#sassyduckreturns

Now for the stuff that cased me to go into a hiatus

I'm not going to lie. This year has being very hard but there's being some positives. However, there was a lot of negative and stressful situations which i went through. I threw myself into crafting and building things for cosplay as not only am I making up for lost time (lack of confidence when i was younger) but it's also one of the only ways I could cope.

So a lot of people don't know this but I don't bother with my extended family. They've never really being in my life and a number of them are toxic. Having said that, there were two members of the family that i did have in my life. My parent and my sibling.

Unfortunately, my parent was diagnosed with stage four cancer along with a number of other health issues, not long after I last posted. Throughout the year, they were in and out of hospital and in the summer had treatment for the cancer. I'm happy to report the cancer was removed and they're currently in ok health. Their health will not be perfect as they went through a lot this year but theyre in a good place right now and I'll take that because I still have them right now but unfortunately these events also lead in me going complete no contact with my sibling, due to their extremely toxic attitude towards myself and my parent. My sibling has also refused to back off and tried to contact me despite the boundaries i had put up. Mind you, I had told this person that I didn't want to be in their life anymore and even blocked them. They still tried to contact me by bypassing the block and getting someone else to message me while trying to guilt trip me for finally putting my foot down and protecting my own peace.

While all of this was happening, I was also dealing with a duty of care for my friend and trying to help them solve a troubling issue at home plus my own job was adding to my stress as I was training new beginners (i currently am a retired trainer for this reason). As you can imagine, I broke. Mentally and physically. My mental health has never being great and was especially bad in my younger years but in recent years, I had done well to manage my depression, anxiety and issues but this year, it's being the worst its being in 4 years. Fortunately, I didn't react the same way i did as i had the tools and growth to manage it and I have being taking steps to restoring my mental health to a decent state once again (hence the crafting). Unfortunately, the same can not be said with my current physical health. I'm not going to sugarcoat it. I have carer's fatigue, which has not helped my depression (though I'm working on it) or my physical health. It does look like I'm going have to go back to using a cane again and getting knee support again and of course, the doctors refuse to see me. That makes it twenty years of me trying to get them to listen and the doctors ignoring me because I'm "too young" or the pain is "in my head".

Anyway, let's address the positives in my life for a bit of balance.

The main positive this year was designing and making a cosplay for a character from Tian Guan Ci Fu and entering it into a competition at the end of this year. Making it kept me going. I didn't win but I realized I'm offically over my stage fright and i rocked that stage

Some other positives was making new friends and seeing/talking to old ones, cosplaying kpop demon hunters and enjoying the songs, doing small progress on my og novel series (currently trying to write book 3) and some other stuff. There's even being lovely customers at work which is always a bonus. Oh yeah. Summer was beautifully quiet at work :)