#twdepression

Roma, 28 novembre 2020

Cara me, che fine hai fatto? Dove sei? Quando torni qui? Qua mi manchi tanto, mi manca vederti, averti dentro, sentirti, capirti, amarti. Mi mancano i tuoi bei sorrisi, mi mancano le tue letture infinite e i disegni colorati, ora che tutto un colore non ce l’ha più. Mi mancano i tuoi ricordi indimenticabili, quelli a cui avresti messo una stellina se la vita fosse una galleria; mi mancano le tue lacrime di felicità, le soluzioni lineari ai tuoi problemi.

Ti auguro tante cose, sai. Ti auguro di smetterla di aver bisogno della tua playlist “currently: crying”, quella era solo per i momenti tristi. Ti auguro di dimenticarti dei numeri, di scegliere in base a quelli, solo perché vuoi risparmiare dove puoi, perché una prugna è meno di una mela. Ti auguro di capire che il cibo è solo un mezzo, che ti dà le energie necessarie per poter vivere. Ti auguro di non aver paura di coprire ogni parte del tuo corpo in modo da nasconderla in vestiti enormi; ti auguro di tornare a guardarti davvero allo specchio e non avere paura; ti auguro di non domandarti più se la gente noterà o meno le tue cicatrici, cosa dirà e tu che risponderai; ti auguro di non domandarti più se i bambini si spaventeranno al mare e se darai loro un cattivo esempio. Ti auguro di non fare più i record di ore a digiuno, perché non ti porteranno da nessuna parte. Ti auguro di non pensare sempre al peggio ogni volta che vedi un ponte, una piscina, una vasca da bagno, un balcone. Ti auguro di smetterla di leggere i foglietti illustrativi delle medicine per sapere gli effetti collaterali in caso di overdose. Ti auguro di non far più fatica ad alzarti la mattina e di non passare più i pomeriggi a letto per soffocare i pensieri. Ti auguro di riuscire ad addormentarti anche se non sono le due di notte; ti auguro di non pensare più che sarai una di quelle ricoverate in psichiatria a vent’anni e che fanno continuamente fuori e dentro dall’ospedale. Ti auguro di ritrovarti, per davvero, e di innamorarti della vita di nuovo.

Whumptober2021 no.9 tears

Mary during her dark days after loosing her egg and forced to go back to America.

Della was gone, Scrooge locked himself away. there was no one to help her.

Hello friends!

I’m writing this today in the spirit of fostering a happy and ongoing relationship between us.

I can’t begin to tell you all how much I appreciate all of you who follow me, like and/or reblog my stuff. Those of you who send me comments, feedback and asks are my favs (I’m sorry unlike my mother I have favourites). In the past few months since I joined this site, it has become my safe space away from reality. I have found some truly amazing humans who have shown me kindness, support and friendship beyond measure. I have been lucky that thus far I have not encountered any trolls. So Tumblr for me has become my home within my home.

I love that on Tumblr I can share my writing with a wide audience. I love that people will tell me that they enjoy my work, or that they check my account every day to see if I have new stuff. That I’ve made people have feelings or thought differently about something. Getting notifications that a person is reading through the chapters of George honestly makes me smile, watching someone binge is a feeling I can’t even describe.

I love that people value my writing and deem that I may just be able to give life to their ideas. I love when people request work from me and that people send me amazing, brilliant, heartwarming or funny ideas which shoot me off in a creative direction I never thought of (I’m looking at you here Shirts and Performance Anxiety requesters). I like that I can collaborate with people I’ve never met and will like never know beyond an anonymous ask and a keyboard. I view requests as a collaborative work.

I love it all.

The wonder of the Tumblr is that we are all relatively anonymous. I’m sure most of you realise I am not actually a crone who lives under a trap door. You don’t know what I look like, what I do to keep a roof over my head and food in my belly, or much else about me. Although some of you probably have a good idea of my political and social justice views and weirdly, now I think about it, many of you have probably had some insight into my particular “tastes” (okay this is embarrassing now I think about it -- moving on.)

Among the things you don’t know about me is I have depression and anxiety (I don’t like to say I suffer because thankfully there are good days, even weeks or months sometimes). I like to think of them as my very own black dragon or rather a pack (or whatever the correct nomenclature is for a group of dragons - hoard?). Who on occasion sweep in and raze my village to the ground and takes a sheep or villager or two. Unfortunately, my dragons are not quite as sweet as toothless. On the whole, I can keep my dragons in check by providing them with regular offerings and by having my kingdom knights in place to guard against them (sleep, regular meals, medication, therapy etc).

But, in the past few months my dragons have deemed these offerings insufficient and have been raiding more and more often and my knights have suffered catastrophic loses. So I am alone with my sword against the hoard. A battle worthy of the Grecian epics has been waged and fair to say my sword has not been as swift or sharp as I would have liked and the hoard has redoubled their efforts. I am tormented on a daily if not hourly basis. These battles have worn me down and worn me out and currently, I am quite literally bunkered down in my hovel.

I have a love-hate relationship with my brain and my dragons. My brain has helped me create some work I’m really proud of. I’ve run a business and worked in some amazing places where amazing things were happening. I graduated from Uni with first class honours and am working my way through a PhD. Hyperfixation helped me write 60,000 words of my fic George in just a few weeks. I like to think that sometimes I’m funny or witty and that I can have some empathy for others who have their own struggles. Other times my brain convinces me that I am stupid, mean, inadequate, unworthy or just plain unlovable, even unlikeable (I’ll stop there but know given the chance I would write a thousand things). I have significant issues with ‘rejection’ and it causes me physical pain and great mental distress to feel I have made anyone feel any of these things.

So why does this matter to any of you? Well, really it doesn’t. BUT, I need to start rejecting some of the requests in my inbox. I need to reject them because having ones I don’t feel I can do in my inbox is stressing me out. But, my dragons have me convinced that I will hurt peoples feelings or that they won’t like me if I do this. The intellectual part of my brain knows that for the most part, this isn’t true, but it’s hard to be intellectual when dragons are burning down your village and trying to eat you. But I have to change something.

So going forward:

* I’ll be cleaning out my inbox of any current requests I don’t think I can do.

* I will reply to your request I won’t just delete them

* I will keep my requests open - but if after a week or so the request hasn’t sparked anything off on my brain I’ll respond and let you know that I can’t do it, I will try to explain why (if it’s a reason beyond - I have no idea what to do with this.

* However this does not mean you are guaranteed your requested fic within a week or any other set time period, just that I’m keeping it on my “to do” list.

* I am happy to have a dialogue with you about your request, but remember I am not a monkey (paid, trained or otherwise who can just churn out fics)

IMPORTANT NOTE:

Me rejecting your request does not mean I think its, dumb, stupid or anything beyond, I don’t have a plan or idea for what to do with this. Basically the ‘prompt’ has not prompted any ideas for me or I know someone has already done a similar request that I don’t have anything ‘new’ to add. Or if its something I’m not comfortable writing about.

The only reason I will reject a request because of ‘you’ is if I know the same request has been sent to multiple authors. Because when people do that it’s not a collaboration. There aren’t many peaky writers out there are we tend to read each other’s work and we talk to each other, often discussing ideas so we tend to notice.

So, in summary, I appreciate all of you, I love getting requests and feedback from you all and I hope we can keep working together going forward.

The above is not a cry for help or an attempt at garnering sympathy, simply an attempt at an open dialogue.

TLDR: If I reject your request it’s not you, it’s me.

Wishing you all a wonderful day/night wherever you are.