Hello! I wanted to ask, what parts of Is This Love are a reflection of your past or lessons you learned?
Oh, I love this question. Thank you so much for asking. Preemptive apology since I am certain I am going to be long-winded. Also trigger warning about self-harm and suicide, I guess.
The short answer I think is surprisingly little. I've mentioned before that I've never been through abuse, so that huge aspect of the story is something I have no personal experience to draw on.
A fair amount of Pomni's "this isn't about you" internal monologue came from me realizing a lot of my negative thoughts were from me turning other people's situations into something about me, and it is a rather bad character trait. I wanted to at least give her self-awareness.
Zooble and Jax's responses to her possible pregnancy being more focused on taking it one step at a time was also something I've gotten better at to stop worrying so much. And it's prevented a lot of unnecessary worrying.
A lot of the Kinger talks come from some level of personal experience. A little bit of "asking for help even when it hurts people" is something I've gotten better at believing when I used to vehemently try to hide everything because people couldn't help me and it felt pointless to burden them. And I know I've talked about my Kinger before, which is what some of Kinger's approaches to talking to Pomni was based on (in addition to canon); especially in chapter 27 when he's just asking questions rather than telling her this or that. Also the "I know you can." Basically a verbatim thing my Kinger's told me. And annoyingly, he was right. There was also the moment in chapter 36 where Jax is saying his suffering doesn't matter because Pomni's suffering more and Kinger lightly pushes against it. The conversation ended up going in a different direction after that, but I have learned that other people's suffering doesn't negate yours. Two bad things can be going on at once; be thankful it's not worse, but don't ignore how bad it is, either.
Pomni's weird emotions about her scars; yeah, that one is from personal experience, and strangely enough, still really hard to describe.
Jax's (almost?) self-harm scene in chapter 70 was loosely based on my first time cutting myself. I remember being completely overwhelmed in my mind and deep hurt from simply being alive, eyes resting on an object and having the thought cut yourself and it was like my brain went silent. The pain stopped. And then it all crashed over me so much worse than before, but now with the mantra cut yourself cut yourself cut yourself echoing in my head.
Also from chapter 70, Pomni's "people make their own choices regardless of what people around them do" was a rather hard-earned lesson. My best friend of 8 years at the time tried to kill herself and I had no idea until she told me a year afterwards. She had come to my house days before her attempt and was even bleeding from self-harm cuts and my dense self didn't think anything was wrong because I was too absorbed in my own problems. I carried that guilt for a long time, and she wasn't even successful. But eventually it clicked in my brain that I had basically tried to kill myself and didn't tell anyone, despite how available they were to me, and I wasn't mad at them for not knowing. The conclusion I settled on was, I should make myself available to help people when they need it/reach out, but they also need to reach out for help.
Uh, that's about all I can think of. Less long-winded than I expected. If you have questions about specific moments, feel free to ask.
