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Anthrocon, Mental Health, and Medical Fees.
7 months ago
I'm really sorry about the lack of updates. I want to keep y'all informed and up to date, but things have been kinda... rough for me lately, so it has been hard to make posts on the internet. Sorry to constantly be a bummer aaaaahhhhh >///<"
Mental Health Progress:
I've been weening off of one of my anti-depressants for the past year or so. My brain has been terribly addicted to it, and it is not working. I wanted to stop taking it immediately, but the withdraw symptoms were so severe that my doctor and I had to slow down the process to a snail's pace. Thankfully, I seem to be almost free of the drug. I've made it to the smallest dose, and I'm almost done with it forever. Unfortunately, this means that my mental health isn't being medicated, and it has been... well its not been great. I have learned many coping mechanisms, and I'm doing what I can to not give into the sense of dread, but it has been really rough. It has been especially rough because a little while ago, I had like... 3 days or so where I felt like I used to feel. I felt normal, I felt enthusiastic, I felt in general. The meds I've been stuck on make me feel empty, emotionless, passionless. So feeling again was just... incredible. Sadly, the worst depression of my life followed it, but at least we know that this positive feeling is possible. I know I can feel normal again, and when I do, I'll be able to get back into drawing something fierce, cause gosh when I could feel alllll I wanted to do was draw. Sorry its taking so long to get me back to a drawing state. I'm going to try and push to get there, I have made you all wait far too long.
Massive Dental Fees:
My teeth are fucked up and I am very embarrassed about it. A symptom of my mental health issues is Executive Dysfunction: Which in my darkest of days (especially before I got my job) made it hard if not impossible to take care of myself in basic ways. My teeth suffered the most. I'm going to need a number of dental procedures to repair damage, but they are incredibly costly. I need at least 3 of them and they cost like $600 each if/when my insurance covers them. I... am... very upset about this for obvious reasons. So I may be even more sparse online because I'm going to have to do a bunch of overtime to help pay for the medical bills. If I can push through the depression and finish all the art I owe, I might be able to do commissions to help pay for it, but... I do owe a lot, and I am... we'll see what happens there. ^^"
I'm Going To Anthrocon Even If It Kills Me (Because It Might Literally):
I have officially registered and booked a hotel for Anthrocon 2025. I will be attending with my dear friends
floatymyboaty and 
pickled-potoo. After the deaths we've had in this community, I am not missing another convention. I'm not letting myself fall further into the depressive, inactive hole I've been in for the last like... 5 years. I want to be present. I want to be active. I want to feel happy like I used to. I want to have a community presence again, and I want be around the folks I care a lot about as much as I possibly can. I don't care about the consequences of this choice. I'm not disappearing again.
If you remember from my last journal, I talked about how my sister has issued death threats against me. I reached out to Anthrocon security about this, to hopefully prevent my sister from attending. But unfortunately, AC has decided that they will not ban her for something that occurred outside the convention. This is understandable: It wouldn't be fair to ban someone who hasn't done something wrong at the con itself. I totally get that choice, and I respect it. I'm telling y'all this because I want to make it clear that I will be attending regardless of if my sister shows up. If she shows up, and something bad happens to me, I don't care. I will not be away from my friends again. I know that is very dramatic, but I'm serious. I'm going to attend, and I'm going to have the best damn time of my life, regardless of what my sibling decides to do. Its scary, especially for someone with an anxiety disorder, but I just cannot be away from this community any longer. I don't want to miss anything again.
TDLR: My mental health is feeling the bad feels from medication changes, my teeth are expensive, and I'm going to Anthrocon.
I hope to have more positive news to share soon. I'm still working on gallery and Discord restructuring, so that I can make everything fancy and good. Please swing by the discord channel if you wanna see more from me more regularly. I love you all so much <3
Da Discord: https://discord.gg/2mbEmsd
Mental Health Progress:
I've been weening off of one of my anti-depressants for the past year or so. My brain has been terribly addicted to it, and it is not working. I wanted to stop taking it immediately, but the withdraw symptoms were so severe that my doctor and I had to slow down the process to a snail's pace. Thankfully, I seem to be almost free of the drug. I've made it to the smallest dose, and I'm almost done with it forever. Unfortunately, this means that my mental health isn't being medicated, and it has been... well its not been great. I have learned many coping mechanisms, and I'm doing what I can to not give into the sense of dread, but it has been really rough. It has been especially rough because a little while ago, I had like... 3 days or so where I felt like I used to feel. I felt normal, I felt enthusiastic, I felt in general. The meds I've been stuck on make me feel empty, emotionless, passionless. So feeling again was just... incredible. Sadly, the worst depression of my life followed it, but at least we know that this positive feeling is possible. I know I can feel normal again, and when I do, I'll be able to get back into drawing something fierce, cause gosh when I could feel alllll I wanted to do was draw. Sorry its taking so long to get me back to a drawing state. I'm going to try and push to get there, I have made you all wait far too long.
Massive Dental Fees:
My teeth are fucked up and I am very embarrassed about it. A symptom of my mental health issues is Executive Dysfunction: Which in my darkest of days (especially before I got my job) made it hard if not impossible to take care of myself in basic ways. My teeth suffered the most. I'm going to need a number of dental procedures to repair damage, but they are incredibly costly. I need at least 3 of them and they cost like $600 each if/when my insurance covers them. I... am... very upset about this for obvious reasons. So I may be even more sparse online because I'm going to have to do a bunch of overtime to help pay for the medical bills. If I can push through the depression and finish all the art I owe, I might be able to do commissions to help pay for it, but... I do owe a lot, and I am... we'll see what happens there. ^^"
I'm Going To Anthrocon Even If It Kills Me (Because It Might Literally):
I have officially registered and booked a hotel for Anthrocon 2025. I will be attending with my dear friends
floatymyboaty and 
pickled-potoo. After the deaths we've had in this community, I am not missing another convention. I'm not letting myself fall further into the depressive, inactive hole I've been in for the last like... 5 years. I want to be present. I want to be active. I want to feel happy like I used to. I want to have a community presence again, and I want be around the folks I care a lot about as much as I possibly can. I don't care about the consequences of this choice. I'm not disappearing again. If you remember from my last journal, I talked about how my sister has issued death threats against me. I reached out to Anthrocon security about this, to hopefully prevent my sister from attending. But unfortunately, AC has decided that they will not ban her for something that occurred outside the convention. This is understandable: It wouldn't be fair to ban someone who hasn't done something wrong at the con itself. I totally get that choice, and I respect it. I'm telling y'all this because I want to make it clear that I will be attending regardless of if my sister shows up. If she shows up, and something bad happens to me, I don't care. I will not be away from my friends again. I know that is very dramatic, but I'm serious. I'm going to attend, and I'm going to have the best damn time of my life, regardless of what my sibling decides to do. Its scary, especially for someone with an anxiety disorder, but I just cannot be away from this community any longer. I don't want to miss anything again.
TDLR: My mental health is feeling the bad feels from medication changes, my teeth are expensive, and I'm going to Anthrocon.
I hope to have more positive news to share soon. I'm still working on gallery and Discord restructuring, so that I can make everything fancy and good. Please swing by the discord channel if you wanna see more from me more regularly. I love you all so much <3
Da Discord: https://discord.gg/2mbEmsd
"Oh right- this is what sad feels like. That's fuckin' weird. I remember that now."
but i'd still say I think that is better than feeling *Nothing* and not being able to snap out of that funk once you're in it.
to the other stuff, I mean... I get it? But you've also got a lot of expenses lined up, try not to dig a deeper hole if you can help it?
I-i know, and you are right. I am doing my best to budget accordingly. Doing lots of overtime at work too.
I know exactly how you feel in terms of medication. I remember when I first became medicated back in 2021 it helped me immensely, and for the first time in for as long as I could remember, I actually felt great again. Combined with an absolutely amazing therapist I was seeing at the time, I felt so incredible for the first time in my life. But after a while, those medications seemed to be having less and less of an effect. Fast forward to today and it's been maybe 2 years since my medicine has been effective in helping me. My doctor has tried many different dosages and many different types of medication, but nothing has seemed to work nearly as good, if at all. As a result, it's severely impacted my artistic flow and motivation, which then feeds back into my low feeling, resulting in this endless loop of depression. I love drawing, I know it's not burnout because i make sure i give myself plenty of breaks, but I feel like as a result I take TOO many breaks and find it so hard to actually get back into it despite how badly I want to and how greatly I enjoy it. I'm still trying to chew through the same batch of commissions I began last September.
My teeth are pretty appalling and terrible too, and it's been 2 or 3 years since i've even gone to the dentist, mostly because I'm terrified of being judged for them. A side effect of my own personal brand of depression results in me either forgetting or never feeling like brushing my teeth. No matter how many times I've tried and tried to develop a consistent habit, I always fall off after only a few days, if I even make it THAT far. I fear of going to the dentist because of what they would say about the shape my dental situation is.
Thirdly, for once I can't say I'm dealing with a similar issue as you in regards to Anthrocon and your sister, but I can say that the AC deal has been very stressful and anxiety-inducing in other ways. One of my closest friends asked if they could come with me to AC, and it's something I desperately want to go right and go well. I've never attended a convention with a friend, I've only ever been to them alone, so this friend wanting to attend with me meant the sun and the moon to me, the fact that someone would even be interested enough to do that. After my time at AC last year, I intended to get a higher tier of registration in order to get a quicker line and hopefully get better access to hotels.
But unfortunately, sponsor memberships, which is what I purchased, is lumped in with general attending in terms of the window for registering hotels. I was unable to start the booking until 11 hours after I had received the email, and by then, all of the cheaper options for the entire con had been booked, and I was forced to choose the one remaining option, that being the most expensive hotel on the list. As a result of the immense cost, my friend who would be attending me had to come to the conclusion that we'd have to cut our time short and leave after the third day rather than experiencing the full four day event. It's such a disappointing result, but I still want it to happen, and i still want them to come and see how much fun it all is. It's so depressing and agonizing to see that all of the cost-efficient options were taken up so quickly. It's made me realize that if I even want a good chance at a cheaper hotel, I'd end up having to spend the extremely high cost for one of the highest membership tiers. It's not that I don't want to support something as fun and thrilling as the AC team, it's just it's getting out of the realm of affordability for me personally. It's all so depressing, because my time at AC '24 was the most fun time i've ever had at a convention.
....I really didn't intend for this to be a big trauma dump or anything, I just hope it at least brought some comfort to you, because i really do know just how you feel, and i'm right there with you! Life is so crazy scary stressful right now, and i feel the same as you in terms of not wanting to miss something like this. After some particular deaths in this community that I too feel as if i still haven't recovered from, it's been really hard, and i've been clinging on so tightly to the the people and the few things that still bring me so much happiness and joy, and that includes the thought of being around so many other amazing people just like me, as hard as it will be financially for me. I know it will all be worth it, and we're all going to be okay at the end of the day. I hope at the very least that there will be some sort of tribute or memorial/celebration of life event of some kind there this year...
I really do hope you still manage to have a good time at AC with your roommates. I'll be sure to look for you assuming there's another vore meet there and it's not on the day I have to return home!
Gosh I do hope youre able to find a solution that works for you. Its so miserable being stuck in that rut.
That was the exact same thing for me. The depression makes it miserably hard to take care of such a basic thing and I felt such shame about that.
Yeah the hotels always go shockingly fast... I had to take off work the day booking opened just so I would have a shot at getting one. Thankfully I managed to nab one, but its always a stressful, speedy process. I'm so sorry to hear you wont be able to attend the full time, but I am happy to hear youll get to see your friend <3 Please feel free to say hi if you see me at the con ^^
Nooo its ok! I enjoy chatting to folks and hearing from them, youre more than ok <3
I will do the same! I hope you have a lovely time too <3