#toby smith

so, impressionism! i really suck at simplifying shapes, not as much as how i can't do line art though

the canvas size is stupidly smaller than what i normally paint on (10x smaller!)

drawing tommy is hard, like, it took about 3 hours to draw everything else (including tubbo!) and double that probs for the tiny tini tommy on the canvas

anyways, drawn on a 16" drawing monitor on rebelle

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I had an escape into the woods while in company time the other day, stood there in my uniform stained in motor oil, covered in the sun passing through my eyelids. I breathed freely, I was being paid overtime, the mania of efficiency and clock tickings fed off, and let the sound of a dozen different birds be heard. In that moment, I think I felt a shard of being alive, it lasted longer than what seconds normally feel. I can't replicate it by memory and it was only until I remembered that I was still alone.

I always fantasize about nurturing a community in this dead end of a town. Make food, create beds, do art. But who am I kidding? I can hardly work a part-time job without daily migraine pills and anxiety medication that can put an energy drinker to sleep in fifteen minutes. It's a delusion of salvation, I want to be saved. It's daydreaming of a situation where Tubbo wouldn't be so special.

And so I paint, paint as adoration. I paint as a test to hone my devotion. Yet I find it hard to keep doing this romanticism. Yes it's an escape, to wrought out of nothing in a page this window into a beautiful world. But I can't justify looking at it for what it esthetically presents, like my soul who dares not speak, eventually rubbing on the page.

I've been dealing with a mental block of sorts, I noticed first that I couldn't write about mundane couple things. I had the symbology and philosophy in mind, but I refused to wallow in practicality. It was almost like I was shutting any form of intimacy out. No, it was exactly that; I stopped going on dates for so long now, I flinch at hugs and refuse kisses on cheeks.

A childhood friend and love of mine started talking again with me recently, we played DnD in a group for a while and he approached me to play an Elden Ring mod together. It's been about a hundred hours, and every session of indulgence nearing double digits I evaded melancholy so easily, I didn't open tiktok or ig for the whole two weeks. Not that I love that man, or even still love the past of him. But we click together, as we always did. I wish I could say "I missed playing with you.", but he knows I once loved him and last time I did something of the sort, fuck.

It brings me, that I’m the real one and Toby stands as almost fiction, so why, why does when he is walking by the shore or talking to a friend, going on vacation or moving houses, drinking on a party or chilling on the sofa I'm overcome with such a choking force to believe doom would better soon come than to live another minute?! It's so strong as to make everything else feel rather numb, it's stronger than adrenaline when I'm near death, than hunger when I'm starved for days, than sleep when I'm refusing to let time pass.

There’s still memories of around the time I discovered his streams, it started from randomly being recommended Technoblade videos on yt, which I binged so much for weeks, or maybe months? I don’t know. Then the mc mondays had it’s videos and I found the Tommyinnit fella funny in a different way, I think I got a crush on him actually.

How come I got to Tubbo? I remember only that I heard him talking and an allure swirled warm in my stomach. It was lockdown already I think? Last year of hs.

Fuck, I don’t remember so much. I have certainty I put his streams on the background and did things? For a moment I wanted to be a streamer I’m sure, and I laugh now, how I had pages and pages of a notebook systematizing his smile and jokes, mannerism and speech patterns. Still have them actually, they are not useful. Cute sure, but so naive.

It reminds me how cheap are the copies of art I bury myself in and it worries me that it's all I ever have. Am I what?! Cursed with an imagination?! Does the greed that I loathe simply shown in another way?

I don't want to rot in still waters that fester disease, I don't want to be free of discomfort. I want to live, LIVE! Fucking dammit, I say Toby's name like a prayer to cure my discomfort!

I leaned into him to allow my feelings of unrest to be validated! I need him to validate my feelings cause nothing else does! I’m alienated by him, kept dreaming by him! The amounts of dissociation erase everything!

But honestly, I know it’s not him. He’s the strongest, if only the latest on a… long line of obsession with men my age. Watch the shadows on the wall confused gay boy, I know that birds do not sing in caves.

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