An Overdue Apology
This is, almost entirely, a space for the Daydverse itself, and I try to keep my personal shit in my personal blogging spaces. When it comes to not inundating those of you who are just here for Renny and Susan and Mike and Terry with cooking and randomness and other fandoms, that's probably a good thing. But there's something else that I've been trying to tell myself is "enough" to be said over there, but it's not. It needs to be said here.
I'm mentally ill. Pretty fucking severely. I finally got pinned down, diagnosed, and went into proper, intensive, medicated treatment in the summer of 2012, and while I'm now in recovery, for a lot of the history of the Daydverse, I was reeeeeeeeallly fucking far on the scale of delusional schizoid disorders and didn't even know it. When they say that often the craziest ones don't know they're crazy, they're fucking right.
For those of you who just enjoy the books and the stories and the art and the community, this frankly doesn't really matter or impact you, but now you know. For others, though, who were my personal friends, it's pretty fucking relevant. For those of you who were close enough to know the truth - that I believed not only that the Daydverse characters existed, but that I could "channel" their disembodied souls and basically be possessed by them as part of an entire friggin' X-man movie's worth of superpowers I believed I had as part of being on a mission from God (holy shit how I wish ANY of that was kidding) - you're the reason I'm posting this.
That I believed it doesn't change in any way that what I was doing was wrong and incredibly fucked up and that it lead to some really, really damaging and fucked up relationships. I hurt people, in some cases badly, sometimes as myself, sometimes as others. I cut people off because of things that my delusions told me, and some of you (wisely) cut ME off when it went too far. I'm not going to name names because I understand how some of you might not other people to know you were involved that deep in my crazy and just want it to go away and are glad that I've basically dropped off this part of the planet for the last eighteen months while I've been trying to unravel my head.
I have tried to individually and privately contact those I know I hurt (who haven't told me to fuck off and never contact them again) and apologize, but recently, I saw someone who described themselves as an "ex-Daydian" say that I'd hurt them, and it was someone I would never have listed among those ranks. This made me realize that not only am I in absolutely no position to judge who I did and didn't wrong in my deeply erroneous belief that I was communicating with some alternate dimension where it was all real and sharing some divinely ordained destiny, giving voice to the spirits and stories of real heroes and villains living and dead, but the very fact that those 'possessions' left me with huge blank holes in my memory means that I literally don't know what I did or didn't do in a lot of cases, and I theoretically could easily have many more victims among the Daydians than I know.
Causing pain to even one of you is the last fucking thing I have ever wanted. Even in the depths of my batshit, my intent was to hopefully cause positive change in your lives...and yeah, entertain you a little while making you think. I genuinely care about every single one of you, and it grieves me deeply to understand that intentions mean shit in that I HAVE hurt an unknown number of you past and present. There are a few of you I love so much and know how much of a betrayal this is that it's literally reduced me to sobbing in shame and guilt too hard to have been able to tell you directly yet, so I've been hoping you'd see it somewhere and now I guess this is that somewhere.
I'm here to apologize. I am sorry. Deeply, unreservedly, profoundly sorry and ashamed. You gave me trust and love and friendship and my own damned fandom, and for many of you who deserved it least and gave me most and loved my stories the deepest, I pissed crazy all over you and your lives and I'm not even going to pretend I know how much damage I did. If you don't want anything more to do with me or the 'verse, that's ok. I don't expect your forgiveness, your 'loyalty,' or anything else. If you want to talk about it more or want a personal or direct apology - and I am absolutely extending them to ANYONE who feels like they want one regardless of how close we are/were or aren't/weren't or how, if relevant, things ended between us - let me know here if you want it in public and in a private message, email, or text (my phone number is 757-634-7195) if you want it privately. If you know anyone who has left the fandom whom you feel should see this message, feel free to pass it on, especially if they were "inner circle" who ended badly.
I don't think I can undo it, but I want to do what I can to make amends and do whatever the people I hurt think is most appropriate to what would be best for them now.
