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Updates/Server Closure/End of Year
2 years ago
So, this is going to be a long one.
I'd first off like to thank everyone for hanging in there and staying with me through all my mental health issues. Things have been hard, Disability is dragging, things keep getting harder and harder and I keep feeling like I should give up. I'm trying to fight that feeling but it's constantly weighing on me. There's a lot I'll be talking about here, and I'll try to separate it into areas. Some of it will be obvious, and some wont. So, I'll make them easy to follow if you'd like to look through.
If you'd like a quick TL; DR, a lot of crap has been happening all of 2023, and it is by far one of the worst years of my life. I've never felt so glad for it to be over but so falsely known that a calendar day changes nothing. My future is uncertain, and I feel hopeless and helpless. I'm going to keep going how I can and keep getting past commissions done as much as I can. I don't intend to leave anyone hanging, do not worry.
Financial Struggles
This is an obvious one, but as I continue to fight for my disability, I am always in need of assistance. The beginning of the year includes things like car tags, which from what I can see is just under $400. With the car payment, rent, National Debt Relief, and other things, I'm looking at just under $2000 to cover this new month. It's a lot to ask for, and as always I'm sorry I have to ask for help. I always feel bad but it's all I can do without making promises about commissions and never being able to fulfill them. The last thing I want to do is be one of those artists that DOES take money and run. I'll never be that. I want to keep working how I can and keep going all I can. I've had some amazing help from people and I cannot thank them enough, I wish by now I could be out of this but SSA doesn't like to cooperate. I hope this year is the year. I have meetings coming up sometime in the next two months with a judge but with a legal team this time. I hope this is the turning point.
Anyone able to help, please consider donating to help keep me going. You have no idea how much I'd appreciate it.
Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/kampferwolf
PayPal: https://paypal.me/KampferWolf
Cashapp: https://cash.app/$KampferWolf
Brother-in-Law Passing
CW: Drugs, abuse, suicide
On Friday, December 8th, I received a call from my brother. This is unusual, I NEVER get a call from him. He was trying to get a hold of my mom and hadn't been able to. So, I tried her, and managed to get them connected. I got a call back from my mom to hear some troubling news.
My brother was an emergency contact for his nephew and was called by the school letting him know that the child was not picked up from school. My brother picked them up and dropped them off at their mom's place. My Brother-in-Law and his wife had divorced, and they had shared custody, the child is only 6 years old. My brother went to check on him at his home, and found him in the bathroom, overdosed. He had been there for somewhere between 8-14 hours, they weren't sure yet as an investigation is still going, but it appears due to everything that it was a suicide. He has always had drug and alcohol issues, along with anger issues and depression he was refusing to get checked out. There was a note for his son which both apologized to him and blamed his ex-wife, which was about what we expected.
Still, this was a familiar sight. Drug abuse, alcoholism, suicide, there's are all things that are so close to home and this time I got to see someone care about their child. It was a different ending to the story I got for my own dad. It's weird to think about, even after almost a month. So much else has happened that I've yet to process it entirely. We are still waiting for a full report, then likely I will be heading back to Colorado for a funeral.
Loss of a Sister
While I don't have a biological sister, I've had someone as close to one as I'd ever had. Her name was Rumo, and I'm writing this section knowing I'm going to feel terrible while I do it. I think part of this is less about letting people know, and more about finally just saying what I need to.
I met Rumo through a Destiny 2 clan, and we hit it off rather quickly. It wasn't long after that she would come to me with something very sensitive. It turned out that she was trans and had no idea how to navigate things with coming out, transitioning medically, letting friends know or even if it was just some off feeling. For a few weeks we talked, and this was how we really truly connected. Eventually, the time came that she came out and to her surprised, everyone was so excited to meet her. And I was so proud of her. She lived in California and was able to start getting care, under some secret with her mom. The rest of her family, aside from one sibling, didn't know, so misgendering was obviously hard to deal with. As time grew though, we'd learn that things would get a lot more complex. She would eventually move here to Minnesota, and we'd find that Rumo was not alone.
Rumo was accompanied by 3 others, though she didn't know at the time. As the chaos of life calmed down from before, the voices inside were able to speak up, and we'd learn that she was part of a System. It so happened that randomly, I had learned about a lot of this out of sheer curiosity about 3-4 months prior, and I was able to give them some answers on what they were experiencing. The next few months would be helping to navigate who was who, names, roles, and how they could communicate. Needless to say, this takes a massive toll on anyone, especially someone who was already dealing with a lot of mental anguish. Not long after things were starting to get really bad, another alter had formed. This one was ironically named "Delta", despite being the 5th. She is a very strong and sure alter that was ready to take on everything, basically exactly what the system needed. With that, however, Rumo began to lose herself.
She felt herself begin to fade, losing some of the memories she did have, while having clarity in other ways. We weren't sure if this was a panic attack type thing or if this was truly her fading. We were scared, and one night, Rumo went off by herself, and wrote a goodbye letter to us in her journal. It was hard to read, like she was falling away while writing it. After this, we tried to wait to see if maybe there was a sign of her, but any sign has been gone. I've talked to Delta and the rest of the system a few times, and mentioned it to closer friends, about how I feel like I let her down when she needed me. I know I couldn't have stopped it, but I wish I could have been there to hold her in her final moments. The idea of her going in fear and being alone destroys me. It sounds like she wanted to be alone, but it still hurts. None of us are really doing well with it. We keep putting on faces like we are getting better with it, but we keep lying to ourselves and we admitted that the other night.
This is by far one of the most difficult things I've ever delt with, and I'm watching the whole system struggle, especially Delta, with memories that weren't originally theirs, and a loss of a part of them. I don't know what to do and I'm scared, on top of all the other things stressing me out.
I'll always be your sister Rumo, and I'll continue to be a sister to your head mates. I love them all too, and I'll take care of them just as I did you.
I love you, dear sister.
Server Closure
As some of you may be aware, I've had a Discord server going for a few years now, since 2018. It has been known as Kamp's Camp, and it's been a place built around community over anything else. Its origin is from a Telegram group I had started a year or so before, known simply as "Chillzone", where I wanted people to have a safe place to come find a home and comfort when they need it. The idea is to be that "couch" you plop into after work, where you have a few friends also chilling and you all just vege out and talk about what's going on in life if you need to. The move to Discord was to allow for other opportunities, like posting art and having other rooms, just to spread things out. The main idea was to keep it focused on that concept of being that "Chillzone" concept. We had a lot of people join, and honestly a lot of cool things happened there. We had TC come and we co-ran their Paw Post stuff, gaming events, and our most popular has always been getting yearly group banners.
However, this also drew some drama, people that came to cause issues. It also became far, far more than what it was intended to be. It became a fetish server. I don't have issues with fetish servers, I'm already in a few that you are probably in. The problem is this isn't what I wanted. Quickly, the server went from what I loved, to a failure in my eyes. Now, the server has mostly stagnated, a shade of its former self, and it's time to see my failure be gone. We are, however, moving everything over to a sister server, where I can take what I wanted to keep out and keep that going in a server that can have everything else going. Invites are only open for those moving over right now, but that might change in the future. It's just sort of an "end of an era" thing, and if you see Kamp's Camp gone, you know why.
End of the Year/Entering 2024
To cap this off, I just want to thank you all for being so patient with me. A lot more has happened than this, but these are some major highlights that I can think about right now that hasn't actually been mentioned yet. These things happened literally within the past month, and the entire last year was filled with crap like this. I've lost so many friends due to their inner demons, the stresses of medical issues and finances, and my own mental degradation. I want 2024 to be the turning point for all of it. I want this to be the year Disability goes through. I want this to be the year that my coms are all cleared out and I can draw for fun again. I want to go see the Aurora Borealis, which is at this time of year, at this time of day, in this part of the country, but is unfortunately not localized entirely within my kitchen.
I want this to be the different year. I just need to survive a little longer to see it. And I'd love to see you there, whether you're able to support me financially to get me there, or just enjoy my work and help remind me that people like what I do.
I love you all, I'll see you all as the year moves forward.
--Auri "Kampfer" Wolf
Server or no, art or no, we're all here for ya. :) *hugs tight*
https://discord.gg/wcrGZTU9ht