#3 | 5/11/2023

been a while, hasn't it? to say my life has been hectic the past month (almost two, really) would be a hell of an understatement, but it's also true. my 23rd birthday passed in april, i quit my shit job, amidst some of the most stressful personal things that have happened to me in the past few years (annoyingly). it's all been a lot to handle, and so there's been a lot of instability in terms of actually giving me time to be "around" properly, let alone enough time to relax and will myself to write something here. in all honesty, i haven't been very stable myself, so i didn't feel like writing. not that i've done much besides vent here anyway but still...

venting here, you don't have to read. thought it'd look nicer this way

i don't want to be someone who always complains, and i especially don't want it to seem like i don't value the little life i have, because i really do. even if life sucks i appreciate it. it's just a really hard one, and it's not the one i had in mind at all, and i don't think the one i did have in mind was any good for me, either... so yeah, i don't know. lots of hard shit to think about, and there's never a break.

we were contacted by an abuser some time in the past 2 weeks, and although supposedly the intentions there were far from negative, it's prodded at a lot of old wounds for me. which is funny, because i didn't actually even know this person personally, lol. i'm not trying to shittalk here, but the timing was extremely inconvenient. please don't bother anyone about this, though, i'm just venting. may is one of the hardest months of the year for me on a general basis, but the event in question will have reached a 10 year milestone this year, so it's really getting under my skin more than usual. having a shitton of trauma responses activated for other parts and having that bleed over into me when i already am spending most of my time trying not to live in trauma response impulses to every single thing is really, really hard. venting in more explicit detail about this to my therapist was apparently bad enough to make him cry, which is a first for me, er, sort of. he's worried enough that i've doubled up on my sessions this week so that he can "check in". i'm hoping i can be normal enough by tomorrow that we won't have to do that anymore.

on top of all of that, i just found hundreds of screenshots and pictures on an old harddrive from [REDACTED]. it freaks me out on one hand, but on the other i'm mostly just incredibly sad that my young self felt it necessary to store that sort of thing and hide it away forever. i can't seem to let anything go, and it just gets me into trouble later. it hurts a lot to think i felt like i needed to hold onto meaningless, hurtful things like that. i'm sort of tired of venting about being trafficked in every one of my journal entries, though, so i'll save it for therapy.

despite all of that, it's not been all negative... i wanted to thank some of my friends who have been there for me, and log some of the nice things that have happened since i posted here last. cause it really means a lot people would remember someone like me or do any of these nice things.

first off, thank you to lina for the really lovely letter you wrote to us back in april, and specifically for the adorable fox origami you sent to me along with it! i loved the fennekin sticker too, thank you... i was surprised you'd remember things i like at all. i promise i'll try to send something off to you within the next week... i have a lot to say

secondly, thank you to coda for the wonderful birthday gifts for both me and jesse. it means a whole whole lot. i'm grateful that we've had the chance to both get a little closer over the past little while. there's not much i can say here that's not too personal... but thank you, seriously!

finally, i wanted to collect a few images from over the past month that made me happy, so i'll put them here. i'll also post some artworks that i've made, too. art used to be really hard for me, but i'm trying to get back into it...