Important Spring Update (Patreon)

Today's update is a bit of a personal one, and a long read. I'll give you the tl;dr now. I've been extremely stressed and fighting with my anxiety disorder again, and it's been causing some interpersonal issues in my life as well. I'm taking a month off of Patreon so I'll be refunding everyone on the 1st. 

If you do not want to be refunded for the month of March, let me know immediately.

With that said, let's get into the details. I had a talk on Sunday with everyone to give them a bit of insight into my life, my head, and why things are going the way they are lately.

On the art side of things...

I've been generally getting frustrated since I took this up as a full-time job due to the fact that I can't seem to get anything that I actually want to draw done anymore. While Patreon work doesn't really seem to take up too much time, it takes up all of my mental and emotional energy that by the time I get through it I just no longer have energy for myself and don't want to work. I mean if you had a 9-5 job would you want to work more when you get home every day? Even if it's for yourself? Probably not. 

It's not something I can't handle without a proper schedule, but I've been shambles lately and can't focus on organizing myself properly to make that work. It all just comes down to my anxiety disorder that I keep having to default to being the source of all of my social and personal problems.

I have a problem...

Recently I've had a lot of issues come up in regards to my close friends having a big issue with the way I treat them and thinking I don't really care about them. I actually tend to struggle with this in general, but moreso lately as my anxiety has gotten worse. It's little things like giving poor one-word responses or not really paying attention and whatnot. I've got a pretty strong philosophy about the way I talk to people stemming from the way I've been treated in the past, and I know my solution isn't perfect but it's part of why it's turned out this way. I've had issues in the past with people I've attempted to sit around and wait for for hours at a time to get them to talk to me but they just ignore me because I'm not playing games with them and they get so wrapped up in the games that they wouldn't speak to me. This is just one example of many but eventually I hit a breaking point.

I realized I was wasting way too much time by just sitting on my PC and waiting for people to talk back to me instead of actually doing something. So I took on the philosophy that if I'm not busy, I'll make myself busy and if someone wants to spend time with me they can come to me instead. It used to be a lot more extreme and I'm getting better about it. 

Often times what happens is I tend to just get scared in regards to my actions. I freak out and decide to just not do anything at all. I've had a lot of history that pushed this feeling really strongly and it's mostly rooted in my family.

My Anxiety Disorder...

My parents split up when I was like 12 or 13 or something. Not an uncommon thing these days, but tbh it didn't really bother me. The only memories I had of my dad before he left was him sleeping a lot or yelling at me because I didn't do things he wanted me to do. Eg. ride a dirt bike with him, go hunting, go fishing. Not really my forte, and it never was. He'd get so mad because the other friends he had in town had kids that loved doing that stuff and I think it made him envious. After I was born my Dad got a vasectomy so it's not like he could try again to get a son he wanted.

I found out later that my dad was always dating women with sons younger and more impressionable than me. My mom was picky into my dad's personal life so I found out about hunting trips and stuff my dad would go on with his step-sons as he jumped from relationships. It was kind of obvious that he was attempting to try and have some kind of father-son relationship he wanted that he couldn't get out of me. From then on I was convinced that it was my fault he left. My mom didn't help with encouraging that idea, either.

The worst part about my dad leaving was my mom's behaviour from then, afterward. The good news is I got to see her more since she wasn't going out to the bar with him basically every night. The bad news is she'd drink at home instead and I'd see what was really going on. She went on anti-depressants and kept talking about how she wanted to kill herself and that if my sister and I ever left home she'd have nothing left to live for and once we're out she would end her life. So you can imagine at this point I'm scared to leave home. It was my fault my dad abandoned me and it would be my fault when mom decides she doesn't want to live anymore.

Eventually she got off her anti-depressants and things improved, but there were still the odd moments like one night she wanted to sleep in my bed (like when I was a kid I'd sneak into my parents' room so I think she was just channeling some of her nostalgia). And I mean I was still young so it wasn't that outlandish, but by this point I was a big boy and didn't want to be treated like a kid. I told her no and she got pretty mad and went out of her way to not acknowledge me for days to try and make me feel bad or something. 

My first cell phone which was given to me by my sister turned into a big problem too. My mom decided without telling me that we were sharing the phone, except I wanted to use the phone so I could talk to my online friends while at school and stuff. She decided to tell me to "take my phone and shove it". Once again didn't talk to me for a while.

My sister and I were always close. At some point when I became a furry I started to kind of distance myself from her because I was developing my own social life, and she would constantly point out how I'm different and not as talkative and don't spend as much time with her. She got upset because it seemed like I didn't trust her anymore with telling her things. (she used to tell me all sorts of stuff about her life, like her sex life, how she's tried some drugs and what they were like, etc.). I had a troll find my mom and sister's facebook and expose my FA page to them. I had a talking to about it but just beat around the bush until I confronted my sister finally. I said I'd finally share it with her since she wanted me to open up to her more, and asked her not to judge me too hard since I never said anything bad about her sex or drug life. She agreed. I explained what a furry was, and her first response was "stay the fuck away from my dog." So yeah that's why I don't tell you anything, sis.

I got to a point where I was becoming afraid of my family. My dad hates me because he's disappointed by his own mistakes, my mom is manipulating me, my sister is lying to me and making me feel guilty. And I was a sheltered kid, y'know? These people were who I saw the most and I was becoming scared of them. Every little thing I did was wrong, somehow, and was the subject of endless guilt. My mom would tell me constantly how much I look like my dad, and then imply that I'm just as horrible of a person as he is. My sister would remind me about how I'm distancing myself and also get upset because I was "always the favourite" and "had it easy". 

These kinds of things have an impact on a person. 

No matter what I do, if it causes some kind of negative reaction, it's my fault and I've done something wrong, and I'm a bad human being.

If I'm honest, when I was much more dramatic and impressionable, I became aware of how my family was treating me and I was tempted to end my life, myself, just to prove to them what they had done to me. I ultimately chose to live with the disorder instead, though. Now that I'm out of there it's really not so bad.

How I dealt with it...

Being in a position where I inspire others and help people has really had a huge impact on my self-worth. I began to realize that if I keep presenting this pathetic and pitiful child-like person to the general public I'm gonna be making a bad impression on others. I had to find a way to deal with my issues and so I looked to virtues to change my outlook on things. Once I met Dizz, I began a recovery of sorts, and I had this moment of clarity where I felt like there was a silver lining. I was surrounded by guilt and fear all the time, and then I saw an opening, and I took it. And with that opening, I took on 2 new big virtues that helepd me overcome my anxiety.

The first is to be sincere. I'd had enough of letting my fear of others' opinions of me get me down. I'll say it how it is, because there's no excuse for lying to somebody. I say sincerity over honesty because I feel like sincerity means you still mean well and make that clear while also delivering the truth.

The second is to accept negativity into my life. It's literally impossible for any type of relationship/friendship/whatever to go on without anything going wrong ever. It's a necessary part of life so I should learn to recognize that it's not really wrong at all, it's normal. What is the good without the bad? It's just neutral because you have nothing to compare it to.

Over time I worked on building my confidence, and with moral support from Dizz I managed to overcome my disorder.

Except now it's coming back..

and I need to deal with it again. I think it's just all the stress getting to me because I'm freaking out in a bunch of minor situations and having anxiety attacks and whatnot. It's driving me insane and I think I need some time to deal with it. I have a lot of personal work I want to do and so I'll be taking the month of March off of Patreon so I can focus on my relationships with people and work on feeling better.

-

I'll be automatically refunding everyone on the 1st. If you don't want to be refunded, please let me know within a day or so. Send me a message on here, leave a comment, message me on Discord (Roy#1767) or Telegram/Twitter (@RoyArashi).

Thanks again for all of the support. I'll be around in the server for the time being.