimcured subreddit, I have to say one thing:
Both anxiety and depression are, like many other things, “just in your head”, but there’s way more behind both issues that them being “just in your head”.
I still tend to overthink even the most insignificant things, and what outcomes they might have. I still think how current events will play out based on experiences in similar, past events. I get stressed out easily because of that. I know I shouldn’t be stressing you, yet I get back into that circle of overthinking things. It’s nothing that you can just shut off.

As for depression, I feel like the best comparison for someone would be being forced to smile for a picture you don’t want to be in. Waking up in the morning, wanting to fall asleep again because you’re still tired. Yet in the evening for some reason not being able to sleep despite being as tired as in the morning. You want to be left alone, but don’t want to feel alone. I don’t know, it’s a lot of contradicting mindsets that clash at each other, draining your energy, leaving you unmotivated. Even the tiniest things, like going to the restroom, become challenging tasks. I even lost complete interest in things that I loved to do during that time.

You simply just can’t “be happy” or “don’t be sad”. If that’d be solution, we wouldn’t have this mental issues going around…

Both are like a hole you fall into with 90° walls. Easy to fall in, hard to get out. Especially without help.

Even if it’s not much, please be there for people that suffer from these conditions. No one deserves being stranded like this.

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But now to some more lighthearted updates. And I’d want your opinion on it for some of them.
Firstly, as you may have seen, I have made an OC.
Takkju still will be around. Takkju is more than just an OC or a sona, he *is* me. Therefor I always limited myself in terms of commissions to what I would enjoy and what I would be personally comfortable with.
To give myself some freedom in that regard, I created I‘ku. He‘ll be some sort of testing ground for things I’m not sure of if I will enjoy them or not. Or for things that I want to get but am myself not comfortable with. I don’t know, I’m weird, I don’t make any sense. Just expect some art from him too in the future in different kinds of scenarios!
He‘s your average Black and Blue Wyvern who can shift into different forms, those being a western dragon, an eastern dragon and a drake. He also can change gender, so he cane be either male or female, but not both at once.
Poor little fella didn’t want this and sees it as a curse. And he doesn’t quite have full control over it. But how did that all happen? Well, for that I’ll write a (hopefully not crappy) backstory in the future

Secondly, I want to get back into streaming again. Not art because I’m by far not an artist, but games. My question here is if it’d be alright if I announce those here on FA via a journal/gallery upload that gets deleted once the stream is over.
I see a lot of artists announcing their (granted, art related) streams here on FA. From what I see game streams are fine to be advertised here but I’m bad at legal language (halp).
At this point I’d also like to mention that I have a discord server (which… due to circumstances mentioned above) I kinda neglected. It’s open to anyone and I’m also open to any kinds of improvements there if you suggest something. It was created to be some sort of place to hang out. If you’d like you can join via this link: https://discord.gg/4XZXMYsu9C

Thirdly: if you are still here And reading, you’re awesome and you will receive a voucher for 1 free hug, redeemable anywhere! However, shipping not included! Also, it won’t expire, so make the best use of it! If you however skipped tongues part… this voucher sadly holds no validity and cannot be redeemed.

And please, no comments on my mental health, I’m doing fine for the moment >-<